Abstract

This study contributes to empirical research on brand communities in social media and to the theoretical enrichment of our concept of brand culture. The method adopted was a netnographic study of eight LEGO brand communities on Facebook, involving the collection of data in the form of text and images. Over a period of several months, the actions and interactions between the adults fans of Lego (AFOLS) was examined and analysed. As an initial investigative framework, we utilise the three characteristics of brand communities established by Muniz and O’Guinn (2001), to direct our inquiry. On the basis of our research, we subsequently establish and develop a brand culture typology that assists in framing online brand communities and their culture, in terms of representation and reproduction. The nascent typology we propose, consists of four elements. These being, the symbolic representation of self, story iteration, brand curation and an expressive network solidarity. We argue that this brand typology facilitates further theoretical and empirical development into brand cultures and in particular, the online brand community phenomena.