Identification in Hyper-Loyalty Brand Communities

An ever lasting urge to uncover "the strategy" of building brand loyalty has been motivating marketers for decades. However, simply establishing the same discovered "template" for al l products and brands has been the pursued agenda, without any further interest in examining the deeper phenomenological processes involved wi th such loyal consumer behavior of various degrees. Among such, consumer communities (Muniz and O'Guinn 2001) created around and directed by part icular brands, yielding to hyper-loyalty (McAlexander and Schouten 1998; Ebstein, Betou et al. 1999), is critical for comprehending underlying dynamics of sustainable long-term competitive advantage. While effectiveness and efficiency have been regularly drawn upon to explain advantageous resources (Hunt 2002); I contend, that deeper comprehension of consumer hyper-loyalty needs to be also integrated