Behind the Buy
From Branding-First to Community-First Consumer Logic
We all seek for community so it's natural for us to look for community in the marketplace. But it's difficult to sort out the real community experience from its counterfeit. As argued by John Freie in 1998, counterfeit community is this contrived thing, a one way road, where we consume community with no requirements to produce, sustain, or in one word, sacrifice for community. Real communities provide psychological benefits for its members, it asks for reciprocity, and they engage with conflict in mostly productive ways. But genuine communities are always a little messier, more complicated, and far from easy than anything we might really want to purchase as consumers.
A Taylor Swift concert (or any generation defining musical movement like hers) is not an individual experience, it’s a communal experience. It is not just the summation of preferences for a kind of music, it is the more ephemeral meaning of the music and the communal experience when those interests are shared with others. What makes fan groups more genuine than counterfeit is the interaction of fans with each other—in the classroom, online, and at concerts that becomes the true sum of the community experience. In other words, it is not just the connection to a product, but the connection to others because of the product.
Methodological Individualism
The problem with capturing genuine community is that we apply a kind of business logic to understanding the user experience (rooted in the tradition of methodological individualism). In simple terms, we aggregate individual experiences into some collective total that doesn't really represent the thing we call community. For many organizations, the allure of methodological individualism lies in its simplicity. Aggregating individual preferences into collective data points seems like an efficient way to measure community engagement. Yet this reductionist perspective sacrifices accuracy in the name of convenience, causing many to miss the point: that it is the interplay between relationships and shared meanings that gives rise to authentic communities.
“It is not just the connection to a product, but the connection to others because of the product.”
Methodological individualism has become a dominant framework in consumer analytics. While this approach can offer valuable insights into individual purchasing habits, it is ill-equipped to capture the intricate, relational dynamics that define genuine communities. As a result, we have a hard time understanding the complicated networks of relationships that can create something that's altogether different than any one individual.
An Example
One great example is the rise and fall and then rise again of Barnes and Noble. Once the boogeyman of local “ma and pa” bookstores (a You’ve Got Mail reference for those of us raised in the late 1900s), it was later overrun by Amazon, the definitive opposite of a community experience, only to reemerge using a localized ma and pa approach. In essence, the B&N rebrand is simple—you can buy your boring books on Amazon, but come to our bookstores for an “experience”, connect with our staff, let them curate the books you’ll want to read, and then connect with other customers that are a lot like you. This is a rebrand away from individualism towards a more sociological understanding of consumer communities.
This means that the best brands broker connections with others, and in this case, in brick and mortar third places where such a community can meet and interact and thrive. Sometimes this leads to revenue for the company, and sometimes it doesn’t. But by enabling these connections, the company is always strengthening its brand.
For big brands like Patagonia, Nike, Apple, Meta, the idea of community is at the center of how we think about our relationship to these products—adventure, fitness, creativity, and social connection are just preset values that find their way to these famous brands. So instead of thinking of these brands as creating community, they are articulating, supporting, and enhancing communities that already exist.
This revelation is at the heart of contextual analytics—when you understand context, you can see more than individuals, you see connection. There are 4 key ways contextual analytics can uncover these connections:
Theory / Framework that ask the right questions:
That are reflexively informed by both deductive and inductive knowledge
Methods that match the question:
Rooted in networks, meaning, and context
Employ thick description when possible
Use rigorous analytic techniques
Analyses that understand:
Generalizability
Causality
Limits of interpretation
Application of data that:
Know the benefits and limits of applying learning to business decision making
Each of these key points requires a conversation about the goals of any organization, and any meaningful strategy requires partners that can elevate your work.
What is the cost of getting it wrong? Barnes and Nobles is stepping away from the kinds of corporate-inspired strategies (e.g. floor layout guidelines for each branch) that read more like formulas, and less like efforts to bolster genuine community. Now, they are hiring local experts who adapt the store experience to the interests and needs of local communities. Time will tell if this will meaningfully save the brand, but this approach is a community-first logic that fits the kinds of strategies that contextual analytics is designed to reveal.
