Customer relationship management is the crux of every brand’s strategy. It’s no surprise, then, that social identification and its impact on individuals is talked about a lot lately. Gianluca Marzocchi, Gabriele Morandin and Massimo Bergami set out to find the target of identification for a community and what exerts most influence on loyalty of a brand. Their survey concludes that those who identify with the company tend to have confidence in the brand and those who identify with the brand community act on the emotional and affective dimensions of the brand schema. And it is those who identify with the community that are more loyal to the brand. And loyalty is such that the research found no evidence of impact on resilience to negative information. 

Title: Brand communities: loyal to the community or the brand?

Source: Social Science Research Network