Consumer Stewards of Brand Communities

Wang, Yanhan

Consumer Stewards of Brand Communities

Wang, Yanhan

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Publication Type:: Thesis
Issue Date:: 2023

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Wang, Yanhan
dc.date.accessioned	2024-09-27T01:28:19Z
dc.date.available	2024-09-27T01:28:19Z
dc.date.issued	2023
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/181005
dc.description	University of Technology Sydney. TD School.	en_US.UTF-8
dc.description.abstract	This study examines the social structures of online communities. It focuses on specific figures who emerges out of these communities – a figure this study termed consumer stewards. This research defines consumer stewards as highly visible community members who enjoy high social capital and use this capital to exercise power to obtain marketing attention and enhance co-creative opportunities between audiences and commercial interests. Using the theoretical framework of Bourdieu’s hierarchies of capital, the eSports community is the context in which the study investigates how these consumer stewards emerge, build their capital and preserve their status within their given community. While this study focuses on the eSports StarCraft II community, it endeavours to make a broader theoretical contribution to the consumer culture theory literature, which has repeatedly sought to understand online consumer communities and their internal structures. A documentary film study and a netnographic research method were chosen to examine the eSports community. The documentary was filmed in 2014 and centred around eSports celebrities (i.e. consumer stewards), and netnographic data was gathered from the eSports community between 2011 to 2020. Three findings are presented in this thesis. First, it provides a detailed breakdown of the composition and function of consumer stewards. Second, it defines engagement as the medium for exchanging capital and power. Furthermore, it makes the argument that engagement could be counted as the fourth capital, supplementing the three forms of capital identified by Bourdieu (1984). Third, it highlights the delicate social position consumer stewards occupy between brand owners and ordinary consumers and discusses both the practical and theoretical implications such a relationship has in the field of marketing and online relationship/narrative management.	en_US.UTF-8
dc.format	Thesis (PhD)
dc.language.iso	en_US	en_US.UTF-8
dc.relation	https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/181005/1/thesis.pdf
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.rights	The author owns the copyright in this thesis including all reproduction and reuse rights for the work. The work may not be altered without the permission of the copyright owner. Attribution is essential when quoting or paraphrasing from this thesis.
dc.rights	© 2023 Yanhan Wang
dc.rights	au.edu.uts.lib/cph
dc.title	Consumer Stewards of Brand Communities	en_US.UTF-8
dc.type	Thesis
utslib.copyright.status	open_access	*

Abstract:

This study examines the social structures of online communities. It focuses on specific figures who emerges out of these communities – a figure this study termed consumer stewards. This research defines consumer stewards as highly visible community members who enjoy high social capital and use this capital to exercise power to obtain marketing attention and enhance co-creative opportunities between audiences and commercial interests. Using the theoretical framework of Bourdieu’s hierarchies of capital, the eSports community is the context in which the study investigates how these consumer stewards emerge, build their capital and preserve their status within their given community. While this study focuses on the eSports StarCraft II community, it endeavours to make a broader theoretical contribution to the consumer culture theory literature, which has repeatedly sought to understand online consumer communities and their internal structures. A documentary film study and a netnographic research method were chosen to examine the eSports community. The documentary was filmed in 2014 and centred around eSports celebrities (i.e. consumer stewards), and netnographic data was gathered from the eSports community between 2011 to 2020. Three findings are presented in this thesis. First, it provides a detailed breakdown of the composition and function of consumer stewards. Second, it defines engagement as the medium for exchanging capital and power. Furthermore, it makes the argument that engagement could be counted as the fourth capital, supplementing the three forms of capital identified by Bourdieu (1984). Third, it highlights the delicate social position consumer stewards occupy between brand owners and ordinary consumers and discusses both the practical and theoretical implications such a relationship has in the field of marketing and online relationship/narrative management.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/181005