Apple communities in practice theory perspective.pdf

Advanced Brand Management - Autumn 2012 - Syddansk Universitet - Take-Home-Assignment: Apple
communities
Author/Student: Arish Ahmad - CPR-no.: 090890-3307
Advanced Brand Management
Take-Home-Assignment
Autumn 2012 - Syddansk Universitet
Topic: Brand Collectives
Apple communities
Author/Student: Arish Ahmad
CPR-no.: 090890-3307

communities
Content
Introduction .........................................................................................................................................1
Brand communities - definition and perspective chosen....................................................................1
Importance of brand communities today – What’s so spe ial a out the ? ......................................2
The case – Apple communities ............................................................................................................3
Analysis and discussion section – Using brand community literature and research to understand
Apple communities ..............................................................................................................................4
Shared consciousness.......................................................................................................................4
Rituals and traditions .......................................................................................................................5
Moral responsibility..........................................................................................................................6
The pursuit of authenticity...............................................................................................................7
A social practice perspective on brand communities ......................................................................8
Conclusion and managerial relevance .................................................................................................9
Litterature ..........................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
This essay revolves around the topic of brand collectives and chooses Apple as its brand of scrutiny. The
author has thus set out with the following research question: I will look into some of the contemporary
thoughts on and conceptualizations of brand collectives in an attempt of understanding the specific
meanings and practices attached to the community surrounding the Apple-brand and/or its products. I will
then discuss the potential strategic or managerial value this knowledge could have.
One of the challenges of writing this essay is the fact that there is sound and compelling research on brand
communities in which precisely Apple communities are prime data sources or examples (Belk and Tumbla,
2005, Muñiz and O'Guinn, 2001, Kahney, 2007, Eco, 1994, Rushkoff, 2000, Arnott, 1999 and Goldstein
(Kahney, 2002)). This text will thus be a modest attempt of extending the literature in ways, which resonate
with more recent developments in Apple communities or go to new levels or areas of the analyses. The
essay begins with a general understanding of brand communities today, followed by a presentation of the
case. The analysis/discussion begins with the pioneering work of Muñiz a d O’Gui and their three
basic characteristics of brand communities. The essay will elaborate and try to extend this framework
within the context of the case. Next the analysis moves towards understanding how Apple communities
bring (a long lost) authenticity into the consumption experience of an individual. Finally a social practice
perspective allows to go deeper into brand community meanings. The work of Schau, Muñiz and Arnould
(2009) is here adopted, who created a framework for how brand community practices create value. The
essay ends with discussing the managerial relevance for Apple of the findings of the analysis.
It is important to note that the discussion of the suita ility of the hose theory for the Apple o u ity
case is subsumed within the analysis-section. This is because this essay is not about testing whether brand
community theory is useful or not, but rather showing how the applied theory can be used to gain insight in
Apple communities. Thus the essay focuses on pursuing strong and valid arguments with a sound structure.
The suggestions and execution/demonstration of the extensions and modifications of the theory and the
justification of case-theory fit are therefore built into the analysis section rather than in a separate section.
Brand communities - definition and perspective chosen1
Community is the fundamental way, in which humans share their cognitive, emotional or material
resources. It is composed of its members and their relationships and is identified on the basis of
commonality or identification among these. The most essential and definitive feature of communities is the
human sharing and negotiation of meaning. Communities today have an important function in the
1
Parts of this essay are adopted (and slightly modified) from an obligatory assignment in another course of this
se ester: Ad a ed Marketi g Co u i atio : O li e o u ity dis ourses ahead of the release of IPho e 5

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negotiation of symbolism of the marketplace (McAlexander et. al., 2002). On this basis the Muñiz and
O'Guinn (2001) definition of brand communities is adopted: "a specialized, nongeographically bound
community, based on a structured set of social relationships among users of a brand". This essay highlights
the social constructivist nature of brands by taking the O'Guinn and Muñiz (2009) perspective; brand
communities are one of multiple actors in the social construction of a brand (others being marketers and
institutions of society). This serves to undermine a narrow brand-consumer dyad understanding of
branding or a psychological and individualistic approach to communities. Muñiz and O'Guinn (2001)
identified three defining characteristics of a brand community: 1) Consciousness of kind 2) shared rituals
and traditions and 3) moral responsibility. This sociological conceptualization of brand communities entails
"that the existence and meaningfulness of the community inhere in customer experience rather than in the
brand around which that experience revolves" (McAlexander et. al., 2002).
Importance of brand communities today – What’s so special about them?
The essentially sociological nature of brands today explains why brands inevitably lead to communities and
why the chosen perspective on brand communities is appropriate. O'Guinn and Muñiz (2009) explain this
well: "We need to see brands as vessels of popular meaning, where negotiation of the meaning is
meaningful. Where consumers bring themselves and a social world to them and thus create them. Brands
are not just names of things, but an increasingly important part of the social fabric and centers of social
organization. Brands work to bring people together, to divide them, to mark meaningful collectives of
identity, to meaningfully define human relationships." This may be understood as a consequence of the
"embeddedness" of consumer society in the (post)modern worlds. Brand communities have the hallmarks
of traditional communities but introduces their own market logic and expression - postmodern surface
orientation entails many and ephemeral relationships with brands and humans alike. Brand communities
can be seen as a postmodern way of fulfilling the universal human need for a sense of community
(McAlexander et. al., 2002). This sense of community was traditionally channeled through Gemeinschaft-
like communities such as church, family, school, union or social class and where the individual as a whole is
embraced. This is in contrast to Gesellschaft-like communities, in which the membership only involves
aspects of the individual’s perso ality (Nisbet & Perrin, 1977). The advent of cold and rational Gesellschaft-
like social structuring in western societies is explained well by Max Weber, as he makes sense of the shift
from traditional, charismatic and value-rational authority to formal legal-rational, purposive-rational
authority throughout modernity (18th
Enlightenment and up until 20th
post-war). Weber also acknowledged
that industrialization with its iron cage of rule-based, rational control, commodification and virtualization
was erasing the dominance of the religious and sacred. We will later use this legacy of this important era.

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The case – Apple communities
Apple communities are mainly characterized by individuals collectively engaging in Apple and/or its
products. Today a main driver of the community activity are rumors about upcoming products. The fan-
based way of engaging in Apple has its roots in the 80s as the company started to sell its Macintosh
computers to the broad market. Later this developed into very cohesive and often fanatic communities,
which attracted both public and academic attention. We therefore necessarily incorporate the insights of
Belk and Tumbat (2005), Kahney (2007) and psychologist Ross Goldstein before them (Kahney, 20022). They
present the cult-like nature of the Apple-devotée collectives, in which the members adopt religious
metanarratives to construct a creation myth and hero myth (Steve Jobs), which is often extended to
drawing parallels to Steve Jobs as Christ figure as a savior and Apple product use as salvation for users.
Furthermore there is a satanic or villain myth, in which Bill Gates is the enemy and PC-users needs saving
and a resurrection myth, labeling Job's return to Apple in the 80s as his "Second Coming" (Campbell and La
Pastina, 2010). The Apple-community is often used as exemplary when talking about brand community
practices from a consumer perspective and is also known by the public media, which with the brands
recent massive growth consequently undermines ult -like features of the community (Campbell and La
Pastina, 2010). This issue will be returned to shortly.
There are differe t perspe ti es for u dersta di g Apple user’s de otio and collectivity. An Apple-devoteé
may emphasize the merits of the machine, its friendliness, its simplicity or the feeli g of ei g i o trol
of the device (Kahney, 20022). A second perspective finds the answer in the cult-like culture within the
Apple corporation itself, which makes the sloga Thi k Differe tly seem more authentic, thus inspiring
and engaging the users (Tobak, 2011). This relates to the perspective, which emphasizes a creative brand
a age e t effort. As o e arketi g professio al put it: Somewhere they have created this really
humanistic, beyond-business relationship with users and created a cult-like relationship with their brand. It's
a ig tri e, everyo e is o e of the . You're part of the ra d […] Me ers of the Ma 's origi al e gi eeri g
and marketing team told me all about it. They did it by building a sense of belonging to an elite club by
portraying the Mac as embodying the values of righteous outsiderism and rebellion against injustice"2
(Kahney, 20023). A more cultural sociological approach, acknowledging the brand as a product of the
consumer and culture as well, sees the community in itself as a primal source of perceived value and thus
devotion to Apple and/or its products. the following section delves into this contention or perspective.
2
This reflects the dominant, yet somewhat outdated, understanding of brand meaning, as something which marketers
position in the minds of the consumers

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Analysis and discussion section – Using brand community literature and research to
understand Apple communities
Shared consciousness
Shared consciousness is the community's sense of "we-ness". There are three aspects to this, which brings
the members together : 1) Imagined community. As a member of a community you may only interact with a
fraction of the whole community. To share a strong sense of identity with the rest of the members, they
have to imagined. The idea stems from Benedict Anderson's explanation of an individual's strong feelings of
national collectiveness with people you have never met. In Apple's case this is reflected clearly in this
quote: "If you see somebody in an airport in London, or someplace down in Peru or something, and you see
an Apple tag on their bag, or an Apple T-shirt, it's like the Deadheads … you have a i sta t frie d" (Kahney,
20022). 2) Legitimacy concerns the differentiation between members and non-members, but also between
truly passionate members and members, who are there for the "wrong reasons" somehow. Muñiz and
O'Guinn gave a number of reasons at the time for why this was not an issue among the Mac-community
members. 3) Oppositional brand loyalty is also an important social process, which perpetuates the shared
consciousness of the community. Opposition to another brand can have a vital role in the community
experience but also in the meaning of the brand. This has been an essential part of the meanings attached
to the Apple communities as it is about resisting the tyranny of the Microsoft tide, where Apple is the
symbol of counterculture - rebellious, free-thinking and creative (Kahney, 20033).
Today the notion of an imagined community of Apple users may have become stronger and more
important and maybe slightly more ambiguous. “i e Muñiz a d O’Gui i trodu ed this idea, u h ha e
happened to Apple as a brand and thus to its communities. The company's introduction of the iPod, iPhone,
Macbook etc. has resulted in massive growth in consumer markets. This opens up for the possibility of less
fanatic and more mainstream brand and community meanings. The more recent emphasis of the same
authors on the notion of brand collectives as "thin but not negligible brands" seems to better explain the
changing nature of the Apple communities. "These bonds are the thin and typically diaphaneous threads
that, when combined through the twisting of ubiquitous popular social forces, amount to strong ties to
many unseen and unknown other" (O'Guinn and Muñiz, 2009). This of course relates to the above
discussion of brand communities and the embeddedness of consumer culture in society, in which brands as
Apple have become the non-negligible connections between many individuals. The rise of social media has
meant explosion of individuals engaging more in brand meanings - and in particular brands as Apple and its
products - through forums, blogs, social networks (Facebook, Twitter etc.) (Campbell et. al., 2011). This
seems to be accentuated by the effective coverage of public media of this general online social

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development around the globe but also by the media-focus on Apple products and communities in specific
(Campbell and La Pastina, 2010). Essentially this has meant, that the distribution of the Apple community
affiliation has become much wider. One need not be a fanatic, but merely has to collectively admire and
imagine the Apple brand or products to be part of the community today (O'Guinn and Muñiz, 2009).
It seems plausible then that legitimacy issues can arise from these changing conditions and the reasons for
the opposite, discussed by Muñiz and O'Guinn in 2001, also seems invalid today, which these two authors
actually hints at in their recent text. Apple communities earlier thrived on and celebrated their marginal
status. Today this marginality is reduced to a desire. The myths which characterized the cult-like nature of
Mac-communities are potentially threatened by mainstream marketplace meanings seeding into the
community through higher market shares (O'Guinn and Muñiz, 2009). Legitimizing community behavior and
desired marginality may be growing social processes within Apple communities, in which members struggle
with undermining the perception of growth. There may not have been fundamental changes to the
oppositional brand loyalty aspect of the community as Apple still enjoys the symbolism of a counterculture
to the dominant Microsoft. A potential difference may be a reduction in the level of strong emotional
(dis)loyalty (against Microsoft), as manifested in the myths of the Mac-cult, which for "new" users may be a
result of more general preference as Apple has moved into the broader mainstream segment, who may not
engage that deeply with the brand and the products as the Mac-communities of the 90s.
Rituals and traditions
Rituals and traditions are social processes in which the meanings of the community are reproduced and
proliferate within and beyond the community. These will mostly center around shared consumption
experiences. Examples within the Apple community includes stories of Mac's relative immunity to viruses,
the predilection for Apple logo stickers and t-shirts or interest in the Apple history, for example the date
the Mac was introduced (Kahney, 20024). Maybe the most important and performed rituals or tradition in
Apple communities today - but also one which has been present since the beginning Apple communities - is
the culture of rumor-sharing, typically related to new product releases. It is a practice which opens up for a
lot of interaction between both the "old-timers", but also the new more mainstream-followers of Apple, as
it is relatively easily engaged in. The accentuation of rumor-engagement can in this sense be interpreted as
a consequence of the growth of the Apple brand and communities within the last decade. An important
factor here is of course then also the very influential rise of online social media use, also elaborated above.
Another of the most well-known rituals or traditions of Apple communities today is the use of religious
imagery, which is the effect (or remains?) of the cult-like nature of Apple communities. Even though it is
not about experiences per se, it is nevertheless an example of meaning being reproduced and transmitted

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within and beyond the community in ways crucially characterizing for the community. It was mentioned
earlier that modernity erased the religious and sacred. In the following it is argued how the Apple
community (and other as well) behavior can be understood as a postmodern countereffect of this erasing
and an example of reestablishing the sacred in today's western societies.
Campbell and La Pastina (2010) explain how technology has long been connected to religion trough myths
and narratives as it is part of the discourse on humanity and its limitations. The following quote of the
article explains the relevance of this in brand communities: " ... technological artifacts and activities can be
framed in religious terms in order to solidify user's investment in the product and used in the development
of a shared identity". They further contend: "... religious images are employed in popular culture discourse
in ways that are flexible rather than proscriptive [...] [free] from the constraints of boundaries placed by
traditional or official understandings of religious meaning" - Religious-like devotion in Apple-communities
seemed to have more to do with creating and sharing a feeling of the superiority of Apple and the human
craving of community rather than with issues of belief and spirituality (as with traditional religion). We can
understand these findings in the context of religion having been a social wellspring and social guidance (or
in other words: a social glue) for the human race in thousands of years, which explains the ability of religion
to connect and unite humans - now people have begun to use this social feature of religion (which is only
one of the many features of religion) to unite around other entities/phenomenon, in this case a brand like
Apple. A psychologist and a "Mac-nut" himself expressed a similar argument:"For a lot of people who are
not comfortable with religion, it provides a community and a common heritage" (Kahney, 2002). This is
achieved by adopting/importing religious language, metaphors and narratives, but leaving out the
prescription and creed aspects of the religion. This seems also to be the focal point of the study of
Campbell and La Pastina (2010); The use of religious intertextuality through the new media was a powerful
rhetorical tool with regard to the first iPhone release - used initially by Apple-fans, and then by the media
and Apple itself. This function of religious language is also seen in other consumer collectives as in Kozinetz
(2002) netnographic study of "coffee-fanatics".
Moral responsibility
A basic characteristic is the ra d o u ity e er’s se se of duty to the o u ity as a hole as ell
as its individual members. This is what stimulates collective action but also contributes to group cohesion.
This manifests itself in typically two ways: 1) integrating and retaining members and 2) assisting in proper
use of the brand. Traditionally Apple community members integrate and retain members by evangelizing to
PC-users the superiority of Apple. The extreme example is Mac-enthusiasts acting as volunteer salespeople
in computer stores and like a cult spread "the message" of Steve Jobs. Another example are Apple users

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repairing, researching or just glorifying their products through community interaction. McAlexander et. al
(2002) in their study of the effects of Jeep brand community events, conceptualized such interaction as a
socializing symbiosis between experts and neophytes. It is a relationship of reciprocal exchanges of value,
as the neophytes gain expertise and social approval from the community and the veterans benefit from the
status of a kind of leadership-role. You may argue, that this social process may (have) become of greater
importance in Apple communities as a result of the rapid growth of Apple-users today.
The pursuit of authenticity
Today's consumer societies has made our perception of reality weaker and some assert, we live in times
and spaces of simulation or hyperreality (Baudrilliard, 1994). Authenticity becomes relevant, because In an
age of abundant choice, consumers are drawn toward brands with an original story..."3
. Consumers
increasingly crave for going "behind the scenes" of brands and getting closer to the makers or "puppet-
masters" (McAlexander et al., 2002). Holt (2002) shows how this is related to a (post) postmodern society,
in which a sense of authentic consumption is getting rare - or at least more desirable. Peterson (2005)
shows how the meaning of authenticity is socially constructed, is comparatively determined and that its
meaning thus varies over time/periods (and culture). Today authenticity is often constructed in terms of
the marketplace: i.e. as the unspun, honest, the natural, genuine, the passionate vs. the fake, the virtual,
the prepackaged, artificial. This particular construction of authenticity goes back to the roots of modernity
and industrialization, as this era can be understood as destroying that which many western populations
now long for (again). Authenticity is therefore often constructed in terms of/in opposition to what is
perceived to have destroyed the sense of it in the first place - the marketplace.
Brand communities like the Apple one reestablish a sense of authenticity in our consumption experiences.
"People are anxious and confused [...] Technology is accelerating faster and faster than we can keep up
with. People need to find some grounding, that human touch, the leading hand. There's a need to recreate
tribes that give people a grounding" (Kahney, 20023). By vesting the material interaction with the complex
Apple products in a social context of a brand community, Apple users can bring authenticity into their
consumption. Examples of such "vesting" are the use of religious imagery to describe the iPhone, Apple and
Steve Jobs (Campbell and La Pastina, 2010) or the symbiosis between neophytes and gurus. Thus the
community social practices assist in adding the authenticity-component to their consumption. This explains
why many people invest much energy and time in brand communities - even before the respective
product/brand is available (or even announced!), as with the recent iPhone 5. Anticipation-building through
community practice serve to enhance the final consumption experience of the iPhone 5. In this sense we
3
http://www.authenticbrandindex.com/

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can relate to McCrackens Diderot effect, which contends that the acculturating force of communities drives
the individuals to make increasingly larger investment in a new cultural interest (Kozinetz, 2002).
A social practice perspective on brand communities
Practices are linked and implicit templates of understanding, saying, and doing things. Practices include
practical activities, performances, and representations or talk. These three are linked through the three
components of a practice: 1) Understandings - Know-how or cultural templates for understanding and
action (mental aspect of a practice) 2) Procedures - explicit rules or principles of performance (bodily
aspect) 3) Engagements - Emotional ends and purposes (emotional aspect). Some choose to add a fourth
aspect emphasizing the symbolic aspects of a practice, which here is probably subsumed in the mental and
emotional4
. Practices can be seen as a qualification of consuming because they are the primary source of
desire, knowledge and judgment..." With this in mind Schau, Muñiz and Arnould identified 12 practices,
which drive collective value creation some of which we will identify in the Apple communities of this paper.
The most important implication this framework has for our Apple communities is the acknowledgement
that the sense of membership or the shared consciousness is manifested through practice. This means that
the feeling of "we-ness" is achieved through 1) performances (bodily/object), i.e. sharing material
interactions or experiences with the iPhone or iMac and engaging in the rumor-developments, 2)
understandings (mental), i.e. sharing and acquiring know-how of Apple products but also the repertoires
and discourses of the community (the cultural templates), and 3) symbolic/emotional engagement, i.e.
engaging in social interaction, playing roles, acquiring a social status and identifying with the cult-like
myths. Often only the symbolic/emotional engagement is emphasized. The social practice perspective thus
seems to be a sound elaboration of the process of identification with and value-creation within Apple
communities. An example is how community practices endow members with cultural capital. This is driven
by the competitive spirit in much community behavior, which motivates the members to engage in certain
practices. Members keep engaging in these practices to uphold the social statuses they achieve from this.
In this way it is through practices that the individual accrues cultural capita and in the end perceived value
of the brand. Examples of practices are evangelizing5
(Apple users preaching the advantages of Apple
products within and beyond the community, and making comparisons with inferior Microsoft products,
engaging passionately in rumors by giving detailed argumentation for a possible release date for the iPhone
5 – based on production schedules from China or life-cycle of the iPhone 4), empathizing and documenting
(ones brand engagement) (inspiring other members by demonstrating their use and knowledge of an
4
This is the custom of the lecturer in the Marketing Theory course of this semester, Niklas Woermann.
5
Conceptualizing "evangelizing" as a general practice may have found its inspiration from precisely Mac-communities
(Belk and Tumbla, 2005) - an example of how Apple communities have actually shaped brand community theory.

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iPhone or Mac by posting pictures or detailed personal manuals). Practices also enhance consumers brand
experience through the production of a repertoire, which enables to use shared insider jargon. This seems
facilitated also by the practices mentioned just above, but adding justifying/evangelizing (In rumor
engagement almost in every thread the community members justified - the drivers being myths and use of
religious imagery - for the high price of an iPhone 5 and less features compared to the Samsung S36
). A last
example concerns how practices structurally add value by making consumption rituals reproducible and
repeatable, which allows more members to derive value from the community. This is an important social
practice of Apple communities as its technological complex products sometimes necessitates complex
consumption performances. Apple users engage more deeply in and generate more value from their
community membership through the institutionalizing practices of the above documenting and
empathizing but also grooming (Investing energy into caring, protecting or optimizing ones iPhone/iMac).
Using this perspective have allowed to go deeper in the analysis and find how the value created from the
Apple community engagement is a result of social practices within and beyond the community. This
complies with the SDL perspective of Vargo and Lusch (2004) as Apple's community practices seem to be an
example of the servicedriven co-production of value.
Conclusion and managerial relevance
We have looked into the way Apple community members construct their sense of shared consciousness,
where one of the main contentions was that mainstream meanings may be seeding into the brand and thus
communities, which seems accentuated by the rapidly expanding use of social media. Managers may
consider that today's new more wide affiliation-distributed communities may not be able to reproduce the
distinctiveness of the Apple-brand meaning of the 90s, which was enthusiastically embraced and
transmitted by the traditional Apple communities - This due to the marginality and thus higher
cohesiveness and deeper interaction (Muñiz and O'Guinn, 2001), which was reflected in the very strong
sense of moral responsibility within, but also beyond Apple communities. This have in a long time been an
essential social process within Mac-users being missionaries of Apple and Steve Jobs.
But community building practices such as evangelizing, justifying or empathizing may not be considered a
privilege anymore as a result of the erased marginality of the Apple community. Marketers may therefore
need to encourage and providing contexts for such community practices. This may be exactly be the
thought behind Apple's recent introduction of official Apple support communities7
, where users can gather
6
Findings from the paper being worked on simultaneously in Market Communication – referred to above also.
7
https://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa

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and exchange their experiences or problems with various products. This was something traditionally being
an entirely consumer-driven practice through the cult-like communities.
Muñiz and O'Guinn's third basic characteristic, rituals and traditions, showed to be a useful theoretical
framework for discussing the Apple communities' myths, use of religious imagery and culture of rumor-
exchanging seems to be a defining ritual or tradition today. Interestingly this seems to be social practices
for which Apple cannot directly offer a context, because rumors or myths, by their nature, lose their
authenticity if encouraged by marketers. This relates to the importance of postmodern consumers feeling
sovereign and mastering the marketplace by individuating market offerings and avoiding too avid market
influence (Holt, 2002). Apple has masterfully achieved to give their consumers an experience of sovereignty
and authenticity through their corporate secretiveness. Not to mention the tantalizing, teasing and stealthy
way of marketing new products (forgetting a prototype at a local bar) and announcing release dates for its
products8
("It's almost here"), which truly lives up Stephen Brown-ish ideals (Brown, 2001).
After arguing that authenticity is craved for in the consumption experiences of consumers, the essay
discusses how brand community practices such as those engaged in within Apple communities can be
understood as a postmodern way of bringing authenticity, and with it also the religious or sacred, back into
an otherwise secularly dominant lifestyle. The socializing practices of the Apple community - such as the
potentially more important symbiosis between the old Mac-cult-members and new young and more
mainstream iUsers9
- provide a humanistic grounding in the interaction with technologically complex Apple
products, which in the end enhances the overall individual consumption experience with the brand. The
managerial relevance of this seems to be subsumed within that already discussed above.
The insights of the social practice perspective have already been worked into the previous concluding
comments on this essay. The most important managerial lesson of taking this perspective must be the
acknowledgement of all the types of engagement in a brand community practice; i.e. performances
(bodily/object), understandings (mental/symbolic) and emotional and end purposes (emotional/symbolic).
Thus it is not enough to be emotionally attached to the Apple brand or iPhone. Value derives from the
bodily engagement with the object and sharing and acquiring of the consumption experience with fellow
users. Apple must consider this if pursuing to uphold the social practices of their new and evolving user
collectives. The users may not derive value from a brand community by setting up an online-forum alone,
as this does not necessarily embrace all the aspects of a social practice through which the value is created.
8
http://mashable.com/2012/09/04/apple-iPhone-5-event/
9
To refer to the users of the broad market Apple products such as iPod, iPhone, iMac, iPad etc.

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