CONSUMER TRIBE

Consumer Tribe: Hiker

Consumer Tribe: Hiker

Introduction

Consumer and marketing studies have traditionally conceptualised consumers as people who exercise choice in the market as consumer not a group or a class. In contrast, new concept or stance is now emerging that discards the distinctive and peculiar viewpoint and emphasis on factuality of life is fundamentally social, as well as who consumers are an intrinsically social phenomenon. Tribal marketing or consumer tribe demonstrates that it is not consumer or a single person who buys or consumes products or services that describe and label our lives while this activity essentially facilitates meaningful social links. These social relationships are more significant than brand, products or traditional marketing mix.

The world of consumer becomes more complex for today's marketers. Increasing competition, rapid changing consumer's choices, and the consumers' subdivision into niche segment are emerging factors that make it more complex or create hurdle for marketers to develop profitable and long-term relations with a loyal base of consumers. Consumer tribes gain attention of several academic scholars and marketers as an answer to these complexity and hurdles. Thus, the aim of this assignment is to broaden the developing literature of consumer tribe to gain an in-depth understanding on why consumer tribe has formed. Moreover, Hikers (consumer tribe) are taken into consideration to facilitate a more complete understanding on how they communicate, as well as offer recommendation on how communication can be improved.

Discussion

Consumer Tribes

According to Arnould and Zinkhan (2004, p. 441) consumer tribe are a group of people who are loyal to a certain brand. Consumer tribes can also be defined as groups of people who strongly share a similar or common passion. These similarities either for a good cause or for a brand, or a sport - ties the consumer tribe together by a common sense of belonging.

From the postmodern or Latin perspective, the brand are recognised and acknowledged because of their ability to unite or link consumers in a social structure, institution and practices of their own device, for this reason, a consumer has emerged. Leisure, products and brands activities are less consumed for hedonic or utilitarian values and more for their social relationship value. Consumer tribes emerged from the archetypal variables of segmentation of product or demographics benefits or social class; they are instead typified as share a common kinship or consciousness; having common rituals, lived experiences, stories, and traditions; have a felt ethical responsibility to the brand community and to each other; and sustained or loyal customers of a specific brand. Additionally, one of the essential and significant aspects of consumer tribes is their mutual resistance towards an opponent.

Cova and Pace (2006, pp.1087-1105) argued that consumer tribes has several characteristics in common, such as their traditions, rituals, ceremonies and ethnocentric mentality associated with the brand, along with a sense of shared reasonability and commitment to the society or a group of people. In a broad description of the tribal paradigm, a researcher provides six characteristics of consumer ...