Online Brand Communities

Introduction.- Evolution of the Web.- Foundations and Structure of the Social Web.- Utitlity of the Social Web for Business.- Evolution of the Marketing Mind-set and the Value-creation Process.- Brand and Social Web.- Conceptual Approach to Community, Virtual Community and Online Brand Community.- Types of Virtual Communities and Virtual Brand Communities.- Consumers' Motivations to Participate in Virtual Brand Communities.- Factors Influencing Members' Engagement with Virtual Brand Communities.- Value Creation in Virtual Brand Communities.- Creating and Developing Virtual Brand Communities: Some Practical Guidelines.                                                                                                                                     

Francisco J. Martínez-López, MSc in Marketing, and European Ph.D. in Business Administration, with Extraordinary Doctoral Prize (University of Granada, Spain), is Professor of Business Administration, at the University of Granada, and Marketing, at the Open University of Catalonia (Barcelona), in Spain. He has been visiting scholar at the Zicklin School of Business (City University of New York, NY, USA), Rutgers Business School (Rutgers University, NJ, USA), Aston Business School (Aston University, UK), the University of Chicago Booth School of Business (IL, USA), the Michael Smurfit School of Business (University College Dublin, Ireland), and the Complutense University Business School (Madrid, Spain). He is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Business Environment (Inderscience Publishers), Associate Editor of European Journal of Marketing (Emerald) and belongs to the Editorial Board of Industrial Marketing Management (Elsevier). Dr. Martínez-López has co-edited several international journals' special issues and research books for leading publishers of business and management research as Springer and Elsevier. He has also co-authored the text book e-business Strategies for E-business: Creating Value through Electronic and Mobile Commerce. Concepts and cases (3rd Edition) (Prentice Hall/Financial Times). Likewise, he has published more than 70 papers in international journals and conferences proceedings.

Rafael Anaya-Sanchez, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Málaga, Spain. His research and teaching interests include Social Web, online communities, retailing, and e-commerce.