Question

Discuss the positive and negative aspects of brand communities for marketers, illustrating your answer with specific brands.

Answer 1

Building and managing an internet-based brand community gives you and your customers a level playing field that meets the needs of each other. You can create an online functionality to attract, please, and keep your business interested and returning after you've determined what your customers are looking for.

But it's not easy to create positive online mark communities. There are lots of challenges in the initial setup and along the road. However, these difficulties should not be a dissuasive one, and the numerous benefits of engaging your customers are quickly outweighed.

Benefits to business:
When you have an engaged user base that participates in your online brand culture, you can receive immediate, continuing reviews. Such insightful consumer analysis will help you and your staff determine where you are allocating human and financial resources, how you are improving and expanding your company, and what goods you are creating for the future.
Research also shows that online brand communities induce better cross-department collaboration between companies. The entire company can view open and public comments, and make it easier for members of the technical and sales team to hear the customer's voice and develop cohesive strategies.

The brand itself is also reinforced by online marketing audiences, giving the company a name, a shape, and a story. This gives your customers the chance to associate your business with more than just the item they purchased. Society instilled life into the name of the business.

But why does any of that matter?

It triggers sales.

The study demonstrates again and again that an online brand group will affect purchases by having "a favorable effect on the immediate decision to buy" and "retaining both seasoned and beginner customers"

Managing an online brand community 's challenges:
The dreaded bad review, unrelated negative comment thread, or entirely vacant involvement ...

Remember when I said the brand is breathing life into the community? Well that community can spit on the brand sometimes too.

Don't fool yourself into believing it's pure sunshine and rainbows. Handling an online brand community means managing the challenges that come with an open and public forum, too.