Firm-brand community value co-creation as alignment of practices

The purpose of this paper is to contribute knowledge regarding the nature of successful and unsuccessful value co-creation processes between firms and brand communities and the strategies used to address the latter.

The paper draws on a netnographic study of the online collaborative platform known as Alfisti.com, which carmaker Alfa Romeo launched to enhance co-creation with its most devoted consumers, the “Alfisti”.

The findings identify three groups of collaborative practices: interacting, identity and organizing practices. The paper details how firm and brand community members enact the elements – procedures, understandings and engagements – of collaborative practices and how the alignment of these enactments impacts value co-creation.

The paper suggests that co-creation of value succeeds when the enactment of collaborative practices aligns, i.e. when firm and brand community members enact practices in a similar way, and that co-creation fails when the enactment of practices misaligns. Firms and brand communities use three realignment strategies – compliance, interpretation and orientation – to address the misalignment and failure of co-creation. The fact that the research draws on a single qualitative case study is a limitation.

Managerial implications include using realignment strategies to manage firm-brand community co-creation.

Creating an empirical-based framework regarding successful and failing co-creation and how the latter is addressed in the context of brand community makes the paper original.