Social media platforms, particularly Facebook, have transformed the concepts of marketing and consumption in our contemporary world, especially with the emergence of brand communities on various communication tools. These tools have increasingly leaned towards using these platforms to support product consumption and promotion. This trend has primarily stemmed from social interactions in the digital space, where major global companies have focused on the consumer values of the various brands they promote. This has been achieved through the dual concept of consumer value, meaning the transformation of the value perceived and formed by consumers around a specific product into a value generated from the perspective of trust transfer, which is then automatically shared and circulated to others. This enhances the marketing opportunities for these companies, leading to profit generation.
In this context, an analytical article by Kweku Yang and others on the concept of dual consumption in brand communities on social media entitled “The Dual Concept of Consumer Value in Social Media Brand Community: A Trust Transfer Perspective,” presents the idea of information systems within brand communities and their organization via social media as a tool for achieving added value. It also outlines how companies can strategically utilize brand communities within the social communication space to achieve business value.
The Equation of Social Commerce:
Social media has created a new commercial communication channel, significantly broadening the space for promoting various products and brands and providing services to consumers. It has formed a new type of commerce known as “social commerce,” which aims to create competitive advantages for companies and contributes to increasing sales through Interactions with consumers. Brand communities on social media (like brand pages on Facebook, for instance) can be viewed as a form of social commerce where companies can gain competitive advantages, mainly brand awareness, which may lead to increased sales by engaging with consumers.
In this frame, the analysis indicates that the brand community on social media involves using social relationships and diverse interactions among consumers to support a specific brand. This is done by directing their interest from unregulated consumption to promoting the brand itself. The concept of social marketing can be illustrated through the following points:
Spread and Marketing: Social media platforms expand the communication and reach of different businesses through their commercial posts and consumer interactions or through the inter-consumer interactions that help spread the goods and products of global companies. Thus, brand communities represent a unique opportunity for their owner companies to connect with consumers and enhance brand awareness, ultimately leading to increased sales.
Creating Value for Customers: Brand communities aim to promote their products and goods on social media to influence consumer behavior by stimulating three values: utility, happiness, and social values, generated through a mix of direct values (i.e., purchase intention) and indirect values created in consumers through discussions about that brand.
Trust and Enhancing Social Commerce: Trust plays a crucial role in social commerce as it is the primary factor in creating a suitable and safe environment that supports the value generated by the consumer. It is positively related to various marketing orientations. Trust in a specific product or service is a motivating factor for individuals to engage with the service-providing company.
Here, the context and social interactions via social media reinforce the idea of trust among consumers, facilitating the exchange of information about the product. The ultimate result is winning consumer trust in the brand, which also leads to wider brand reach and increased product sales.
The Dual Value of the Consumer:
Brand communities on social media have become essential avenues for companies to create value for their customers (i.e., the value perceived by the consumer) while also extracting values from them (i.e., the value generated by the consumer). This reflects the dual concept of consumer value within the community, suggesting that consumer value is a dual concept arising from companies pushing various products and services through social media platforms, which in turn shapes “value” for consumers based on their evaluation of those products.
The process of evaluating and preferring different products by consumers depends on two factors: first, the perceived benefits derived from purchasing the product, and second, the costs associated with it. It is worth noting that there is limited research illustrating the mechanisms commercial companies employ to derive perceived value among consumers. However, the analysis revealed that the determination of individuals’ orientations towards a specific product is influenced by three dimensions:
(1) Predictive Ability: The ability of individuals to anticipate future needs serves as a basis for building trust, significantly shaping their orientations towards specific products and thus generating the value of purchase.
(2) Diversity and Alternatives: Enhancing the value of purchase for consumers on social networks comes through the variety and quantity of alternatives presented. Through familiarity with this diversity and these alternatives, consumers form varied experiences via social media, which are shared through various tools. Therefore, it can be seen that social commerce on these platforms acts as an umbrella covering all goods and services.
(3) Internal Interactions: The exchange of information among individuals about various products via social media through different posts and comments contributes to shaping the consumer’s orientation and generating purchase value, making social media platforms a suitable environment for online shopping. These diverse interactions also create shared social value around the brand itself.
As a result, global companies significantly aim to cultivate a positive mental image of their products, directing consumers towards them, thereby achieving utility value represented by informed and knowledgeable purchase decisions.
Trust Transfer and the Value of Happiness:
Trust is a crucial element in social commerce as it helps translate the value perceived by consumers regarding the importance of a product into actual action, whether through purchasing or sharing experiences about that product. Brand communities create multiple opportunities for purchase decisions among social media users via online shopping. They also generate other values, such as the value of happiness derived from commenting on various products to assist others in making purchasing decisions based on their diverse experiences or recommending those products through their comments or sharing some products, reflecting the individual’s or consumer’s endorsement of that product or commodity.
Thus, the value of happiness is another key dimension of the value perceived by the consumer, which companies generate in the context of brand communities on social media. The dual value in this aspect represents the facilitation of social interaction for users online, strengthening social ties among them, in addition to the value of purchasing various products.
From this perspective, companies can directly and indirectly glean consumer desires through a “WOM” (Word-of-mouth marketing) strategy—which refers to any informal verbal communication happening personally, via phone, email, or any other communication medium, which significantly impacts the behavior of others on social media. This contributes to increasing companies’ profits through direct and indirect business transactions, especially since this mechanism represents functional value that influences usage intensity, which in turn affects various impressions towards the brand. This creates a sense of trust towards a particular brand among consumers even before they engage with existing brand communities on social media.
Related to the above, trust transfer occurs from one person to another according to the different experiences that one builds around a specific product. In the realm of virtual interaction, consumers take the first step in building trust based on their varied experiences and by sharing those experiences with others. This step occurs through two processes: the first is the communication process stemming from personal interactions, and the second is the cognitive process that has formed based on accumulated past experiences, which can be clarified through the theoretical model upon which the analysis is based.
Key Findings:
The article concludes with key findings regarding brand communities on social media, primarily:
- Social media serves as a vital space for global companies to market their products and gain the trust of many users of these platforms, particularly as utility value is positively linked to trust in the virtual brand community.
- Consumers can engage in brand communities that align with their preferences and desires, generating perceived and shared values, evolving into latent values that enhance their consumption of those products.
- Consumer trust is significantly strengthened by trust in the brands present on those networks, contributing to the marketing of those brands, thereby broadening interest in them and increasing their sales.
- The ability of various companies to attract consumer attention on social media platforms influences trust towards their products, generating value for repeat purchases. Furthermore, the value of happiness among consumers generated by discussions regarding certain products has a significant impact on consumer culture.
- Trust in the communication and social tools is one of the enhancers of trust in the product itself, supporting further interactions about that product, which may affect, in various ways, the intention to purchase or use it.
Ultimately, the interconnected relationship between brands and social media has motivated major companies to enhance their presence on social media platforms to interact with consumers, thereby achieving broader marketing alongside greater sales to maximize their benefits.
Source: Xuequn Wang, Yichuan Wang, and others. “The Dual Concept of Consumer Value in Social Media Brand Community: A Trust Transfer Perspective.” International Journal of Information Management 59 (2021).