Purpose – Over the past few years, social networking sites (SNSs) have become very useful for firms, allowing companies to manage the customer–brand relationships. In this context, SNSs can be considered as a learning tool because of the brand knowledge that customers develop from these...

External communities of practice are groups formed by company clients and employees based on common interests, commitment, mutual trust and collaboration whose members regularly share knowledge and learning. This paper examines how external communities of practice contribute to the creation of...