How brand communities emerge: The Beamish conversion experience

Abstract

This paper explores the processes contributing to the genesis of a brand community. This ethnographic study focuses on the Beamish brand community. The Beamish beer product is a niche brand only available consistently in the locality of Cork city, Ireland. Evidence from this study shows that a collective conversion experience is foundational to the emergence of this brand community. Following this initial conversion experience, the brand community attempts to maintain the transcendent experience through practices of sacralisation maintenance. Sacralisation is maintained through the playful rituals and virtual play the community members enact. The mutual willingness of the converted to participate in these various forms of playful rituals has been a key role in the reification of the Beamish brand community. Finally, suggestions are made as to how brand management should best approach the initial attempts at brand-community formation.Brendan Richardson is a lecturer in marketing and consumer behaviour in the Department of Management and Marketing, UCC, Cork, Ireland. His research interests are primarily in collective forms of consumer behaviour such as football fandom and brand communities, but he is also interested in the motivation to participate in blogging and high-risk consumer activities such as kayaking and surfing. Related areas of interest include sacred consumption, consumer resistance, subcultures of consumption, and the further development of ethnography as a research methodology.T +35321490294

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