Brand communities: loyal to thecommunity or the brand?

Gianluca Marzocchi, Gabriele Morandin and Massimo BergamiDepartment of Management, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate empirically the relative emphasis accorded bymembers of a brand community to identification with that community and identification with thebrand-owner, and thereby close a gap in the literature to date.

Design/methodology/approach – Based on a review of the literature relating to identification,loyalty, and potentially mediating brand-related constructs, a cross-sectional questionnaire-basedsurvey was carried out at a brandfest organised by a major European motorcycle manufacturer. Datacollected from 256 respondents were analysed by structural equation modelling, testing sevenhypothesised causal links.

Findings – Brand loyalty is primarily influenced by identification with the brand community,through the mediating role of brand affect.

Research limitations/implications – The findings require confirmation in other settings andindustry sectors before they can be generalised with confidence, but point to several fruitful researchdirections.

Practical implications – Brand strategists have new evidence to guide allocation of effort andresources to the effective cultivation and maintenance of brand loyalty.

Originality/value – The study makes an original contribution, in a real-world setting, to theunderstanding of how members of a brand community relate to the brand, and of how their brandloyalty is activated.

Keywords Brand communities, Brand loyalty, Social identification, Motorcycles, Europe,Customer behaviour, Brand management

Paper type Research paper

IntroductionThe concept of consumers’ identification with brands or companies has been wellreported and discussed in the literatures of marketing, consumer behaviour andpsychology. Consumers can also identify with what have been termed “brandcommunities” (Cova, 1997). Muniz and O’Guinn (2001, p. 413) have argued that these“become a common understanding of a shared identity”, while McAlexander et al.(2002, p. 38) extend the concept in asserting that “communities tend to tend to beidentified on the basis of commonality or identification among their members”. Whilesome studies have investigated single and specific targets of identification, none hasinvestigated the possibility that consumer-company identification andconsumer-community identification exert independent and equivalent impacts onrelevant loyalty-related outcomes, and if so to what extent. The research question to beaddressed is therefore: how important are identification with the brand owner andidentification with the community, respectively, in building loyalty in a brandcommunity? Accordingly, this paper develops and tests a theoretical model to explainthe impact of identification constructs on loyalty-related outcomes. An understanding

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Received 12 January 2010Revised 28 August 2010

Accepted 9 January 2011

European Journal of MarketingVol. 47 No. 1/2, 2013

pp. 93-114q Emerald Group Publishing Limited

0309-0566DOI 10.1108/03090561311285475

of this process is an important input to strategic decisions concerning the relativeallocation of effort to the fostering of consumers’ identification with the company, witha brand community or with both. An informed strategy will be capable of exploitingthe full potential of the customer base to spread positive referrals and activate othertangible actions, to the benefit of the company and its products (Gremler and Brown,1999).

Furthermore, defining and measuring an “identification” effect necessarily entailsplacing it within a broader conceptual framework. It is not simply a matter ofestablishing the existence of a causal connection between brand loyalty andidentification with a brand owner or brand community (or any other theoretically andmanagerially relevant construct). It is further necessary to understand which variablesplay a mediating role in this relationship. In our own study, attention will be focused ontwo of those other constructs: brand trust and brand affect. These variables werechosen because they perform a central and significant role in studies of loyalty and therelational commitment that is its primary expression (Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001;Venetis and Ghauri, 2004; Ball et al., 2004; Esch et al., 2006), and because the literaturehas already described them as a potential consequence of identification (Gwinner andSwanson, 2003; Kuenzel and Halliday, 2008; Thompson and Sinha, 2008; Shen andChiou, 2009). This in turn led to attention than before being focused on the triangularnetwork of interrelationships among:

. consumer-company and consumer-community identification;

. brand trust and brand affect; and

. brand loyalty and its associated behavioural intentions.

Hence, the article’s sub-goal is to clarify the mechanisms that community membersenact in the process of constructing loyalty. In particular, it aims to determine whetherthis process is driven by affective reactions (that is, brand affect), by trustworthinessconnections with the brand (brand trust) or by both, and to what degree. At thetheoretical level, a significant contribution to the literature of brand communitieswould be made by linking the identification constructs with a system of dependentvariables relevant to marketing actions.

The remainder of the paper:. develops the conceptual model and research hypotheses;. discusses the empirical context of the research design, data collection procedures

and measurements adopted;. presents the results, and discusses their theoretical and managerial implications;

and finally. identifies the limitations of the study and fruitful directions for future research.

Theoretical development and research hypothesesA long and sustainable “ripple loyalty effect” (Gremler and Brown, 1999), to the benefitof the firm, can result only from a customer base sharing the firm’s mission and values,as far as they could be hedonistic or ephemeral. The role of brand communities in thisprocess has been seen as a possible route to “the Holy Grail of brand loyalty”(McAlexander et al., 2002, p. 38), in recognition of the ability of the identificationprocess to convert brand and company attractiveness into predispositions to act

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(Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2006a, b). This mechanism demands to be explained in greaterdetail, which is what this paper aims to do.

Social identification in brand communitiesIn an early, influential statement, Mael and Ashforth (1992) defined social identificationas the individual perception of actual or symbolic belongingness to a group. Ellemerset al. (1999) proposed that the phenomenon had three components: cognitive(awareness of one’s membership), evaluative (positive or negative connotationsattached to group membership), and emotional (involvement in the group). In additionto arguing for conceptual distinctions among the components of social identity,Ellemers et al. (1999) demonstrated that they are empirically distinct in anexperimental study, while Bergami and Bagozzi (2000) confirmed the results in areal-world context.

The activation of these three components, which this study took into consideration,permits individuals to define themselves as members of social categories and ascribe tothemselves characteristics that are typical of those categories. As a result, by theprocess of social identification, individuals perceive themselves not only in terms ofidiosyncratic characteristics that differentiate them from other individuals, but also interms of the characteristics they share with other members of their in-group (Hogg andAbrams, 1988).

The subject of social identification and its impact on individual behaviour has takenon increasing importance in customer relationship management. This fact should comeas no surprise, given that the establishing of strong, deep, stable and enduring ties withthe customer base is a constant priority in the theory and practice of contemporarymarketing.

More recently, the study of social identification has attracted interest in explainingthe psychological bond with the community and the admired company, beyond thebehavioural implications of such membership.

While most studies have focused on identification with the brand community (forexample, Algesheimer et al., 2005), few have examined the role played by the companyin establishing such relationships and, more specifically, the influence exerted bycustomer-to-company identification. To our knowledge, none simultaneouslyconsidered identification with the community and the company, investigating theattitudinal and behavioural implications from the community members’ perspective.

The distinction between customer-to-community identification andcustomer-to-company identification is relevant for at least three reasons. First, sinceit is widely acknowledged that people can identify with multiple targets ( Johnson et al.,2006), it is relevant to know both which is the main target of identification forcommunity members and which exerts the most influence on loyalty and otherdesirable outcomes. Furthermore, it is important to study multiple social identitiessimultaneously because social identifications at any level tend to form and becomesalient through comparison with a reference group: the members of the next moreinclusive self-category. The attractiveness of an in-group is not constant, but varieswith the subordinate self-category that furnishes the frame of reference for intergroupcomparison. Hogg and Turner (1985) demonstrated that enhancing the salience ofmembership of a social category increased self-stereotyping and self-definition andproduced attitudes and behaviour consistent with the content and meaning of those

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categories in society. As a consequence, multiple identifications are dependent oncontext (Tajfel and Turner, 1986). The perceived salience of group membership may bea product of both the extent to which an individual is already involved in a group andthe existence of other groups within his or her ambit.

Brand trust and brand affectThe centrality of the identification construct within the conceptual frameworkdiscussed here poses a significant research challenge, that is to assess if the maintarget of identification for brand community members is the brand-owner or thecommunity, and which one exerts the strongest influence on marketing-relevantoutcomes. The relevance of the causative effect of these two forms of identification onkey marketing outcomes may reside in two relevant constructs, brand trust (Moormanet al., 1993; Morgan and Hunt, 1994) and brand affect (Dick and Basu, 1994; Chaudhuriand Holbrook, 2001), to which the literature on relationship marketing has attributed acentral role when defining the factors conducive to reinforcement of relational ties withcustomers.

Brand trust is defined in this literature as the willingness of consumers to rely onthe power of the brand to realise its stated purpose, and brand affect defined as abrand’s ability to draw out a positive emotional arousal in the consumers as a result ofits use (Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001). Three variants of brand trust are hypothesisedby Sheppard and Tuchinsky (1996), on the basis of its content or cognitive antecedents,namely: calculus-based trust, knowledge-based-trust and identification based-trust.Knowledge-based trust is self-explanatory. “Calculus-based” describes a form mostcommonly encountered in the work environment, which is based on a calculation of theprobable effects of perceived rewards and deterrents on the behaviour of the thirdparty. “Identification-based” is most common in personal life, and defines the situationin which the two parties have internalised each other’s expectations and intentions tothe extent that they do not need to calculate probable outcomes. Regarded as thehighest form of trust, it can be developed in the business context, where it may buildinto the co-creation of joint products or goals, and commitment to company’s sharedvalues. Dwyer et al. (1987) have similarly theorised that company’s shared valuescontribute to the development of commitment and trust, while Morgan and Hunt (1994)proposed that they are a direct precursor of trust. Delgado-Ballester andMunuera-Aleman (2001) also found evidence that involvement with the owner-brandinfluences and moderates brand trust.

Similarly, identification with the community should reinforce brand trust, as aconsequence of the “customer bonding” effect in brand community settings (Szmiginand Reppel, 2004, p. 628). Describing the stages of the customer bonding process, theyproposed that the identity phase, characterised by the development of a strongercustomer attachment to the company, reinforces the perceived reliability of the brand.In this phase, the relationship is extended to a third party, the community, “wherecustomers are not only bonding to the organization but also with each other”.

While awareness of membership in a social group reflects the notion ofself-categorisation, it is also important to consider the implications of such affiliationfrom an affective perspective, specifically with regard to possible consequences of socialidentification with a target group. For example, an experiment by Ellemers et al. (1999)found that affective commitment mediated displays of in-group favouritism, both in

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terms of evaluative ratings and allocation of outcomes. A study in an organisationalcontext by Bergami and Bagozzi (2000) confirmed this result, in showing that affectivecommitment was a direct consequence of organisational identification.

Frijda et al. (1989) further found that contact with a group was associated withfeelings of attachment and belongingness. Membership provides an opportunity forindividuals to express their emotions, and direct their behavioural tendencies in a waythat reinforces the positive affect associated with that membership. In the context ofthe study reported here, identification with a brand community is expected to have adirect impact on brand affect, according to the degree of emotional involvement withthe social group. The attachment and belongingness a person feels toward acommunity should reinforce the pleasure of association and, in turn, his or her in-groupfavouritism.

Other research studies have revealed the existence of strong ties between socialidentification and various types of organisational commitment and citizenshipbehaviour. Manifestations of identification-based commitment, or trust, might beco-operation and effort (Bartel, 2001) or voluntary financial contributions(Bhattacharya et al., 1995). Since consumption is the primary dimension in theconsumer-community or consumer-company relationships, “such identification-basedcommitment is likely to be expressed through a sustained, long term preference for theidentified-with company’s product over those of its competitor” (Bhattacharya and Sen,2003, p. 77). Brand trust and brand affect should thus be regarded as key consequencesof consumer-company identification. Consolidating the theoretical arguments reviewedso far, we hypothesise that:

H1. Consumer-to-company identification has a positive impact on brand affect(H1a) and brand trust (H1b).

H2. Consumer-brand community identification has a positive impact on brandaffect (H2a) and brand trust (H2b).

Loyalty and key marketing variablesThe notion of trust as an antecedent to the building and maintaining of a positive andlasting relationship between partners forms a cornerstone of the conceptual frameworkof relationship marketing (Morgan and Hunt, 1994). Starting from a common platformof trust, parties can focus on the long-term benefits of the relationship, thus enhancingcompetitiveness and reducing the costs (actual or behavioural) of the transaction. Itthus seems legitimate to hypothesise, as do Chaudhuri and Holbrook (2001) andSirdeshmukh et al. (2002), that brand trust has a direct impact on attitudinal loyaltyand indirectly affects consequent behaviour. Bhattacharya and Sen (2003) suggest thatthose responses will be to exhibit ‘behavioural loyalty’, and voluntarily to engage in‘social promotion’ (by word of mouth) and ‘physical promotion’ (through endorsementof the brand, display of brand symbols and logos, for example on clothing, andpurchase of branded memorabilia). However, following Chaudhuri and Holbrook(2001), a distinction is made between attitudinal loyalty, a long term commitmenttoward a product or a brand, and behavioural loyalty, manifested in repeat purchasesof a product or brand. For the purposes of this study, attitudinal loyalty is consideredas an antecedent of behavioural loyalty as was suggested by Uncles et al. (2003) in thecase of high involvement goods.

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The literature relating to trust also gives grounds for hypothesizing a positiverelationship to both resilience to negative information and propensity to comment. Thefirst of those links appears to be immediate: the very definition of trust is associatedwith concepts such as confidence and reliability, and the consequent rejection ofnegative information that third-party sources might disseminate about a company(Moorman et al., 1993). More formally, two factors recognised in the literature asconsequences of trust can be said to intervene as attenuators of the impact potentiallygenerated by negative information: reduction of uncertainty and increase in relationalcommitment (Morgan and Hunt, 1994; Dahlstrom and Nygaard, 1995).

When attention is shifted to the relationship between trust and propensity tocomment on a company, the theoretical debate becomes more complex. Much of thespecific literature has emphasised the role of communication as a driving factor inbuilding a relationship of trust, and many authors, such as Anderson and Narus (1990)and El–Ansary (1993) among others, consider this variable to be an antecedent oftrust. In fact, considering communication simply as an antecedent of trust may bejustifiable only where the phenomenon is analysed statically. In dynamic terms, itseems evident that the establishment of a trust relationship will in turn improve thequality of future communication. The literature on the mechanisms of communicationwithin a distribution channel has long highlighted the existence of a positive impact oftrust on the quality of communication among partners (Mohr and Nevin, 1990). It thusseems legitimate to hypothesise that the trust a consumer develops in a brand will alsofoster a more open and direct flow of communication, which may take the form ofexplicit support for the manufacturer of the brand. Recently, Sweeney et al. (2008)found evidence of such a relationship in their critical incidents study, which we aim toconfirm in this study with a complementary quantitative approach. It is thushypothesised that:

H3. Brand trust positively affects attitudinal loyalty (H3a), resilience to negativeinformation (H3b) and propensity to comment (H3c), ceteris paribus.

H4. Attitudinal loyalty positively affects behavioural loyalty (H4a), socialpromotion (H4b) and physical promotion (H4c), ceteris paribus.

Moreover, the direct influence exerted on brand loyalty by positive affective responseshas been investigated by Chaudhuri and Holbrook (2001, p. 84), who concluded from abroad sample of studies of the relationship between emotional states and commitmentthat “the close relationship of a brand with its consumers (i.e. commitment) also tendsto reflect the level of positive affect generated by that brand” and that “strong andpositive affective responses will be associated with high levels of brand commitment...brands that make consumers ‘happy’ or ‘joyful’ or ‘affectionate’ should prompt greaterpurchase and attitudinal loyalty.” They conceded that consumers “may not alwayspurchase the brands they ‘love’ for reasons of high price and so forth”, but generalisedthat “brands that are higher in brand affect should be purchased more often and shouldencourage greater attitudinal commitment”. Based on these further theoreticalarguments, it is hypothesised that:

H5. Brand affect positively affects “attitudinal loyalty”, ceteris paribus.

Lastly, we took into account “attitudinal loyalty” (sustained preference for thecompany and its brands), “resilience to negative information” (that is, the ability not to

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be influenced by events with a negative impact on the company image) and“propensity to comment” (the predisposition to overtly direct suggestions andcriticisms towards the company) as consequences of consumer-to-companyidentification and consumer-to-community identification. These constructs derivefrom the work of Bhattacharya and Sen (2003, p. 84), who proposed a general model ofthe influence that the psychological process of identification has on attitudinal andbehavioural dimensions. We agree with their assertions that “empirical testing is thelogical next step in establishing the validity of our model and our proposition” and that“because of the number of constructs in the model and the complex relationship amongthem, it is best to test it in two or more parts before testing the entire model”.

Besides the justifications for the previous causal links offered by Bhattacharya andSen (2003), we borrowed ideas from the European Customer Satisfaction Index (ECSI)model (Ball et al., 2004; Vilares and Coelho, 2004), which hypothesis a direct connectionfrom company image to loyalty. As the attractiveness of the company image isassociated with organisational identification (Dutton et al., 1994), our model posits thatidentification may influence loyalty-related constructs.

In addition, Gremler and Brown, discussing the Bhattacharya et al. (1995) resultsargue that the more an organisation gets customers to identify with the corporation,the more likely that the customer base will develop behaviours to the company’sbenefit. Ahearne et al. (2005, p. 5) have suggested that when customers identify withthe organisation they “tend to purchase more and recommend the company’s productsmore often”. Concurrently, Algesheimer et al. (2005), found that customers identifyingwith a brand community tended to be supportive and pass on positive referrals for thecompany and its products. Finally, Shen and Chiou (2009) found evidence that whencustomers perceive similarity with other members of the community, they treat oneanother like family and will display commitment to the group and its mission.Consolidating the empirical evidence and the theoretical arguments reviewed so far, wehypothesise that:

H6. Consumer-to-company identification has a positive impact on attitudinalloyalty (H6a), resilience to negative information (H6b) and propensity tocomment (H6c), ceteris paribus.

H7. Consumer-brand community identification has a positive impact onattitudinal loyalty (H7a), resilience to negative information (H7b) andpropensity to comment (H7c), ceteris paribus.

Figure 1 summarises the conceptual model, linking the process of identification withthe genesis of brand loyalty through brand attitude and brand trust, which our studywas designed to test empirically.

MethodResearch settingOur study sets out to answer the research question, “how important in building loyaltyin a brand community are identification with the brand owner and identification withthe community, respectively?” by means of a cross-sectional study of a sample ofparticipants at a “brandfest”. McAlexander et al. (2002, p. 42) describe this kind ofevent as a means to “provide for geotemporal distillations of a brand community thatprovide normally dispersed member entities with the opportunity for high-context

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interaction”. Their distinctive feature is thus that they concentrate, in space and time,the three fundamental dimensions that characterise a community:

(1) sense of common identity among members and the perception of distinctivenessfrom non-members;

(2) shared rituals and traditions, which exist to perpetuate the community’s cultureand history; and

(3) a sense of group solidarity, typically manifested as a sense of duty to helpfellow-members of the community (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001).

This makes a brandfest a relevant and appropriate context in which to conduct anempirical investigation of brand loyalty, in terms of individuals’ identification with thebrand-owner’s company and with the community itself.

The study investigates the brand community that emerged and developed around amajor motorcycle manufacturer, Ducati, which operates on a global scale from itsItalian base. This industry setting and product category were chosen for twofundamental reasons. The first, which is common to a large part of the literature onidentification and, within that, to research on brand communities, is the broadagreement in the literature that some categories of products are more likely than othersto trigger a process of identification between individual consumers and the product(McAlexander and Schouten, 1998) or, in this case, the brand. Such products are rich inexpressive, hedonic and experiential qualities. More specifically, they are characterisedby: a high degree of involvement in the purchasing process; a pattern of use implyinghigh levels of emotional involvement; a collective or social dimension in usage of theproduct, potentially resulting in interpersonal bonding; and the possibility ofestablishing mental associations with the strong ethos and heritage of the brand andprojection of its image through ownership. The specific choice of the sports motorbikesector, as a case in point of such characteristics, ensures that the sphere ofinvestigation will be favourable to the development of the hypothesised relationships.

The second reason is that the ambition of our study is not limited to testing theexistence of a direct causal relationship between identification and loyalty (by no

Figure 1.The conceptual model

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means a minor objective in itself). It is in fact to deepen understanding of thatrelationship by placing the identification-loyalty dyad within the context of a broadersystem of relationships, in explicit competition with such other loyalty-generatingmechanisms, already amply described in the literature, as the impact of the brand trustand brand affect constructs. With this aim in mind, we therefore deliberately turnedour attention to a product sector in which we could legitimately construct a purelytheoretical hypothesis, a priori, of the existence of a strong identification effect. Thetest to which we intend to submit the hypothesis thus becomes even more stringent.The absence of a statistically significant link between the company identification andcommunity identification constructs and the marketing variables, or the presence ofonly a weak correlation, would provide strong grounds for arguing that causal factorsnot immediately tied to identification play a competing role.

Sample selectionThe research questionnaire was administered by face-to-face interviewing tomotorcyclists during the last World Ducati Week, an international “brandfest” inItaly. It was attended by between 40 and 50 thousand Ducati enthusiasts from aroundthe world, and included technical demonstrations, sponsored entertainment and socialgatherings.

No sampling frame was available via the company, registered participants beingonly a partial subset of the total attendance. Several precautions were adopted to ruleout major discrepancies between the ideal population of interest and the sampled units.Data were collected on every day of the event. To ensure unbiased selection ofrespondents within each day’s quota, individual sample units were selected byapplying a modified version of the shopping-centre data gathering techniquesuggested by Sudman (1980). By this means, a total of 256 questionnaires werecollected. Given that the refusal rate was less than 2 per cent, no correction fornon-response bias was necessary.

Sample profileThe sample was 83 per cent male and 17 per cent female, a gender balance consistentwith the known profile of riders of the Ducati range of high-performance motorcycles.The age range was between 16 and 65 years, with a mean of 31. Each region of Italywas well represented, and 5 per cent of respondents were attending the event fromother countries, mainly in Europe. Almost 60 per cent of the sample had completedhigh school, and 15 per cent were educated to degree level. In terms of employment, 58per cent were blue-collar workers, 20 per cent entrepreneurs and self-employed, 15 percent students and 2 per cent retired, leaving 5 per cent classified as “others”. Almostthree quarters of respondents owned one motorbike, 84 per cent of which were Ducati.Among the remainder, 14 per cent had three or more and 13 were non-owners.Members of Ducati riders’ clubs accounted for just under a quarter of the sample, while20 respondents were Ducati employees and 41 were shareholders. The remainingmajority were simply aficionados of the brand.

MeasuresThe original questionnaire was prepared in English and then translated into Italian,using standard back translation procedures, for distribution at the brandfest. The

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Appendix shows the measurement items for each scale we employed and the originalsource of the scale. All items, unless specifically indicated, employed a seven-pointLikert scale. The items are mostly derived from previous published research, withminor wording adjustments to fit the context of our study.

ResultsOf the 256 questionnaires collected, 245 were fully completed and usable for analysis.Structural equation modelling was used to test the seven hypothesised causal links. Inthe first stage of the study, the confirmatory factor analysis capabilities of Lisrel 8.54were used to examine the tenability and robustness of the measurement sub-modelsmore closely, before the fit of the full structural model was assessed.

Measurement modelsTo ensure that all constructs were measured adequately, a two-stepmeasurement-model analysis was performed. First, all constructs and theirindicators were subjected to a single confirmatory factor analysis, in order toestablish the internal consistency and discriminant validity of the latent factorsincluded in the model. Second, the measurement sub-model for the two identificationconstructs (company and community) was tested, assuming two second-order factors.

The full measurement model for the latent factors, built with 14 latent constructsand a total of 31 indicators, yielded very satisfactory goodness-of-fit statistics:x 2ð343Þ ¼ 514:91, p < :00;RMSEA ¼ 0:04, SRMR ¼ 0:04, NNFI ¼ 0:99, CFI ¼ 0:99.Composite reliabilities for the 15 multi-item scales ranged from a minimum of 0.78 to amaximum of 0.94, all well above the value of 0.60 accepted in the literature asindicative of internal consistency (Bagozzi and Yi, 1988). From a discriminant validitystandpoint, the result was equally satisfactory: none of the 95 per cent confidenceintervals of the w-values included the value of one, providing evidence of the fact thatthe factors are in fact distinct from one another.

The measurement sub-model for the two identification constructs (company andcommunity) was tested, assuming two second-order factors. Goodness-of-fit statisticsin this case were satisfactory x 2ð47Þ ¼ 186:26, p < 0:00, RMSEA ¼ 0:11,SRMR ¼ 0:10, NNFI ¼ 0:95, CFI ¼ 0:96. All three components of organisationalidentification (as depicted in Figure 2) loaded highly on the related factor, the affectivecomponent most strongly (average g ¼ 0:96), followed by the cognitive component(average g ¼ 0:85) and the evaluative component (average g ¼ 0:67). Discriminantvalidity having been tested by verifying that the 95 per cent confidence interval of thew-value included the value of one (w21 ¼ 0:58, s:e: ¼ 0:05), a more formal test wasperformed by comparing the model under scrutiny with a more restricted model inwhich the off-diagonal element of the F matrix was constrained to unity. In a x 2 test, asignificant difference in the values between the more restricted and less restrictedbaseline model (370:99 2 186:26 ¼ 184:73; df ¼ 1) pointed to a rejection of the nullhypothesis that the two constructs are not distinct.

Structural modelThe structural model, as represented in Figure 3, exhibits satisfactory goodness-of-fit:x 2ð257Þ ¼ 648:83, p < 0:00, RMSEA ¼ 0:07, SRMR ¼ 0:06, NNFI ¼ 0:96, CFI ¼ 0:97.The significant x 2 value is a quite usual occurrence in the case of samples of this size.

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Figure 2.Parameter estimates in thesecond-order confirmatory

factor analysis

Figure 3.Structural equation model

parameter estimates

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As hypothesised, consumer-company identification had a significant influence onattitudinal brand loyalty (b ¼ 0:13, s:e: ¼ 0:06), on brand trust (b ¼ 0:45, s:e: ¼ 0:08)and on brand affect (b ¼ 0:22, s:e: ¼ 0:08). Two hypothesised paths failed to reachstatistical significance: consumer-company predicted neither resilience to negativeinformation (b ¼ 0:12, s:e: ¼ 0:09, n.s.) nor propensity to comment (b ¼ 0:16,s:e: ¼ 0:12, n.s.). Similarly, consumer-community identification significantly affectedthe constructs of attitudinal brand loyalty (b ¼ 0:22, s:e: ¼ 0:07), propensity tocomment (b ¼ 0:22, s:e: ¼ 0:11), brand trust (b ¼ 0:23, s:e: ¼ 0:08) and brand affect(b ¼ 0:55, s:e: ¼ 0:09). Contrary to expectations, it marginally failed to predictresilience to negative information (b ¼ 0:16, s:e: ¼ 0:09). The squared multiplecorrelations for structural equations having brand trust and brand affect as dependentvariables are 0.39 and 0.51, respectively.

Most of the variance of the attitudinal brand loyalty construct (squared multiplecorrelations 0.77) is explained by brand affect (b ¼ 0:46, s:e: ¼ 0:07). Brand trust inturn has a significant positive effect on this component of brand loyalty (b ¼ 0:24,s:e: ¼ 0:05) and resilience to negative information (b ¼ 0:46, s:e: ¼ 0:09), but nosignificant effect on propensity to comment (b ¼ 20:12, s:e: ¼ 0:09, n.s.). Finally, theattitudinal form of brand loyalty has, as expected, a strong influence on behaviouralbrand loyalty (b ¼ 0:81, s:e: ¼ 0:06), the social and physical components of personalpromotion of the company (b ¼ 0:93, s:e: ¼ 0:06; b ¼ 0:95, s:e: ¼ 0:06). Squaredmultiple correlations for structural equations having resilience to negative informationand propensity to comment as dependent variables are 0.41 and 0.08, respectively.Table I summarises R 2 values for endogenous variables in the structural model.

DiscussionThe central research question of this study was which of the two modes ofidentification, consumer-company or consumer-community identification has the moresignificant impact on the development of brand loyalty in a member of a brandcommunity. Though further research is needed before the results can be confidentlygeneralised, the answers suggested by analysis of the survey data do offer insights,and permit tentative conclusions to be drawn in the next section.

First of all, we have confirmed the existence of the distinct foci of identification in areal-world context, and found that both exert a significant and positive influence onbrand loyalty. As Table II shows, identification with the brand community has thestronger effect, by a considerable margin.

Endogenous variables R 2

Brand affect 0.51Brand trust 0.39Attitudinal brand loyalty 0.77Behavioural brand loyalty 0.66Social promotion 0.87Physical promotion 0.90Resilience to negative information 0.41Propensity to comment 0.08

Table I.R 2 values for endogenousvariables in the generalmodel (see Figure 3)

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Second, even if consumer-company and consumer-community identification influenceboth brand affect and brand trust, the analysis revealed that identification with the twoobjects activates different psychological processes in brand community members’minds. As the structural equation coefficients in Figure 3 show, identification with thecompany has a stronger influence on brand trust while that with the brand communityhas a stronger impact on brand affect. The former focus seems to activate a cognitivelymediated process, reinforcing the reliability and confidence in the brand, whereas thelatter acts on the emotional and affective dimensions of the brand schema. It wouldobviously be rash to rule out the possibility completely that these results could be atleast partially influenced by sample self-selection bias during data collection, probablyover-representing the proportion of customers particularly sensitive to the affectivedimensions of the brand. Nevertheless, the relationship seems relevant enough to bedeserving of further scrutiny.

Third, brand affect was found to be a stronger antecedent of the attitudinalcomponent of brand loyalty than was brand trust. Both modes of identification alsoinfluence that variable, but with a weaker impact. As Table II shows, the resultssuggest that the causal path consumer-community identification ! brand affect !attitudinal loyalty is the primary causal connection among all the possible pathslinking the identification constructs to attitudinal loyalty, in terms of absolutemagnitude. Moreover, in the table, the patterns of path and effect, and the coefficients,suggest that brand affect, besides exerting a stronger direct effect on the attitudinalcomponent of loyalty than brand trust does, also acts as the most relevant mediator inthe indirect identification-loyalty causal links, by the very substantial margin of 0.35 to0.17.

At a more detailed level of analysis, the findings of the study confirm the positiveimpact of consumer-company identification on attitudinal loyalty and, through thismediating variable, on the constructs of behavioural loyalty, “social promotion” and“physical promotion”. No evidence was found of a direct impact on resilience tonegative information or propensity to comment. They similarly confirmed thatconsumer-community identification had a direct and positive impact on the attitudinalcomponent of brand loyalty and a mediated effect on its behavioural component, andon the social and physical forms of personal promotion of the brand. A significant andpositive relation was also found between consumer-community identification andpropensity to comment. However, the path from consumer-company identification topropensity to comment was not significant. Surprisingly, identification with a brandcommunity is a much stronger predictor of “voicing” behaviour with respect to the

Path Effect Value

Consumer-company ! Attitudinal loyalty Direct 0.13Consumer-community ! Attitudinal loyalty Direct 0.22Consumer-company ! Trust ! Attitudinal loyalty Indirect 0.11Consumer-community ! Trust ! Attitudinal loyalty Indirect 0.06Consumer-company ! Affect ! Attitudinal loyalty Indirect 0.10Consumer-community ! Affect ! Attitudinal loyalty Indirect 0.25Consumer-company ! Attitudinal loyalty Total 0.34Consumer-community ! Attitudinal loyalty Total 0.53

Table II.Direct, indirect, and total

effects ofconsumer-company and

consumer-communityidentification on

attitudinal brand loyalty

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company than identification with the company itself. Finally, the coefficient for thepath connecting consumer-community to resilience to negative information was notsignificant.

A final noteworthy finding was the preponderant role played by brand affect andbrand trust, both positive and significant, in explaining loyalty causally. Thedimensions represented by these two constructs, more usually discussed in the contextof relationship marketing, seem to exert a stronger and more direct influence on loyaltythan the identification constructs. Their important contribution is further underscoredby the strong predictable impact of trust on resilience to negative information. Brandtrust, more than company identification, seems capable of explaining the cognitiveresistance of consumers to any negative information they may receive about acompany.

ConclusionThe primary theoretical objective of our study, relevant to the marketing implicationsof organisational identification, was to seek evidence for the direct impact ofidentification with a company and identification with a brand community on loyalty tothe company and on a correlated set of marketing-related dependent variables. Asubordinate (but relevant) goal was to assess the relative strength of those predictors.In parallel, the study aimed to compare this loyalty building mechanism with theinfluence exerted by other variables, through causal links of established relevance.

Attention was focused on two constructs, brand trust and brand affect, with the aimof gaining further insights into the complex network of relationships linking them toidentification with a the brand owner and with a brand community.

Some of the study’s findings offer a promising contribution to currentresearch-based knowledge. First, the proposed model highlights the scope andcomplexity of the conceptual framework in which the relationship among the twoforms of identification, brand affect, brand trust, and the attitudinal and behaviouralforms of loyalty is embedded. The study’s findings suggest that affect and trust appearto have a greater direct impact on loyalty than identification does. This evidence seemsto call into question the recent emphasis in the literature and in marketing practice onthe role that enhanced customer-company identification may play in establishing adeeper, more stable commercial relationship. In fact, there is significant empiricalsupport for the existence of a causal path in which identification acts as an antecedentof both brand trust and brand affect. The amount of variance in those two constructsthat can be explained by consumer-company and consumer-community identificationis respectively 39 per cent and 51 per cent. Above and beyond the statisticalsignificance of the relationship, this very large total proportion of explained variancehighlights the relevance of the causal path in question, and the relevant mediating roleplayed by affect and trust in the relationship between identification and loyalty. Theresults are consistent with the investigation by Jeppesen and Frederikson (2006) intothe reasons for users contributing to firm-hosted communities, which found thatmembers wish to be recognised by the firm and may want to identify more stronglywith the firm than with their peers.

Second, the conceptual framework presented here justifies a more complexinterpretation of the relationships between company, brand community and brandthan has been proposed in the literature to date. The IBC (integration in brand

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community) construct first proposed by McAlexander et al. (2002, p. 44) is based on aholistic view of the web of relationships linking individuals to a product, a brand, acompany, or other users, within the “reference brand community”. Their analysissuggests that “consumer-centric relationships with different entities in the brandcommunity might be cumulative or even synergistic in forming a single construct akinto customer loyalty”. The IBC model, tested by means of a second-order four-factorconfirmatory model, ultimately postulates the existence of covariance among theconstructs comprising it, traceable to a common factor labelled “integration in brandcommunity”. Our own study sought to model this covariance. On the one hand, itconfirms the existence of a system of relationships among customer, brand, companyand brand community; on the other, it seeks to differentiate between the contributionsmade by each component to customer loyalty.

Finally, the empirical test of our model provides partial support for the hypothesesformulated. While the data supported the hypothesised causal effects on loyalty, themost surprising finding was the failure of consumer-company identification to exhibita significant impact on the resilience to negative information and propensity tocomment constructs. While we consider that it is a task for future studies to establishwhether this result derives from a simple idiosyncrasy of the data or is a structuralelement that needs to be taken into account in the process of refining the underlyingtheory, we do not refrain from providing a tentative interpretation of this unexpectedoutcome. In our opinion, a potential answer lies in one of the main contribution of thispaper, namely the uncovering of the different psychological processes triggered byidentification with the company and with the brand community, among members ofthat community. Identification with the company seems to activate a cognitivelymediated process, reinforcing the perceived reliability of the brand and confidence in it,whereas identification with the community acts on the emotional and affectivedimensions of the brand schema. So it is not surprising to find that the impact ofconsumer-company identification on resilience to negative information is in factsignificant (indirect path value 0:46* 0:45 ¼ 0:207). In short, it is not direct but insteadfully mediated by the propensity to trust the brand, a strongly cognitive variable. Onthe other hand, the same cognitive imprint of consumer-company identification mayexplain its failure to influence propensity to comment. Voicing behaviour can befacilitated both by social support and social interaction, two distinguishing features ofbrand communities. In fact, we note the significant impact of consumer-communityidentification on propensity to comment.

Managerial implicationsIt is easy to understand why the marketing management community should beparticularly interested in the effects of consumer-company identification on the onehand, and brand communities on the other, for their potential to increase brand equity(McAlexander and Schouten, 1998; Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001) by means that are morecost-effective than more traditional strategies, such as advertising. The possibility ofevaluating the absolute effectiveness of identification and community-based marketingactions, and thereby justifying the investments they entail, remains the priorityconcern. Later, once that evaluation is positive, management attention can be focusedon assessing the relative effectiveness of initiatives to build and foster brandcommunities, by determining the optimal portfolio allocation with respect to the

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different forms of investment in relationship marketing at the organisation’s disposal.From this specific management perspective, it is thus important to establish whether,on the one hand, the role of identification in supporting loyalty is negligible comparedto the impact of more conventional forms of marketing investment or, on the other, it iscapable of supporting (and in part replacing) them. Indeed, a complex picture emergesfrom this study.

The empirical results provide robust support for the hypothesis that a consumer’sidentification with a brand community leads to higher levels of both attitudinal andbehavioural loyalty to the company itself, as well as stronger propensity to commentfavourably and constructively on the company. This is a strategically importantfinding, providing initial confirmation, albeit partial, of the role played by investmentsaimed at fostering the development of a healthy and strongly identified community ofbrand enthusiasts. In any case, it should be emphasised that the strongest influenceexerted by cohesive communities is related to a stronger affective response and greatertrust in the brand, and only subordinately (and mainly indirectly) to loyalty and otherforms of what is called prosocial behaviour. In this regard, strategic planners shouldunderstand that investments in the growth and maintenance of brand communitiesactivate a wide set of mutually reinforcing benefits for both customers and thecompany itself.

Though the propensity-to-comment factor could in practice prove to be a burden forthe company, it is likewise true that spontaneous willingness to pass comment, makesuggestions, voice support, and generally engage in dialogue can be a valuable sourceof early insight into market demands, which will in turn be inputs and stimuli in theprocess of product-line development or updating.

Further, our findings confirm the relevance of a positive relation with the brand tothe development of the loyalty-related constructs, at least for products and serviceswith a hedonic and emotional content, as exemplified by motorbikes. In fact, even if thepower of an attractive brand is already widely recognised in the literature and inmanagerial practice, the findings of this study help to disentangle the effects of brandtrust and brand affect on loyalty among brand community members.

Finally, the study sheds light on the mechanism inducing individuals to look forcontact with business firms and the reasons why more and more companies are“unlocking their doors” to customers, in order to involve them actively in the firm’senvironment. Of course, some form of co-operation between customers and companiesmight yield more mutually satisfying outcomes. In this sense, brand communities,besides contributing to the spread of curiosity and passion attaching to a brand in themarket, could be important sources of new ideas and product innovations, whoseorigins are not so much traced back to commercial interests, per se, as to the desire toshare experiences, foster common values and improve user learning. Far from beingisolated consumers, users may be organized in communities, leading to better jointoutcomes for consumer and firm alike. All these efforts direct our thinking away fromatomistic frameworks, where the organisation and consumers are treated as distinctactors seeking to promote their own utility through mutual exchanges, towards moreholistic constructed meanings, in which boundaries become permeable and blurred,and social identities form to the benefit of individuals linked to the organisation as wellas to the organisation itself.

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Limitations and directions for future researchAn unquestionable limitation of this study is the specificity of the research context: asingle brand of sports motorbike and a company-specific annual brandfest. Given thepredominantly social nature of motorcycling and of such gatherings, effects derivingfrom identification with the company, and above all the community, could legitimatelyhave been expected. Though the impact coefficients tied to the identification constructscould thereby have been over-emphasised, the very choice of research setting permitteda more stringent verification of the mediating role played by two non-identificationconstructs, namely trust and affect with respect to the brand in question.

A second limitation derives from reliance on cross-sectional data collected duringthe three days of the brandfest. This study-design choice is justified by the nature ofthe hypotheses formulated within the framework of the research objectives. A possiblefollow-up study would certainly include a longitudinal perspective, as suggested byMuniz and O’Guinn (2001).

As with all attempts to build theory and extend results from a limited setting andrestricted constructs, one must be careful when generalising these findings. We do notrule out the possibility of other conceptualisations and conclusions. For one example,other foci of identification might be considered within a framework of multipleidentities. A brand community based on small groups of individuals who know oneanother (Dholakia et al., 2004) could be an additional source of promising findings, aswell as virtual communities (Shen and Chiou, 2009).

Furthermore, it is self-evident that brand communities grow up around differentsports and products, and specific examples of sports broadcasting and journalism, andfurther studies are called for to validate the findings. The antecedents of identificationalso demand further investigation, if a better understanding of the identificationprocesses and further validation of the Bhattacharya and Sen (2003) model are to beachieved.

Lastly, since customers with differing loyalty levels may respond better todifferentiated strategies (McMullan and Gilmore, 2008), future research contributionsmay clarify how identification with different targets (or other social-psychologicalconstructs) can affect levels of loyalty and other relevant marketing-constructs.

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Further reading

McAlexander, J.H., Kim, S.K. and Roberts, S.D. (2003), “Loyalty: the influences of satisfaction andbrand community integration”, Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, Vol. 11 No. 4,pp. 1-9.

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Schouten, J.W. and McAlexander, J.H. (1995), “Subcultures of consumption: an ethnography ofthe new bikers”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 43-61.

Corresponding authorGabriele Morandin can be contacted at: gabriele.morandin@unibo.it

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Appendix. Measurement items

Figure A1.

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Figure A1.

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