Researching and marketing to consumption collectives

Matthew A Hawkins

Consumer researchers have identified a handful of consumption collectives, such as consumption tribes, brand communities, and communities of practice.

Introduction

Consumer researchers have identified a handful of consumption collectives, such as consumption tribes (Cova, 1997), brand communities (Muñiz & O'Guinn, 2001), and communities of practice (Leigh, Peters, & Shelton, 2006). A consumption collective is an umbrella term applied to a group of consumers "who share a commitment to a product class, brand, activity, or consumption ideology" (Thomas, Price, & Schau, 2013: 1012). Extant studies typically focus on understanding how specific collectives form (McAlexander, Schouten, & Koenig, 2002) and how being a member of a collective impacts consumers' meaning-making processes (Kates, 2002). While understanding that multiple consumption collectives exist, researchers...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands