Brand-Customer Relationships: Web 2.0 and Online Brand Communities

Guitton, Olivier (2007) Brand-Customer Relationships: Web 2.0 and Online Brand Communities. [Dissertation (University of Nottingham only)] (Unpublished)

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Abstract

This study aims to explore the characteristics of online brand communities in a Web 2.0 context and to understand in which positive ways they can contributes to the brand and its customers. This staged evolution of the Internet, reinforces interactivity and gives users the possibility to generate their own contents themselves.

This topic is particularly relevant because today, brand and customers are more than ever linked into a reciprocal relationship that bonds them psychologically and emotionally. The Web 2.0, as a cluster of applications inviting users to generate their own contents, creates an increased online experience that is meant to reinforce brand-customer relationships.

To be able to look at the characteristics of such relationships in a detailed way, qualitative research methods will be conducted. This use seems justified by the need to evaluate the subjective and emotional dimensions of consumption and to understand how consumers behave in their everyday lives (Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982). Therefore, for the purpose of the research, three case-studies have been selected in order to discover the effects of building Web 2.0 online communities towards the relationship between brands and customers. Customers experiences on those websites will be the central focusing point whilst attempting to explain how value can be co-created among the organization and the users.

Item Type: Dissertation (University of Nottingham only)
Keywords: web 2, brand, brand-customer relationships, online brand communities, netnography, relationship marketing, experience marketing
Depositing User: EP, Services
Date Deposited: 07 Mar 2008
Last Modified: 03 Feb 2018 15:02
URI: https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/21494

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