Brand community image : a social identity theory perspective

Intensified competition and increasing usage of social media give rise to marketers' attention to brand community as an effective means to engage with customers and ultimately to build a strong brand. In brand community research, as in brand image research, if a positive image is an indication of a strong brand, a positive brand community image can also be used as an indication of the status of a brand community (Wang, Butt, and Wei 2011). Nonetheless, in published research, there is a lack of attention to brand community image. While some researchers argue that brand community is psychological in nature and investigate the psychological antecedents of customers' integration into a brand community (Bagozzi and Dholakia 2006; Carlson, Suter and Brown 2008), they predominantly focus on identification and selfcategorization processes, and stop short of considering the social comparison processes that underlie inter-customer relationships and form customers' positive bias toward their own brand community. As such, this study considers the psychological processes underpinning brand community image by examining the following question: To what extent may customers' perceptions of other customers in the brand community impact on their experience of that brand community, as reflected in the brand community image?