BECOMING FRIENDS WITH CITIES

Ever since the release of Muñiz and O’Guinn’s paper in 2001, the concept of brand communities has received growing attention. However, most literature has focused on the creation and use of brand communities by commercial institutions, not by places. Furthermore, when examining the suitability of social media for the construction of online brand communities, Facebook has usually been the only website considered. The present research fills this gap by investigating four different social media websites to determine which opportunities social media provide for the establishment of online brand communities and to what extent these are exploited by cities. Based on an elaborate literature review, an examination of the use of Facebook, VZ Netzwerke, YouTube and XING by the thirty largest cities in Germany and interviews with city marketers of eight German places, the paper finds that it is mostly social network sites (SNS) that provide an optimal breeding ground for online city brand communities. Moreover, it shows that the opportunities SNS offer to places are not fully seized yet. As it appears, most practitioners in Germany still fail to truly understand the concept of brand communities and believe that fans are equivalent to brand community members.