The peer-to-peer, crowd-enabling mechanism of emergent brand communities

DOI: 10.5176/2251-2098_EMG15.4

Authors: Gary J Buttriss and Andrew S Wallace

Abstract:  In this paper we seek to understand how social media influence the emergence and evolution of brand communities. We suggest that the mechanisms of peer-to-peer crowd-enabling mechanisms that drive large-scale social protest movements like The Occupy Movement or the ‘Arab Spring’ offer an interesting starting point. We focus on the emergence of an instance of anti-brand community, the result of significant service failures, in the Australian telecommunications industry

Keywords: brand communities, mechanisms, crowd dynamics, service failures