Characteristics and influential factors of online brand communities

In today´s competitive marketplace with increasing media clutter, the task of brand building has become more important and challenging than ever. Employing a Brand Community appears to be an effective approach to build and maintain such consumer-brand relationships. Also the advent of the Internet has made it possible to establish spontaneous, non-geographically bound brand communities in cyberspace. The online brand community has become a powerful tool giving insights into consumer needs, interests, worries and behaviors and is a great way to build trust and loyalty among your current and future customers. This paper, tries to provide better understanding of the importance and characteristics of online brand communities through the lens of academic research. Then, we explore and introduce the most influential factors those affect or are affected by online brand communities.