Social & Cultural Influences on Consumer Behavior

A personal consumer experience for me would be the purchase of Apple products and its relatability to today’s subject would be brand communities.

Apple does a significant job at making you feel like you need a specific product as they show you the diverse ways said product can affect your life in a positive way, but most importantly how this product can solve issues for the consumer. To add to that, Apple’s massive growth in popularity indirectly makes you start scratching your head and question: “What is it about this brand that attracts so many?”. The answer is simple: buying an apple product makes you part of a community, the one of Apple users. Not only does it make you feel included, Apple makes sure that every product they release can work side by side with another line of products also designed and created by apple. Therefore, it is easy to see that not only do you build a physical community by purchasing one product, you are also creating a device community by buying the most products possible as they are all inter related. It is said that Brand communities “share emotions, moral beliefs, styles of life, and affiliated product” (Lynch Chapter 11, slide 11) A good example that stems from Apple watches is how they allow you to gather around with other runners and you are able to engage with that “runners” community. The result of said activity generated from this one product is that people feel even more positively over their purchase as they develop a sense of self-accomplishment. Therefore, going back to my main point, this brand/product demonstrated its added value to the consumer which is positive reinforcement for the person who bought this product for this principal use. Obviously, this positive experience creates emotional involvement towards the company and so the consumer talks greatly about it which, as we all know, word of mouth is extremely powerful marketing that can send businesses on a bigger scale.

Although so many might feel part of such a great community, the unfortunate truth is that there is such a thing as anti-brand communities and it might create discrepancies for Apple’s business. Antibrand communities are groups of consumers who share a common disdain for a celebrity, store, or brand. (Solomon, 2022)

Works Cited

Rodrigues, C., Brandão, A., & Rodrigues, P. (2021). I can’t stop hating you: An anti-brand-community perspective on apple brand hate.  The Journal of Product and Brand Management, 30(8), 1115-1133. doi:https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-10-2019-2621