Consumer Behaviour Brand Community

Consumer Behaviour

Brand community is a community of a specialized goods or services that has not limited by its physical location and build based on social relationships among admires of the brand (Muniz and O'Guinn, 2001, p. 412-432). Influence by a huge leap of technology most of brand community are now an online brand community, by creating a platform for customers to communicate through internet connection online brand community might overcome the barrier of time and place (Wu et al., 2015, p.813-823). Marketers has investigated that brand community has no direct contribution to the sales but its created a value to each member through an activity by every member in the community itself (Muñiz, Jr. and Schau, 2007, p35-50). While the other researcher found that there are some different level of member in community, the one who only visit to find information, a regular member with continuously read information and stay up to date and there is a deeply involved customers who interact, create content and help increase the community by asking people to join the community, this deeply involve group have a direct contribution to the purchase of the products, they tend to try new product, active in spreading information and create word of mouth about related brand (Oestreicher-Singer and Zalmanson 591-616). The activity in the brand community is unlimited, it can be used for customers to exchange information about the product, discuss or share experience about the related brands. As a company, they will be able to now about what they customer’s thought and with a well maintain and good management, a channel to promote new product, create brand image and improve loyalty are easily gain by the community (Algesheimer, Dholakia and Hermann, 2005, p19-34). Lego is a toys company from Denmark, creating a plastic construction bricks and various type of shape that can be assemble to create a lot of shape from house, vehicle, robots and so on. Lego create brand community called Lego Ideas, originally start in 2008 with a name of Lego Cuusoo, the community enable their customers to create their own design, promote their design and if they reach 10.000 supporters, the company will produce the design, sold all over the world and giving 1% of royalty for the designer. The website also provides a blog for users to share information and interact with more than 600.000 other members.

First introduce in japan partnership with Cuusoo to create a community that support the design of Lego, Cuusoo itself is a crowdfunding platform company based on Japan that work as a facilitator for designer to introduce their work. Lego Cuusoo enable designer from japan to promote their design and if it is reach 1000 voters, Lego will produce the design and sold globally. After the increase of Lego fans all over the world, Lego Cuusoo lauched global access in 2011 and raised the requirement voters into 10.000. Lego changed their name into Lego Ideas in 2014 without changing so much about the regulation and the inside of the community, until March, 2017 there are 131 design reach more than 10.000 voters but some of them are rejected due of an issues such as licensing, complex design or similarity with other design (lego.wikia.com. 2017). Issue appear when Lego decide to change their name from Lego Cuusoo to Lego Ideas, they do not have a link from their original website and when they decide to shut down their Lego Cuusoo website it is looks like Lego has close the website and the customers do not know about Lego Ideas yet. A minimum communication makes Lego Ideas exclusive for a Lego fans only (Avasilcăi and Rusu, 2015, p.03). Design a new model is not an easy job, even though a lot of Lego fans are under 10 years old, Lego decide to put a strict age restriction of 13 and above, Lego says that a fans under the requirement age should be accompanied by an adult. To sustaining the brand community, Lego create a Lego Ideas team that search the best Lego creation each week and put it on what they called “staff picks”, the company also creating a blog in the community to give inside and update information. The Lego Ideas team needs to analyze the design that reach 10k vote to reach all the intellectual property agreement, market fit, playability, safety and so on before they are able to produce it. Other channel such as social media and YouTube are also maximize to maintain the activity in the community and sustaining it, they announce the Lego Idea 10k club winner in their YouTube page with more than 2 million subscribers.

The narrative surrounding the brand

Lego is a well-known global brands with a lot of fans in all difference age group, Lego offer an experience and a creativity to customize and make it authentic self-expression. As a main target audience, Lego targeted children age 1.5 to 11 regardless the gender and adult with children in their life as the one who buy it. For secondary target market is an adult fans of Lego who has a relationship with Lego and enjoy construction toys.  Lego has a value of imagination, as a construction toys company they believe that the only barrier in our imagination, Lego has created approximately 600 billion Lego part and produce at least 60 billion parts every year (Brickrecycler.com, 2017). Another value is creativity, thanks to interlock system by Lego that enable customers to connect Lego from all different type and models. The company tries to create an integrated brand image of fun learning by licensing product with a lot of character that found attractive in the eye of customers. To maintain the positive narrative of the quality product, Lego used only ABS plastics that known as a durable and never compose material as their main raw materials. Lego create a narrative of “joy of building, Pride of creation”. It is perceiving well in the community where all of the fans all offer the world able to submit their creation and being rewarded by what they made. As Lego also do an interview and post a photo for a member who reach 10k voters, they feel more appreciate and be more loyal to the brand. But, it also drives other to be more motivated to achieve what the 10k club achieve, normally it takes 2 years to get 10k voters in the community and another 6 month of review until mass production finish. Lastly, a message of adaptability is strongly perceived from the company. Start as a wooden toy manufactured then they changed their material to plastic. After 2 years they created an interlocking bricks and always try to be better with a new design, throughout the years Lego always created a new design to offer for their customers, in 1998, the first Lego Mind Storm was introduced with an ability to be programmed, and in 1999, Lego introduced Lego Land in California then the Lego movie and the Lego video games. Lego is able to adapt with the needs of their customers creating a unique value for the company (Lego.com, 2017).