eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY:

The main objective of this thesis was to understand motives in consumer participation and in particular to find if motives on their own can explain the reasons why consumers engage in consumer communities. The context of this study was Quality Hunters social media community. The aim is to understand how consumers perceive the community and how they participate in social media community.

METHODOLOGY:

The research is qualitative and interpretative. Six Quality Hunters community participants were interviewed and the data from the interviews formed the empirical data of this study. Phenomenological research approach and methods were used to gather and interpret the empirical data.

FINDINGS:

The main findings of the study are that motives are one of the main factors influencing consumer participation in social media community, but they cannot alone explain the participation. The need to expand the motives was found during the data analysis phase and Motives, Opportunities & Ability model was introduced to better explain consumer participation. Other findings include the importance of the brands' to understand the conditions in which the communities are formed. Consumer tribes don't offer the same possibilities to commercialize the community as traditional brand communities offer and it can lead to consumers rejecting the brand existence in the tribe.