Tack On the Tactile for Brand Communities

Via social media channels, people frequently name admired brands and offer testimony of devotion. When that testimony is given in a brand community, there are extra considerations. Researchers at State University of Milan say members of a brand community are more than just fans of the brand. Brand communities require ongoing interaction of the members with each other and with authorized representatives of the brand in ways which maintain psychological identification with the brand.
     Evidence gathered at University of Pretoria signals that for the success of a brand community, positive emotions associated with the sharing are more important than the practical information exchanged. In fact, although brand communities generate brand loyalty, surveys reveal that a notable percentage of brand community members express no intention of purchasing the brand in the future. The identification with the brand depends on the brand community members’ identification with each other. In successful brand communities, each member has a clear sense of acceptance by the others and a clear sense of influence over the others.
     Classic research finds how acceptance is psychologically associated with receiving physical touch and influence is psychologically associated with reaching out to touch. Dialogues about touch would therefore be expected to facilitate brand community cohesion.
     Yet those same words might have little influence when directed to shoppers outside the brand community. Researchers at Luiss University and Universita degli Studi della Calabria asked people to evaluate a keyring based on information provided by either a brand community or the company website. In all cases, the texture, weight, and feel of the keyring were described. The participants then indicated how much they liked the item.
     Attitude about the keyring was more positive among those participants told the information was from a brand community than among those told the information was from the company. Note that chosen for this experiment was an item for which tactile information had previously been rated by another group of consumers as having little diagnostic value. When a parallel experiment was done about the attitude toward a scarf—an item where touch had previously and understandably been identified as important in a purchase decision—it made little difference whether the source was identified as a brand community or the company.
     The researchers’ explanation is that the detailed text about touch implies reliability when tactile properties aren’t important to item appeal. So even when touch doesn’t count, it counts.

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