Brand-Consumer Relationship: Examining the Saturation Effect of Online Communities in a Social Networking Environment

With the fast proliferation of the Internet and online communities, a two-way communication between brands and consumers is now attainable. With this, brand-consumer relationship building would take its part through the online medium (Hagel and Armstrong, 1997; McWilliam, 2000; Rothaermel and Sugiyama, 2001; Pitta and Fowler, 2005). Nonetheless, as companies are using more the social networking platform where millions of members are already registered, saturation is starting to take place. This comes at the risk of having a negative influence on consumers’ sense of belonging towards the brand and its community. The growing impact of saturation on social networks has yet to be understood. The consequences of saturation on online members-brand relationship need to be investigated.