• DOI:10.1108/03090561311306886
• Corpus ID: 168108615

Learning to be tribal: facilitating the formation of consumer tribes

@article{Goulding2013LearningTB,
  title={Learning to be tribal: facilitating the formation of consumer tribes},
  author={Christina Goulding and Avi Shankar and Robin Canniford},
  journal={European Journal of Marketing},
  year={2013},
  volume={47},
  pages={813-832}
}

• Christina Goulding, Avi Shankar, R. Canniford
• Published 10 November 2013
• Business
• European Journal of Marketing

Purpose – Studies of marketplace cultures emphasize the benefits of communal consumption and explain the ways that brand managers can leverage subcultures and brand communities. The ephemeral and often non‐commercial nature of consumer tribes means that they are more difficult to manage. This paper, aims to suggest that a necessary pre‐requisite for understanding how to engage with consumer tribes is to identify how consumers become members of tribes.Design/methodology/approach – Data are drawn from a five‐year ethnographic study of the archetypical club culture tribe that utilized a variety of data collection methods including participant observation and in‐depth interviewing.Findings – The paper identifies “learning to be tribal” as a communal practice that occurs through three interconnected processes of engagement, imagination and alignment.Originality/value – This paper makes three contributions: it clearly distinguishes between the three main forms of communal consumption found in the marketing lite...