Relationship marketing and brand involvement of professionals through web-enhanced brand communities: the case of Coloplast
Introduction
Stiffer competition, escalating marketing costs and ever shorter technology life cycles have led more and more researchers to suggest that marketing efforts should change from a focus on immediate exchange to the initiation, establishment and maintenance of long-term relationships with customers. As a consequence, relationship marketing has been suggested as the next dominating marketing paradigm (Morgan & Hunt, 1994).
One of the central aspects of relationship marketing is communication with customers. Involving consumers in a marketing dialogue is a prerequisite for achieving brand involvement and loyalty, which in turn affects the prospects of establishing positive market relationships. More and more firms are recognizing the advantages of web-enhanced brand communities as a potential lever for relationship-marketing communication. Brand communities, not only provide companies with an additional marketing communication channel, but also enable the company establish linkages to devoted users of their product. Such users have taken the time and effort to engage themselves in consumption-related activities and share their knowledge with others, thus enhancing general knowledge levels and devotion to particular products and their utilities. So far, because the initiation and development of vital brand communities has required a certain critical mass of enthusiastic users, brand community activities have been few and far between. However, firms have increasingly realized that, via the Internet, they can overcome the time and space constraints that have so far limited their involvement in such activities. There is thus reason to believe that web-enhanced brand communities will grow in importance and unleash a new potential for developing market value for users and producers alike.
So far, there has been little research on web-enhanced brand communities and their utility as a marketing communication tool (Fischer et al., 1996, Kozinets, 1999, Rothaermel & Sugiyama, 2001). Up to now, the main focus of research has been on consumption and private end-users (e.g., Harley Davidson Clubs or Jeep communities; McAlexander, Schouten & Koeing, 2002), whereas brand communities in the context of industrial marketing has mostly been ignored. Existing contributions have looked mainly at how Internet-based communities can support brand building in consumer markets. Traditionally, industrial markets have not been seen as targets for brand marketing efforts (Michell, King & Reast, 2001). However, the potential impact of using web-enhanced brand communities in the industrial markets could be even greater since professional users may have a stronger and more long-standing interest in exchanging product-related information with the company and among themselves. The purpose of this paper is to outline a conceptual model of how web-enhanced brand community activities can influence relationship building in industrial markets. Furthermore, the model will be empirically based using an investigative case study.
Section snippets
The brand community concept
The community as a unit of analysis has its origin in anthropological and sociological research, and, today, there are countless definitions of communities. Usually, communities describe phenomena where people gather regularly and share a particular interest (Rothaermel & Sugiyama, 2001). Consumption patterns have led to the creation of a particular form of community, such as the Saturday fruit and vegetable markets found in almost every populated region in the world. Although brand communities
Data collection
The article is based on a qualitative case study, consistent with the methodology described by Strauss and Corbin (1990) and Yin (1994). However, while the study, due to its context, is qualitative, it is positioned between the deductive and inductive way of carrying out qualitative studies, it being neither a test of an already developed theory nor a development of a new theory. Rather, it is an extension of an existing theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) through dialectic interaction between
Case analysis
The following discusses the presented conceptual model linking web-enhanced communities to customer relationship-building efforts, using SpinalNet and StomaNet as a case example.
Concluding remarks
This paper has discussed the role of web-enhanced brand communities for supporting social exchanges of professionals based on a case study of Coloplast's web-enhanced community of health care professionals. The findings suggest that, in line with expectations, web communities in the professional market build on preexisting communities, enabling community members to intensify the activities of the community to expand its reach. Moreover, the case explores processes of recruitment and involvement
Poul Houman Andersen is Associate Dean of Research and Full Professor in international marketing at the Aarhus School of Business, Denmark.
References (41)
Organizing international technological collaboration in subcontractor relationships: An investigation of the knowledge-stickiness problem
Research Policy
(1999)E-Tribalized marketing? The strategic implications of virtual communities of consumption
European Management Journal
(1999)An empirical study of hospital buying
Industrial Marketing Management
(1979, January)- et al.
Virtual Internet communities and commercial success: Individual and community-level theory in the atypical case of TimeZone.com
Journal of Management
(2001) Relationship development and marketing communication: Towards an integrative model
Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing
(2001)- et al.
Reputational information: Its role in inter-organizational collaboration
Corporate Reputation Review
(1999) - et al.
Industrial purchasing: An empirical exploration of the buyclass framework
Journal of Marketing
(1987, July) - et al.
A model of distributor firm and manufacturer firm working partnerships
Journal of Marketing
(1990) - et al.
Viral marketing=word of mouth marketing?
Ethnography unbound: Power and resistance in the modern metropolis
(1991)
A communication-based marketing model for managing relationships
Journal of Marketing
Blown to bits—How the new economics of information transform strategy
Creating, or escaping community? An explorative study of Internet consumers' behaviour
Advances in Consumer Research
Consumers and their brands: Developing relationship theory in consumer research
Journal of Consumer Research
Marketing-orientation revisited: The crucial role of the part-time marketer
European Journal of Marketing
Net gain: Expanding markets through virtual communities
Industrial marketing strategies and different national environments
Journal of Business Research
Relationship atmosphere in international business
Leading the revolution
The use of knowledge in society
American Economic Review
Cited by (73)
The Role of Chocolate Web-Based Communication in a Regional Context: Its Implication for Open Innovation
2022, Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and ComplexityDoes gamification engage users in online shopping?
2021, Electronic Commerce Research and ApplicationsCitation Excerpt :Different researchers have studied engagement and its consequences on “consumers/customers”, including the concepts of satisfaction (Bowden, 2009a), trust (Casaló et al., 2007; Hollebeek, 2011a; Hollebeek, 2011b), commitment, emotional link or attachment (Chan and Li, 2010) and loyalty (Bowden, 2009a; Bowden, 2009b). Of these concepts, commitment, empowerment and loyalty are prominent in online community contexts (Andersen, 2005; Schouten et al., 2007; Chan and Li, 2010). However, in the field of human–computer interaction, the concept used is “user engagement”, which refers to how individuals interact with the technology that captivates them.
Gamification as a motivation strategy for higher education students in tourism face-to-face learning
2020, Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism EducationCitation Excerpt :The benefit a user expects to gain from the use of an application based on gamification is a factor that affects their response. The literature has identified economic and utility benefits as well as those of a hedonic or symbolic nature (Andersen, 2005; Chung & Buhalis, 2008; Jeong, 2008; Stepchenkova, Mills, & Jiang, 2007; Wang & Fesenmaier, 2004; Yoo & Gretzel, 2008). The former is related to the quality of the product and its functionality.
Can buzzing bring business? Social interactions, network centrality and sales performance: An empirical study on business-to-business communities
2020, Journal of Business ResearchCitation Excerpt :Many studies have found that social interactions in an online consumer community (e.g., Manchanda, Packard, & Pattabhiramaiah, 2015; Schau, Muñiz, & Arnould, 2009) affect members’ attitudes toward the products or brand of the marketer that built the community (Adjei, Noble, & Noble, 2010). Research on online communities has suggested that the roles of B2B communities in generating value for their members may be distinct from those of customer-to-customer (C2C) communities (Andersen, 2005). However, the effects of B2B communities’ activities on business, especially their peer-to-peer social interactions, have rarely been investigated (Bruhn, Schnebelen, & Schäfer, 2014; Libai et al., 2010).
Digitization capability and the digitalization of business models in business-to-business firms: Past, present, and future
2020, Industrial Marketing ManagementExploring crucial social media marketing factors for improving customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in bed and breakfast sectors in Taiwan
2023, International Journal of Tourism Cities
Poul Houman Andersen is Associate Dean of Research and Full Professor in international marketing at the Aarhus School of Business, Denmark.