Avenues of Deeper Engagement

With the rapid social media technologies persisting to impact the fashion industry, fashion marketers, brands and marketing researchers aim to comprehend the newfound opportunities these advancements create in attracting consumers, one of them being the emergence of Online Brand Communities (OBCs). To understand and leverage from this marketing phenomenon, firms must grasp consumers motivations to engage in these communities, and their consumer experiences within them. Thus, this thesis explored the OBC dynamics through the consumer perspective. This contributes to research on OBCs, given that understanding the behaviors within them is beneficial, both to marketing researchers and the fashion industry, as these communities reshape the traditional brand-consumer relationship. Additionally, as OBCs have become integral to their members' daily lives, attracting new ones consistently, it is very relevant to explore the members perspective. With a novel approach, the research focused on members of an established and successful OBC, of the Swedish fashion brand Djerf Avenue. Employing a qualitative research design, eleven semi- structured interviews were conducted, exploring the perspectives of OBC members. Findings from the thematic analysis demonstrated themes of motivations for engagement, aligning with the framework of Wirtz et al., (2013), while consumer experience themes revealed OBC’s relevance in members' lives and personal identities, corresponding to the Consumer Culture theory (CCT) research. Furthermore, results did provide unique consumer perspectives, highlighting they value genuine consumer-to-brand communication, brand care, acknowledgment, and appreciation. The importance of these elements in consumers' motivations to engage and their experiences was notable across data and proven to facilitate positive consumer brand perception and community resilience. Fundamentally, this study makes a significant contribution to the literature on OBCs, by examining a successful OBC performing in the fashion market. This OBC was particularly relevant to research due to its prominence and the recent brand crisis it experienced, and as revealed by the findings, successfully overcame because of community solidarity. Therefore, this thesis provides invaluable insights for marketers, especially those in the fashion industry, and for (fashion) brands utilizing OBCs as part of their marketing strategy. Ultimately, it demonstrates effective OBC management and offers practical implications for sustaining brand resilience through OBC community engagement.