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Online Brand Communities and Brand Loyalty: Toward a Social Influence Theory

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The Art of Digital Marketing for Fashion and Luxury Brands

Abstract

Online brand communities (OBCs) are gaining traction in the development of marketing strategy within the fashion industry, but it is unclear how the dominant group of users, the millennials, is responding to the prevailing and varying customer loyalty programmes. Traditionally, customers’ loyalty is measured by the volume of purchases. However, loyalty is not just based on the perceived materialistic and monetary gains a customer obtains. Loyalty also involves the strong feeling of support or allegiance that moves a customer to remain faithful with a brand despite the occurrence of a negative backlash on social media. However, customers do not have the same level of loyalty for a brand. Some even have more loyalty towards the OBC than to the brand itself. Based on the understanding that loyalty differs among groups of people within the same OBC, this chapter contributes to existing literature and provides a conceptual insight into how OBCs activate customers’ multidimensional loyalty intentions towards fashion brands. Based on customers’ experience within OBCs from the fashion industry, this chapter identifies different levels of loyalty towards fashion brands which can indicate millennial customers’ loyalty intentions. From this we can identify the diverse attitudes and actions that separate millennial customers into sub-groups based on their loyalty intentions.

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Recommended Further Reading

  • Cheng, F. F., Wu, C. S., & Chen, Y. C. (2020b). Creating customer loyalty in online brand communities. Computers in Human Behavior,107,.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dick, A. S., & Basu, K. (1994b). Customer loyalty: Toward an integrated conceptual framework. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science,22(2), 99–113.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Helal, G., Ozuem, W., & Lancaster, G. (2018b). Social media brand perceptions of millennials. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management,46(10), 977–998.

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  • Kelman, H. (1958b). Compliance, identification, and internalization three processes of attitude change. Journal of Conflict Resolution,2(1), 51–60.

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  • Willis, M. (2019). The dynamics of social media marketing content and customer retention. In G. Bowen & W. Ozuem (Eds.) Leveraging computer-mediated marketing environments. IGI Global.

    Google Scholar 

  • Willis, M., Ozuem, W., & Ng, R. (2019). Enhancing online brand relationship performance in the fashion industry. In W. Ozuem, E. Patten, & Y. Azemi (Eds.), Harnessing Omni-channel marketing strategies for fashion and luxury brands. Brown Walker Press.

    Google Scholar 

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  1. Institute of Business, Industry and Leadership, University of Cumbria, Lancaster, UK

    Michelle Willis

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  1. Institute of Business, Industry and Leadership, University of Cumbria, Lancaster, UK

    Wilson Ozuem

  2. Department of Economics and Business, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Silvia Ranfagni

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Willis, M. (2021). Online Brand Communities and Brand Loyalty: Toward a Social Influence Theory. In: Ozuem, W., Ranfagni, S. (eds) The Art of Digital Marketing for Fashion and Luxury Brands. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70324-0_7

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