Understanding Online Brand Communities:

The Role of NVivo 10 for Windows and NCapture

Dr. May Aung

Associate Professor

College of Business and Economics

University of Guelph, Canada

maung@uoguelph.ca

Agenda

• Academic Research on Brand Communities and Online Brand Communities

– Existing Research Studies

– Research Project in Progress

• Netnography Methodology

• The role of NVivo and NCapture

• Research Project: Understanding Smartphone Online Brand Communities

Academic Research:Brand Communities and Online Brand Communities

The Brand Community ConceptProposes three crucial elements; shared consciousness, rituals and traditions, and a sense of moral responsibility relating to brand consumption behaviour (Muniz and O’Guinn 2001)

Customer-Centric Brand Community ModelOffers four relationships consumers may have with a brand community—product, brand, organization, and other consumers—as an effective means to understand the key elements of brand communities (McAlexander, Schouten and Koening 2002).

Brand Community Research Studies:

Algeshelmer, Dholakia & Herrmann (2005); Kozinets (2001); Holt (2002); Muniz & Schau (2005): etc.

Academic Research:Brand Communities and Online Brand Communities

Online Brand Community:

A community formed in cyberspace on the basis of attachment to commercial brands (Sung, Kim, Kwon and Moon 2010, p. 432).

A group of individuals with common interests in a brand who communicate with each other electronically in a platform provided by the company which supports the brand (Sicilia and Palazon 2008. p. 257).

A specialized, non-geographically bound, online community, based on social communications and relationships among a brand’s consumers. (De Valck et al., 2009, p 185)

Online Brand Community Research Studies:

Sicilia and Palazon, (2008); Ewing, (2008); Seraj, (2012); etc.

Understanding brand community: Multiple realities of

Apple iPhone consumers

Dr. May Aung, Kejia Wu, Laila Rohani and Khalil Rohani,

University of Guelph

Understanding the SuperUser:

The heart and soul of consumer-generated online

brand community

Ashley van Herten and Dr. May Aung, University of

Guelph

Consumer Culture Theory Conference, Oxford UK (August 2012)

Marketing Theory and Practice Conference, Charleston, SC 2013 (www.amtp.org)

Extended Consumer-Brand Relationship Theory

Dr. May Aung (University of Guelph), Kapil Gurbani, Samuel (Hip Seng) Lei

(University of Guelph-Humber)

Research Project

Understanding Online Brand Communities

(Smartphone Consumers)

Understanding Online Brand Communities

Research Objectives:

To understand

• what online-brand community means to consumers of high-technology brands;

• how consumers of high-technology brands create and strengthen their

relationships with their brands (within the context of online-brand communities);

and

• if these themes indicate strong brand loyalty and future purchase intentions

Overview of Research Study

Current conceptual underpinning can be extended by incorporating within-brand and

beyond-brand sharing behaviour.

Belk (2007, 2009) proposed that the intent of ‘sharing-in’ (within-brand behaviour) is to

extend the group of people enjoying the shared benefits of the brand. Within the context

of online or offline brand community, ‘sharing-in’ could offer collaborative ownership of

the brand (David 2005).

In addition, the research study by Aung, Gubarni and Lei (2013) found the behaviour of

beyond-brand sharing that is ‘sharing-out’ behaviour between the consumers of

competing brands. In a simplistic manner, this study proposes that sharing and

relationship building behavior can occur not only in the within-brand environment (focus

on one brand) but also in the beyond-brand environment (encompassing competing

brands).

Potential Research Sites:

Online-brand communities (online forums relating to smartphone consumers)

Apple iPhone online-brand communities (consumer forums at business

affiliated website www.apple.com and consumer-initiated website

www.everythingicafe.com)

Blackberry smartphone online-brand communities (consumer forums at

business-affiliated website www.blackberry.com and consumer-initiated

website such as www.crackberry.com)

Samsung Galaxy smartphone online-brand communities (consumer forums

at business-affiliated website www.samsung.com and consumer-initiated

website www.samsunggalaxys3forum.com).

Research Ethics

Research Project

Understanding Online Brand Communities

(Smartphone Consumers) :

Netnography Research Methodology and

Qualitative Data Analysis Software NVivo

Research Methodology for Social Media Communities: Netnography

• “Netnography, or ethnography on the Internet, is a new qualitative research

methodology that adapts ethnographic research techniques to the study of

culture and communities emerging through computer-mediated

communications.” (Kozinets 2002, p. 2)

• Ten criteria such as coherence, rigour, literacy and groundedness relevant to

evaluate the netnographic research (Kozinets 2010) were applied.

• Data analysis was conducted utilizing pattern matching approach and

hermeneutic interpretations (Kozinets 2010).

Social Media Research:

To gather and work with web pages and online PDFs using NCapture.

To import Tweets from Twitter, Facebook posts, YouTube videos and comments and

LinkedIn discussions using NCapture.

To work with pictures, database tables, spreadsheets, audio files, videos

To automatically code social media data quickly and easily visualize the results.

“NVivo is more than a simple qualitative data analysis program, it is a vital resource for

planning, team coordination, literature reviews, research design, data analysis and

reporting.” (Chris Atchinson, Simon Fraser University)

NVivo: Qualitative Data Analysis Software

Research Project

Application of NVivo and NCaptureDemo – Online Brand Community

Research Project

Application of NCaptureDemo - Data Collection

Research Project

Application of NVivoDemo – Building Data Sets & Data Analysis

Data Analysis

Preliminary Data AnalysisWord Frequency Analysis: Word Tree, Tag cloud, (NVivo 10 Window)

Advanced Data Analysis

Emic and Etic Approach (Berg and Lune 2012)

Analytical Coding and Hermeneutic Interpretations (Kozinets 2010)

Data Analysis

Preliminary Data AnalysisWord Frequency Analysis: Word Tree, Tag cloud, (NVivo 10 Window)

Data Analysis

Emic and Etic Approach (Berg and Lune 2012)

Analytical Coding and Hermeneutic Interpretations (Kozinets 2010)

Results

Consumers from

Competing Brands

Consumers from

Competing Brands

Apple

iPhone

BB

Smartphone

Samsung

Smartphone

Community

Future Research

Competing Brands and their Community Members

References

Algesheimer, R., Dholakia, U., Herrmann, A., (2005), “The social influence of brand community: Evidence from European Car

Clubs”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 69, No. 3, 19-34.

Aung, M., Gurbani, K. and Lei, S. (2013), “Extended consumer-brand relationship theory”, Association of Marketing Theory and

Practice 2013, Retrieved March 4th, from http://www.amtp.org/ocs/index.php/amtp/AMTP2013/paper/view/387.

Belk, R. ( 2007), “Why not share rather than own?” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 611

(May), 126-140.

Belk, R. (2009), “Sharing”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 36 (February), 715-734.

Berg, B.L. and Lune, H. (2012), Qualitative research methods for the social sciences, 8th edition, Pearson Education, Inc.

David, P.A. (2005), “From keeping ‘nature’s secrets’ to the institutionalization of ‘open science’”, in CODE: Collaborative

Ownership and the Digital Economy, ed. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Canbridge, MA: MIT Press, 85-108.

De Valck, K., van Bruggen, G., Wierenga, B., (2009), “Virtual communities: A marketing perspective”, Decision Support Systems,

Vol. 47, No. 3, 185-203.

Ewing, T. (2008), “Forum – Participation cycles and emergent cultures in an online community”, International Journal of Market

Research, Vol. 50, No. 5, 575-590.

Holt, D. B. (2002), “Why do brands cause trouble? A dialectical theory of consumer culture and branding,” Journal of Consumer

Research, Vol. 29, No. 1, 70-90.

Kozinets, R. (2001), “Utopian enterprise: articulating the meaning of Star Trek’s culture of consumption”, Journal of Consumer

Research, Vol. 28, No. 1, 67-88.

References (continued)

Kozinets, R. V. (2002), “The field behind the screen: using Netnography for marketing research in online

communities”, Journal of Marketing Research, 61-72.

Kozinets, R. V. (2010), Netnography: Doing ethnographic research online. Sage Publications

McAlexander, J. H., Schouten, J. W., & Koenig, H. F. (2002), “Building brand community”, The Journal of

Marketing, 38-54.

Muniz Jr, A. M., & O’Guinn, T. C. (2001), “Brand community”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 27, No. 4,

412-432.

Muñiz Jr., A., & Schau, H., (2005), “Religiosity in the abandoned Apple Newton brand community”, Journal

of Consumer Research, Vol. 31, No. 4, 737-747.

Seraj, M. (2012), “We create, we connect, we respect, therefore we are: intellectual, social, and cultural

value in online communities”, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Vol. 26, No. 4, 209-222.

Sicilia, M. and Palazon, M. (2008), “Brand communities on the internet, a case study of Coca-Cola’s

Spanish virtual community”, Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 13, No. 3, 255-270.

Sung, Y., Kim,Y., Kwon, O., & Moon, J. (2010), “An exploratory study of Korean consumer participation in

virtual brand communities in social network sites”, Journal of Global Marketing, Vol. 23, 430-445.