A brand community is defined as any group of people that possess a common interest in a specific brand and create a social universe with its own myths, values, rituals, vocabulary and hierarchy. Muniz and O’Guinn divide the main characteristics of social communities into three core components: the connection that members feel towards one another, shared traditions and a sense of responsibility. In the past, community growth was restricted by geography, while now a brand community is a specific, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relationships among admirers of a brand. These brand communities will most likely be formed around brands with a strong image and are often open social organizations without membership requirements. The members of the brand community have a feeling of strong connection among the group members. Although members may not know one another, the community members still differentiate themselves from other groups. This means that members feel they are a part of a large virtual community.

Brand community members provide a form of assistance to address problem solving or offer suggestions on issues based on the knowledge gained from long-term use of the brand. Several studies have shown how brand communities help to influence consumer intentions and behaviours. It has been a mission for marketers to create brand communities for some time. This is based on the belief that a close community of friends and family, or even people with similar interests, tends to value the opinions of other members of that group.

The evolution of brand communities has also moved from off-line to virtual communities on the internet, and studies have shown how companies benefit from virtual communities.  Explored the effects of consumer participation in a virtual brand community on consumer behaviour and found this created trust in the brand, which translated into consumer loyalty. Virtual communities influence consumer participation. Examined fashion-related discussions on MySpace.com to identify the four most popular discussion categories (personal style, brands, designers and retailers) to suggest that consumer-driven marketing is growing.

Several studies have examined how consumers use and respond to social media marketing. One of these studies explored voluntary usage behaviour on social networking websites and found that the perceived usefulness and trustworthiness of a social networking website were the main factors that affected user decisions. Another study examined the use of social media in the meeting planner’s activities and its impact. The research found that perceived critical mass directly affects the intention to use social media, and also indirectly affects attitudes and intentions to use social media through the perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of social media. The perceived enjoyment of online social networks has the most effect on attitudes towards the use of social media when choosing tourist destinations.

From the social information processing theory perspective, social networks are a significant information source and people get hints for behaviour and action from it. Social networks have direct effects on the spread of e-WOM, which in turn influence purchasing intentions. e-WOM not only affects purchasing intentions, but also has an impact on brand image. The motivations of brand-consumer interactions in social networks are a source of entertainment, brand engagement, timeliness of information and service responses, product information, and incentives and promotions. The consumers’ engagements in online social network communities have a positive impact on consumers’ brand awareness, WOM activities and purchasing intentions.

Facebook is the most popular online social network community. Facebook fan pages are also becoming an important part of marketing communication strategies that use social media to create brand awareness to increase sales.

Andreassen and Streukens studied e-WOM by analysing the content of online consumer discussions from a product perspective. They identified four core discussion content categories in the online forums: business practice issues (BPI), usage experience issues (UEI), information requests (IR) and comments about product launches and developments (PLD). The effectiveness of WOM in consumer purchasing decisions can be the primary determining factor of all purchasing decisions.