Brand communities: influencing organisations' identities and their perception of the business environment. (1st January 2011) - Lipinski, John
Companies strive to be in step with the marketplace. An organisation's identity shapes how it perceives the business environment and affects its market orientation. As media and entertainment choices multiply and evolve, it becomes more complex for companies to easily reach a broad audience. One solution to this problem is for companies to interact more directly with brand communities; specialised, non-geographically bound communities based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand. Integrating and interacting with brand communities and allowing them to influence an organisation's identity will help companies to become more market-oriented and influence their perception of the business environment to more accurately reflect actual market conditions.