The Emergence of Anti-Brand Communities and Their Influence on
Companies and the Other Consumers
Introduction
In terms of research regarding to loyalty, researchers have acknowledged the role of
“brand” in the formation of consumer marketing relationships because “marketing
relationship” is often considered an abstract concept and difficult to aware of its existence
from consumers’ perspective. Researchers also have acknowledged that brands act as
relationship facilitators based on several psychological theories such as social identity theory
or social exchange theory (Patterson & O'Malley, 2006). Consumers may develop emotional
bonds with brands based on several characteristics of these brands such as human -like
personality, brand image, and brand reputation, etc. (Veloutsou, 2009; Veloutsou & Moutinho,
2009). Studies on brand equity indicate the dimensions such as brand identity, brand
personality; brand image and brand reputation may lead to better consumer brand relationship.
This perspective mainly focuses on individual consumers’ brand relationship.
In recent years, the research interests in studying individual consumers’ brand relationship
gradually move to learning about a group of consumers who are gathered with no
geographically boundary (Bagozzi & Dholakia, 2006; McAlexander, Schouten, & Koenig,
2002; Muniz & O'Guinn, 2001). This group has been named as “brand community”, “brand
tribes” or “sub-cultures” where consumers within the communities tend to share their
experience with other consumers; further make up consumer-to-consumer relationships.
Furthermore, some researchers claim that there is a growing trend of anti-branding behaviour.
That is, consumers behave as an opponent to a certain brand and even influence other
consumers through a number of actions. The advent of technology speeds up the influence of
anti-branding community.
A research gap appears that current research mainly focuses on the positive consumption
of brand whilst research relating to negative side of brand, such as brand avoidance and the
influence of anti-brand community is lack for discussion. The existing research has some
initial discussion on the formation of anti-brand community and the profile of these
communities by qualitative methods, such as interview. There are some questions remained
unanswered: First, less research discusses what dimensions of brand or factors are related to
the motives of anti-branding communities. Second, limited research discusses the moderate
role of anti-branding communities on the other public. This study will address this gap by
using mixed research methods. The main research questions are:
1. What dimensions of brand are related to the formation of anti-branding community?
2. What actions the members of the anti-branding community may take to influence the
brand owner?
3. What actions the members of the anti-branding community may take to influence the
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other consumers?
4. To what extent consumers and brand relationship would be affected by actions of the
anti-branding community?
Literature review
Brand community
Although it is not the brand new concept, the term “brand community” first was
introduced in marketing literature by Muniz and O’Guinn in 2001. According to Muniz and
O’Guinn (2001), a brand community is defined as a “specialized, non-geographically bound
community, based on a structured set of social relationship among admirers of a brand.”
Followed this call, McAlexander et al. (2002) addressed the limitation of brand loyalty
research and discussed the role of brand community from a customer-experiential perspective.
In other words, they think brand community is customer-centric, that the existence and
meaningfulness of the community come from customer experience rather than from the
experiences around the brand created by the firms. They suggested that crucial relationships
include those between the customer and the brand, between the customer and the firm,
between the customer and the product in use, and among fellow customers. The discussion of
brand community can be concluded that researchers have realized it is insufficient to
investigate brand-consumer relationship when look at issue regarding loyalty. Therefore,
studying the consumer-consumer interaction and their impact on the brand owner and other
consumers might be an ideal way to obtain more meaningful results.
Anti-branding community
In recent years, some articles have started to study the negative side of brand.
Anti-brand communities emerge from a group of consumers who oppose and boycott or
protest to certain brands as a result of increasing consumer powers (Kucuk, 2008). The
majority of these anti-branding communities appear as a form of virtual online communities
due to the advance of internet. Anti-brand web sites focus negative attention on a specific
targeted brand (Bailey, 2004). The communities gather people with a forum to voice
discontent, facilitate the exchange of anti-brand information, organize boycotts, and
coordinate lawsuits. (Krishnamurthy & Kucuk, 2009). They may have great impacts on brand
value which is supposed to be related to brand equity created by the corporation.
Hollenbeck and Zinkhan (2006) discussed this issue of “anti-brand community” from the
perspective of consumer activism to investigate the current anti-brand social movement by
examining consumer activist groups on the internet. In their research, they defined three
anti-brand websites (anti-Wal-Mart, anti-Macdonald, and anti-Starbucks) for in-depth analysis
with 36 interviews. The findings of this research indicate for reasons why anti-brand
communities form such as: to provide a social community comprised of members with
common moral obligation; to provide a support network to achieve common goals; to provide
a way of coping with workplace difficulties; and to provide a resource hub for taking action.
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However, previous research has limitation and still leave issues to further examined.
First, previous brand or anti-brand community studies is still in the early stage. Most research
used qualitative methods to identify the characteristics of brand or anti-brand community for
particular industry (e.g. car club; computer). The generalisation of research findings is limited.
Second, current research focuses on either the interaction within members of communities or
the influence on members’ behaviour toward the brand. There is no research provide a linkage
to investigate the relationship between these three: brand, community and other communities.
Thirdly, the scope of research regarding anti-brand community is too narrow. Only a few
research applied case study with a focus on online community.
Methodology
This study will apply a sequential mixed method research design. The data collection
procedure of the study involves two phases. The purpose of this sequential, mixed methods
study was to first explore and generate themes about what dimensions of brands (physical and
service) are related to negative attentions for anti-brand communities (e.g. brand identity,
brand personality and brand image or corporate image) and the influence of these
communities (e.g. negative WOM, boycott and protest) on brand equity and the consumption
of other consumers. Then based on these themes, the second phase will develop an instrument
to survey the consumers about how their attitude towards a brand meaning changed by the
role and action taken from anti-brand community. The rationale for using both qualitative and
quantitative data is to better understand the research problems and to get a deeper
understanding of the phenomenon of interest and further to test theoretical modes. The
conceptual framework of this study is shown in Appendix.
Expected results
The anticipated results consist of the following: 1) obtaining insights into the nature of
anti-brand community across physical product and services brand; 2) understanding what
dimensions of brand equity are related to anti-brand community; 3) understanding whether
consumers’ perceived value of brand equity would be influenced by anti-brand community’s
actions.
Contribution of this study
The findings of this study may contribute to a better understanding of consumer-brand
relationship; particularly linking the role of anti-brand community on the antecedents
(company actions) to consequences (consumers future purchase intention).
This study will
also contribute to provide an overall understanding for firms to design an effective brand
strategy.
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Reference
Bagozzi, Richard P., & Dholakia, Utpal M. (2006). Antecedents and purchase consequences
of customer participation in small group brand communities. International Journal of
Research in Marketing, 23, 45-61.
Bailey, Ainsworth A. (2004). Thiscompanysucks.com: the use of the internet in negative
consumer-to-consumer articulations. Journal of marketing Communication, 10(3),
169-182.
Hollenbeck, Candice R., & Zinkhan, George M. (2006). Consumer Activism on the Internet:
The Role of Anti-Brand Communities. Advances in Consumer Research, 33(479-485).
Krishnamurthy, Sandeep, & Kucuk, S. Umit. (2009). Anti-branding on the internet. Journal of
Business Research, 62, 1119-1126.
Kucuk. (2008). Negative Double Jeopardy: The role of anti-brand sites on the internet. Brand
Management, 15(3), 209-222.
McAlexander, James H., Schouten, John W., & Koenig, Harold F. (2002). Building Brand
Community. Journal of marketing, 66(January), 38-54.
Muniz, Albert M., & O'Guinn, Thomas C. (2001). Brand Community. Journal of Consumer
Research, 27(March), 412-432.
Patterson, Maurice, & O'Malley, Lisa. (2006). Brands, consumers and relationships: A review.
Irish Marketing Review, 18(1 & 2), 10-20.
Veloutsou, Cleopatra. (2009). Brands as relationship facilitators in consumer markets.
Marketing Theory, 9(1), 127-130. doi: 10.1177/1470593108100068
Veloutsou, Cleopatra, & Moutinho, Luiz. (2009). Brand relationships through brand
reputation and brand tribalism. Journal of Business Research, 62(3), 314-322.
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Appendix
Figure 1: The Conceptual Framework for this Study
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