Brand Communities, Religion, and Consumer Subcultures

Introduction to Brand Community Religiosity

Muniz and Schau (2005) begin with a discussion of religiosity and the purpose that religious thinking and behavior serve for human psychology. Their theoretical concern involves the way in which religion constructs meaning for believers, and how disappointment — or a sense of the god that failed — affects religious experience as it manifests within a brand community. Their specific focus is on the community of Apple Newton users — "at least 20,000 day-to-day Newton users" (pp. 737–8) — and how their religious thinking was observed after Apple itself discontinued the Newton brand.

Muniz and Schau: The Apple Newton Community

Muniz and Schau collected their data largely from two Internet user forums where Newton users communicated with each other. They also recruited direct subjects for interviewing via a web page, and ultimately included direct interviews — conducted via email, phone, and face-to-face — with approximately 80 participants from those Internet forums.

Key Findings on Religious Motifs in Brand Loyalty

Muniz and Schau discovered that "supernatural, religious and magical motifs" were common in the discussions of this user community, almost as though they reflected a sustained faith in a brand that had been abandoned by Apple itself (p. 739). Different aspects of the consumer experience maintaining this faith in the Newton appear quite clearly religious in character, with stories about "resurrection," "miracles," and the magical qualities of the product itself appearing frequently.

Muniz and Schau ultimately find that the most interesting aspect of this religious thinking among Newton users is the religious experience of "community." In the case of the Apple Newton, they note that "underdog brands, those that are marginalized, stigmatized, and left behind" paradoxically create some of the strongest user communities (p. 746). They conclude that this form of brand loyalty shares the same social psychology observable in religious identity: "some of the same forces that drive many religions may drive the religiosity of brand communities" (p. 746).

Kozinets: The Star Trek Consumer Subculture

Kozinets (2001) begins from a standpoint rooted in existing literature on consumption as a means of structuring personal identity and relationships, including the establishment of subcultures. His theoretical framework draws on prior work describing the interaction between subculture formation and consumer behavior. In this sense, his choice of Star Trek is fertile ground, since it has produced a widely recognized subcultural phenomenon while also proving to be one of the great success stories in entertainment consumption. The theoretical framework posits that consumer subcultures are used "to make collective sense of their environments and to orient their members' experiences and lives" (p. 68).

Kozinets' methodology involves significant amounts of ethnographic field research. Over the course of 20 months between 1995 and 1997, he collected data from three basic sources: the "structured and intimate local microculture" of local fan communities (p. 69); the larger fan culture of Star Trek conventions; and the web-based virtual community, including newsgroups and websites. This research was designed to cover the different manifestations of the subculture and included "semi-structured informal interviews" with participants (p. 70).