Collective Identity and Social Movements of VESPA Community

• Main Authors: MarcinJankowski, 馬辛
• Other Authors: Wann-Yih Wu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/15501671700575067452

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 國際管理碩士在職專班 === 97 === Today’s marketers realized some time ago, that investing in operations, which help the brand communities to form around their brand is a good strategy mainly because of two reasons: brand communities base on emotions and intense brand loyalty which is more valuable and stronger than direct marketing campaigns. Secondly, companies can treat their clients more like partners and build strong ties with them what definitely will bring numerous advantages and positive effects in the future – those consumers will stay loyal and will purchase more products, recommending the brand to others at the same time. From previous research it is already known, why do they emerge and why consumers participate in them. In this research a new approach is proposed – an approach which tries to answer questions about the factors triggering and mobilizing the collective actions among the Vespa Community members and about the ideology shared by its members. For this purpose the new social movement theory was used to describe the processes taking place among the Vespa community members. Such strong interactions among individuals, which can create a movement and collective identity, are something, on which both scholars and marketers should keep their eyes on. This research focuses on the Piaggio Vespa brand community with clubs all around the world. The data collection was limited to interviews with members of Vespa clubs in Poland and Taiwan. The website data analysis (on-line forums and discussion boards) was based on only Polish on-line forum. The results have shown strong differences between both Taiwanese and Polish clubs. The Polish Vespa Community seems to function according to the New Social Movement (NSM) theory where collective identity is very strong and plays an important role in interpersonal relations inside the club. The Taiwanese club on the other hand seems to be in complete opposition to the Polish one. There’s no collective identity developed and the theory of New Social Movement does not apply to the situation in this community.