Brand communities. A relational approach to consumer experience

This paper presents a review of the current discussion on "brand communities", i.e., specialized, non geographically bound communities, based on a structured set of social relationships among admirers of a brand. It also explores some consequences of this explicitly commercial social solidarity, such as new forms of consumer empowerment and new ways of shaping objects meanings. Finally, it proposes a relational framework in which objects, brands, social groups and corporations play a differentiated but connected role in consumption experience.