Consumer Tribe

‘Consumer behaviour theory is all fine and well,

but has nothing to tell us about how consumers act in real life’.

According to Solomon (2006), Consumer behaviour is ‘the processes involved when individuals or groups select, purchase, use or dispose of products, services, ideas or experiences to satisfy needs or desires ‘(p. 5). This means that consumer behaviour theory interpret how consumer makes decision on their purchasing, usage or disposal either as consumer individually or a group. Moreover consumer behaviour is a part of consumer insight which means the capability to understand consumer and market intensely that helps to construct the right decision making (Stone, 2004) . However in the reality, it is more complicated to predict and influence consumer’s activities as there are possibly unexpectable factors that make impacts on consumer’s action. Consumer behaviour has various of theories. All theories are comprehensible, still it is not able to clarify how consumers perform in reality. For instance, consumer tribe theory, it is problematic for consumer to identify tribe and be member of the tribe. Hence consumer tribe theory is not always functioning.

There are numerous types of consumers. Consumer tribe is one of consumer behaviour theories which use to allocate categories of people. Consumer tribe is a group of people emotionally connected by similar consumption values and usage, use the social ‘linking value’ of product and service to create community and express identity (Cova, 1997, p). This means that consumer tribe is formed when people discovering among themselves that they share passion over something in common and have experiences together through activities engagement. There are four characteristics that differentiate tribe from brand community and subculture. Firstly, tribe is multiple. This means that members are gratis to join more tribes and tribe members do not prohibit membership of other tribe to participate in the tribe. Secondly,...