If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -Companies should move beyond product attribute positioning to fostering affective-laden relationships with customers, as customers often want to feel engaged with the brand they purchase. These brand tribal members share something emotively more than mere brand ownership. As measures of brand engagement continue to evolve, proven instruments measuring brand tribalism and studies investigating its explanatory power are limited. The purpose of this paper is to help fill this research fissure by offering a three-study approach, leaning on Sahlin's anthropological theory of segmented lineage. Design/methodology/approach -In Study 1, the authors develop and evaluate the measurement properties of a brand tribalism scale. Using survey data in Study 2 and Study 3, the applicability of brand tribalism on brand-response variables across two technological contexts is examined. Findings -Data drawn from ordinary brand users confirm scale validity while questioning the efficacy of communal social structures to affect brand attitude and repurchase intentions. Research limitations/implications -Moving consumers from occasional brand users to members of their brand tribe should be one of many company objectives. The studies here offer acumen as to why such objectives should be pursued and how they can be met. Originality/value -The data from the three studies lend insight to the importance of brand tribalism, its measurement properties, and raise issues regarding its effect on key brand-related outcomes.

Online consumption communities, involving millions of online consumers, have been created around massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs). Within these communities, players who share interest in MMORPGs convene, interact, and collaborate with fellow players and achieve game‐related outcomes. As these online social networks have been noted to augment, and perhaps supplant person‐to‐person interaction, this study focuses on the drivers of inherent interpersonal relationships, the nature of the constructed society, and resulting consumer initiatives to sustain and nurture the organization. Specifically, this research suggests that MMORPG communities transcend more facile forms of online or brand communities and demonstrate characteristics that can most aptly be construed as brand tribalism in the anthropological sense. Here, the challenge and telepresence innate in playing MMORPGs, cognitive and affective involvement associated with MMORPGs, and commitment to MMORPGs are modeled as antecedents of brand tribalism or a sense of the relationship with the brand and MMORPG community. Consequently, intent to purchase MMORPG‐related virtual products, recruitment of other MMORPG players, and word of mouth are identified as consequences of this unique consumer–brand relationship. Further analysis reveals the negatively charged emotional measure (i.e., defense of the tribe) within the tribalism instrument explains more variance in the outcome variables than the positively charged emotional measures (i.e., lineage, social, sense of community). Implications and future research directions are offered.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore and replicate the indirect effect of smartphone brand tribalism on purchase intent via brand pride and brand attitude. Design/methodology/approach Using survey data from 190 US (Study 1) and 432 Qatari (Study 2) smartphone consumers, path analysis is used to evaluate the hypotheses. Findings For these disparate samples, only the defense of the tribal brand dimension of brand tribalism influences brand pride, which in turn leads to a sequential process of brand attitude and purchase intention. Research limitations/implications Using only smartphone data from the USA and Qatar may hinder external validity. As effect sizes in this context are understood, researchers have additional benchmarks for future brand tribalism and brand pride research. Practical implications The psychological underpinning and presence of brand tribes in society cannot be overlooked by strategists. Such tribal-laden following is too evident within smartphone communities. By further understanding the effect of brand tribalism on brand pride and subsequent attitudinal response and behavioral intent, marketers and brand leaders are in an improved position to develop strategies that appeal to targeted customers, ultimately growing and strengthening their brand value. Originality/value Supported by the anthropological view of brand tribalism, this paper contributes to the branding literature by examining the indirect effect of brand tribalism on purchase intention via brand pride and brand attitude. The posited model, previously untested and replicated here across two ethnically diverse samples, shows more explanatory power for defense of the tribal brand on brand pride as compared to the other brand tribalism dimensions. A novel and valid, multi-item brand pride measure is also developed.

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