Facebook brand communities

What is it about?

Almost all brands have Facebook pages/communities. One of the most important motives behind having such brand communities on FACEBOOK is to advertise new products and promotional efforts to encourage customers to purchase. Therefore, this study argue that the more time people spend on brand communities on social media, the more inclined they will be to purchase products advertised on social media. the results also help companies to attract customers to participate more on Brand communities on Facebook. Specifically, it identified the customers' characteristics that can be managed to encourage customers to participate on Facebook communities. Data are collected from an emerging market, i.e. Egypt, thus results are of special importance to companies that are targeting consumers from emerging markets.

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Why is it important?

This paper extends the fastest-growing stream of research on online brand community participation and purchase decisions in the context of an emerging market—namely, online brand community participation in Egypt. Egypt has one of the world’s largest proportion of young people, and it has a burgeoning urban population with a growing demand for many goods and services as well as the means to buy them (Nilson 2015). Moreover, it has an online population, with more than 54.81 million Internet users showing a 10.45% annual growth rate (El Araby 2015; MCIT, 2014); of those, 71% are users of some form of online community (especially social networks and forums) (Nielsen 2013). However, almost all previous studies on participation in online brand communities have been conducted in Anglo-Saxon cultures. Emerging market economies and cultures differ significantly from mature, developed economies (Malhotra and Dash 2013). For example, the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries score lower on individualism and masculinity (two dimensions of Hofstede's cultural dimensions), which might influence buying decisions (Hofstede 2010). In individualistic cultures, “individuals tend to place more value on private life, while collectivistic societies accept more easily the intrusion of groups and organizations into private life” (Mahrous 2011, p. 251). In addition, in societies with lower levels of masculinity, people prefer family and social life more than the acquisition of material things such as money. Accordingly, antecedents and consequences of participation in online brand communities in MENA cultures might differ from those of Anglo-Saxon cultures. In light of this, the models—based on empirical findings about developed economies and grounded in their socioeconomic cultures—need to be empirically validated in the context of emerging market cultures (Elsharnoby and Mahrous 2015). Insights into consumers’ participation in online brand communities and their implications for purchase decisions can help service providers design, maintain, and develop virtual communities in a way to enhance consumers’ participation and influence purchase decisions for consumers in emerging countries such as Egypt.

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