Team Brand Communities. Potentials and Pitfalls of the Brand Community Concept in the International Sport Brand Management (PDF)

Diploma Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Sport - Sport Economics, Sport Management, grade: 1,3, University of Bath, language: English, abstract: The aim of this thesis is to transfer Muniz/O'Guinn's brand community concept to the sports market. Looking at the previous conception and definition of brand communities, those communities around the brands of sports organisations appear to be an ideal example. Hardly any other industry arouses so much interest and is of such great importance in the everyday life of customers with regard to the product or service and creates a more solid basis for social identification, interaction and emotional bonding than sports. The research question can be formulated as follows:

To what extent can the concept of brand community be applied to sports brands and their surrounding community? What are the opportunities and risks of applying and adapting the concept to the sports industry for sports brand management?

After a detailed theoretical derivation of the term "brand community" with reference to the concepts from marketing (branding) and sociology (consumer community) that constitute it, this work transfers the concept to the specificities of the sports market. Scientific studies on the management of sports brands as well as on community fan behaviour and sports consumption will be used. In a critical appraisal, the advantages and disadvantages of the brand community concept are evaluated and corresponding opportunities and risks for the use in the management sports brands. It is a choice between increased customer loyalty, enlarged brand value and efficient marketing on the one hand and counterproductive consumer behaviour, reduced brand value and uncontrollable marketing on the other hand.

In the end, this work comes after a detailed exploratory research to the conclusion that the Brand Community concept has great potential for the management of the brands of sports organisations. Although there are other research is needed to adapt the model even more specifically to the specificities of to the needs of the sports market. But already it provides the manager of sports brands undreamt-of opportunities to exploit the close connection between sports consumers to make more efficient use of the sports brand and the strong surrounding community and to capitalize on it.