Introduction
Branding is an inherent part of marketing because it helps companies to shape their identities in the minds of their customers. For a long time, companies have managed to shape brand identities using traditional media sources, such as television, radio, and magazines (Sharma and Jain, 2019). However, the digital age has led to a shift in this strategy as more firms look to use digital and virtual platforms, such as social media, to communicate with their loyal customers (Eryandra, Sjabadhyni and Mustika, 2018). This change has led to the growth in online brand communities where customers congregate and share insights regarding specific brand attributes to improve their utility value (Sharma and Jain, 2019). Others simply take part in such discussions to stay in touch with like-minded buyers and to be abreast with current events happening in the market.
The important role played by digital platforms in moderating the stream of communications between companies and their customers have influenced decision-making processes relating to the formulation of branding strategies. The main challenge associated with this plan is sustaining online communities in the digital age. In this paper, it is argued that the main challenge associated with the sustenance of such brand communities is the lack of moderated discussions in these communities, low levels of trust among different cadres of members, declining quality of discussions, and user rankings. Porsche is used as a case study based on its launch of the Cayenne Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) brand, which was poorly received by loyalists in the company’s online community platform (Global Brands Publications, 2022). Key sections of this paper will use this case study to demonstrate the difficulty of sustaining brand communities in the digital age. Evidence will be obtained from customer views expressed by Porsche owners on the Rennlist online community platform where views about the product launch were exchanged. This discussion follows two main theoretical areas under review, which are community longevity and member support.
Literature Review
Member Support
The process of developing digital brand communities can be a problematic task because of the openness to abuse that members are exposed to. Indeed, the digital era has given people the tools to broadcast their views to many people without a moderating agency (Golf-Papez and Veer, 2022). This liberty has exposed some members to open abuse from people, whose identities cannot be verified, thereby discouraging them from actively participating in online discussions (Golf-Papez and Veer, 2022). The digital age has allowed users to give their opinions on various product attributes. These exchanges have allowed members to discover more about their products than they would have previously done had they not been members of these communities and to obtain assistance when need be (Ilhan, Kübler and Pauwels, 2018). However, this freedom has made online communities prone to divisions at various levels of engagement.
Several reasons have been advanced to explain the failure of companies to nurture their online brand communities. Some researchers have attributed divisions observed among community members to participation inequality, which is commonly seen among diverse teams (Leclercq, Hammedi and Poncin, 2018; Chen, Song and Yao, 2020). It stems from a commonly held belief that 90% of members in digital brand communities lurk around, while 9% of them actively participate in group discussions (Global Brands Publications, 2022). A further 1% of this population is assumed to undertake most of the creative work within these social setups (Sabia, Bell and Bozward, 2022). Subject to this principle, a core group of people, who share history, commonly dominates the activities of many large online communities (Global Brands Publications, 2022). They often suck up the attention of other members and tend to be recognized for most of the work that the group takes part in (Harkin et al., 2020). This situation is associated with social stagnation because the majority of the group members will be discouraged from participating in the group activities knowing that they would not get the same recognition as the 9% who participate and the 1% that create do. Thus, a low level of member support in online communities undermines their sustenance.
Community Longevity
The environment that defines brand community engagement often dictates how long the group will last. Typically, members are expected to interact in a productive environment, characterized by healthy discussions about various brand attributes (Molinillo, Ekinci and Japutra, 2019). However, the digital age has brought an uncontrolled environment where all views are accommodated. This type of setting has led to the emergence of negative attributes, such as bullying, trolling, and abuse of people who openly share their problems or give their opinions (Akar and Mardikyan, 2018). The common purpose and passion that community members share are often eroded by this behavior because it becomes difficult to control trolls, while, at the same time, maintaining healthy and productive discussions (Hungara and Nobre, 2022). This situation undermines the longevity of online communities and discussion forums.
Trust is an important element in the development of vibrant brand communities. It refers to the assumption that members of a brand community share common values and beliefs towards a product or service, and, by extension, one another (Kasimba and Lujala, 2021). Researchers opine that small brand communities have the highest level of trust compared to larger ones (Caliandro and Anselmi, 2021). This outcome is possible because people tend to know one another in small communities. However, in large ones, they may not recognize one another, thereby resulting in a decline of trust. This decline in trust is likely to affect the productivity of the brand community by preventing people from sharing knowledge, which is a key component of the sustenance of successful brand communities (Batat, 2019). Therefore, when trust is broken, community members are unlikely to maintain group cohesion because they will be protecting themselves from abusers and trolls.
Some members may choose to exit these communities to save their dignity by staying away from people they do not trust. Researchers indicate that this problem is associated with big brand communities because there will always be someone ready to provoke members to get a reaction (Divakaran et al., 2017; Rehman and Al-Ghazali, 2022). Thus, the nature of discussions that go on in digital communities exposes members to abuse and trolls. Indeed, given that ideas and experiences are exchanged on these platforms, there are opportunities for members to disagree and for conflict to foster. These factors undermine the longevity of such groups because disagreements without a moderator would naturally lead to a collapse of these group setups.
Declining Quality of Discussions
An important element of successful brand communities is the quality of discussions that happen within them. Members who are passionate and devoted to the success of a brand often start and maintain high-quality discussions (de Almeida et al., 2018). However, as new entrants emerge, some of them do not show the same level of enthusiasm towards a product, thereby leading to a decline in the quality of debates that occur in such forums (Shin and Perdue, 2022). Researchers have observed that when such new entrants dominate discussion forums, they may retreat to having private discussions with people who are interested in hearing their genuine views, or exiting the group altogether (Al-Tit, Omri and Hadj, 2020; Wallace, Costello and Devine, 2018). The discontentment with the platform leaves online communities with a majority of less enthusiastic members who cause a further decline in the quality of discussions, thereby creating room for a different party to form a rival group (Ruiz-Mafe et al., 2018). These insights show that the digital age has made it difficult to maintain brand communities because of a decline in the quality of discussions.
A decline in the quality of discussions within online communities means that the relevance of such groups may decline because it takes time to identify valuable information from a list of commentaries. Some researchers have attributed the decline in quality of discussions to the difficulty in distinguishing the views of expert and non-expert views (Erz and Heeris Christensen, 2018). Indeed, the increase in the number of users has made it difficult to determine the views of those who have expert knowledge and those who are merely giving an opinion (Buzeta, De Pelsmacker and Dens, 2020). At the same time, it has become difficult to verify the credentials of those who claim to be experts because no process guarantees such outcomes (Kim and Peterson, 2017). Users simply state that they are experts and proceed to give their opinions without further verification. This situation has made it further difficult to distinguish expert and non-expert views. Thus, some analysts have argued for the categorization of customer views based on quality (Zhu, Guan and Donovan, 2020). The failure to do so can force some members to exit groups because they will not believe that their opinions are appreciated. Stated differently, they will be drowned by the abundance of views expressed by all kinds of people who have a nudge to share ideas.
Issues and Problems under Scrutiny
Traditionally, people have known Porsche as a sports car company targeting buyers who love speed and performance. This background has been supported by the perception that Porsche cars are made from hand-made parts. Furthermore, their production processes are devoid of short-cuts, which often compromise quality (Wu et al., 2019). Supporting this view is the commonly held view that German engineering was central to the performance heritage of the Porsche sports brand (Dempsey, 2018). In 2003, Porsche decided to expand its product division and venture into the SUV market with the launch of a new car – the Porsche Cayenne (Global Brands Publications, 2022). This move was informed by the growing market for SUVs around the world and the rise in demand for reliable cars among frequent automobile users (Wu et al., 2019). Therefore, in a bid to address these concerns, Porsche announced that it was developing the Cayenne SUV.
Porsche’s shift in production strategy marked a departure from the commonly known brand identity of performance and luxury. Instead, it started to embody values of efficiency, reliability, and mass appeal, which did not augur well with the core customer base (Global Brands Publications, 2022). Furthermore, the adoption of an automated production process meant that the company had to lose its authentic production system that was built on years of perfecting hand-made skills and artisanship, especially in the production of car accessories (Smith, 2021). The loss of these attributes led many Porsche owners to believe that the automated production system was “soulless” (Dempsey, 2018). Broadly, the shift in production strategy meant that the Porsche brand would no longer be associated with luxury, speed, and performance, but with reliability and robustness. The sudden change in brand values led many brand loyalists to criticize the company on its online community for radically shifting from its essence of sleekness and luxury to the less celebrated mass-market appeal (Derval, 2018). Additionally, it was argued that the shift from the use of hand-made to automated product detailing eroded its niche appeal because it made it seem that the brand was another mass-market product in the industry (Streather, 2019).
Despite the existence of negative views about the launch of the Cayenne SUV on the Porsche online community platform, a division emerged among members because a group of owners welcomed the addition of the Cayenne SUV into the “family” because they did not believe it was an inferior brand to others (Global Brands Publications, 2022). This split in opinion morphed into a gender divide among members of the community with one side holding the view that the Porsche brand should not represent feminine values. They said that Porsche is a uniquely male-dominated brand with its roots embedded in extreme sports performance (Smith, 2021). Naturally, this philosophical inclination led many customers to associate the Porsche brand with the development of supercars and it meant that men were the majority of members of the online communities.
The launch of the Cayenne SUV challenged the male-dominated setup of the Porsche online community because the car was deemed to have feminine values. Some of the online community users even referred to the vehicle as an ideal representation of a “soccer mum’s” mode of transport (Global Brands Publications, 2022). These views suggested that the launch of the Cayenne misrepresented the spirit of the Porsche brand. However, female Porsche owners did not hold the same position and argued that the brand still represented the authentic identity of performance and luxury despite its venture into new markets (Global Brands Publications, 2022).
Porsche’s covert representation of the brand as being predominantly male eroded the trust that female buyers had in the brand. They held this negative view because the representation of feminist attributes on the Cayenne SUV was met with hostility from members of the online community who believed that the brand should remain uniquely masculine (Global Brands Publications, 2022). This division created disunity among members because male Porsche owners clashed with their female counterparts about the future essence of the Porsche brand and its representation as a masculine brand (Cole, 2020). Again, while female Porsche owners did not see a problem making the brand gender-neutral, ardent followers believed that doing so would erode its value. To their displeasure, they argued that the Cayenne was moving the brand away from its masculine roots and they no longer trusted it to represent their identity.
The clash between the genders emerged as an after-effect of the admission of members from different gender persuasions in the Porsche brand community. The open membership format used on Porsche’s online engagement platform is a threat to the brand’s identity because it may fail to maintain the characteristics of the original followers (Global Brands Publications, 2022). This weakness has led to a lack of trust between the company and its followers because ardent Porsche owners are unsure of their future in the brand (Global Brands Publications, 2022). Differences in views between original and new members of the online community formed the second basis of division in Porsche’s online community.
Notably, there was a division between car buyers who deemed themselves “real loyalists” and those who were generating new interest in the brand. This split manifested itself in the support and disapproval of the Cayenne SUV brand (Global Brands Publications, 2022). In other words, loyalists excluded those who owned the Cayenne from the core group, which was comprised of authentic brand enthusiasts, mostly made up of those who had the Porsche 911 (Cole, 2020). From this behavior, it can be deduced that the core community was comprised of 911 owners and the Cayenne buyers were outliers. This segmented structure of the brand community created division among members by forming a class system that discriminates against people based on their brand preferences.
This Porsche case study provides evidence of the difficulty of sustaining brand communities in the digital age. The gist of the company’s failure to secure support from its core customer group stems from the misrepresentation of the brand identity by the launch of the Cayenne SUV. Overall, the findings of this investigation show that different groups of customers treated each other differently based on the kind of Porsche they drove. Based on this assessment, two issues that emerge in the investigation are member support and community longevity.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Conclusion
From the onset of this study, challenges affecting the sustenance of brand communities have been explored to identify strategies that could be adopted to promote group sustenance. Key elements of this investigation have been drawn from the automobile industry, using Porsche as a case study. The division that the launch of the Cayenne caused in the brand’s online community shows that the digital age brings with it new freedoms to brand discussions that could erode the authenticity and quality of discussions that happen on the forum. Given that these challenges mostly affect major brands, such as Porsche, the emergence of factions within the wider online community demonstrates that the longer a community exists, the higher the likelihood that there will be a divide created between original and new members. Thus, managing the evolution of a brand’s identity between the two competing interests fronted by different groups of customers describes the challenge that companies experience in sustaining their online brand communities.
Overall, the findings of this investigation show that online brand communities can help companies to build a loyal customer base, as Porsche has done with its customers. This process has given them a free platform for sampling market views in preparation for making modifications for improvement. Online communities also give prospective customers an insight into the brand attributes of a company before they make purchases. This way, they learn about the strengths and flaws of a product based on the quality of discussions happening in these communities. Overall, virtual communities are fair in composition and content because there is no guarantee that the statements made on the platform are factual. However, given that companies do not moderate discussions that occur on these platforms, it can be assumed that the views expressed are unbiased and honest.
Recommendations
For purposes of this investigation, the recommendations listed below are relevant to the development of short-term and long-term strategies for sustaining Porsche’s brand community. In the long term, the company should align its product development strategy with its vision and goals because a firm’s brand identity should stem from its vision. Therefore, managers need to formulate a clear vision of how they would like people to perceive the Porsche brand. Therefore, the findings of this paper have shown that a company’s brand identity should reflect its goals and vision.
In the short term, Porsche should improve the quality of relationships between the business and its customers. This move is critical because misunderstandings are likely to emerge from the misfit between what customers perceive the brand to be and how the company is operationalizing it. This gap explains the backlash that Porsche received after launching the Cayenne SUV brand. Stated differently, the car did not communicate the essence of the brand’s identity, which is luxury, sleekness, speed, and performance. Therefore, there is a need to improve the relationship between the customers and the company by filing expectation gaps that exist today.
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