Brand community image : a social identity theory perspective

![CDATA[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?]]