The companion community: How car producers promote hybrid car consumption

ABSTRACT The authors distinguish between two kinds of community: consumption and companion communities. It is known that the consumption community encompasses consumers and their interactions in acquiring, using, modifying, and disposing of a specific brand or product category. In contrast, the companion community comprises marketers and their network partners who nurture and enable the consumption community by providing necessary resources such as brands and services, as well as meanings that accompany these brands. Focusing on the particular companion community that promotes and generates meanings for hybrid cars, the authors find that the meaning of sustainability constructed within this community is self-focused: manufacturers contend that they have become "sustainable" because they admit their guilt about acting destructively towards the natural environment and marginally improving the situation. This is a subtle controversy and its implication for consumers is clear. Instead of seeing the hybrid car as the paragon of absolute sustainability and a signal to consume more, consumers should regard it as a monument to industrial wastefulness. ARTICLE Introduction In the marketplace, communities are formed on the basis of consumption practices and brand interests. In particular, brands are said to be a means of consumer bonding. In the same way, we argue that brands unite marketers into what we call companion communities. The companion community stands for marketer-affiliated individuals who enable consumer community development and operation through the provision of physical, financial, cultural, and symbolic resources. Traditionally, researchers have seen marketers as an external factor separate from consumer communities. We argue that both consumption and companion communities are closely intertwined so that they represent two aspects of the same wider social system. Neither community exists without the other. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how meanings are formed within companion communities. To do this, we first compare two contrasting conceptual perspectives: mechanist and constructivist. Then we theoretically explain how communities of consumption and companion communities are related. Next we describe the method of investigation. Results are presented and discussed. In the final section, we discuss conclusions and implications. Interpretive Worldview The concepts of system and community are related. The common definition of a system is that it comprises elements (e.g., individuals) and their relationships. Similarly, community is seen as a group of members and their relationships. This similarity between the two definitions is not coincidental. It is rooted in the tradition that we call mechanical systems thinking. Mechanical Systems Perspective People coming across complex social happenings often try to simplify them in order to grasp their essence. A person who uses the metaphor of a machine to understand community or system is more likely to have mechanical thinking patterns. Machines are made up of individual components that work and mesh together. Similarly, from this perspective, community can be seen as the aggregation of participating individuals and their actions. Researchers are also prone to such simplification. Some discuss a small group of friends as an example of community, and others consider community to represent the aggregation of brand users. Second, it is a challenge to explain why individuals act as a cohesive group when they are part of community, while economic theory emphasises that they should operate as individuals who seek to maximise their own utility and minimise costs. If a particular community is made up of individuals, then problems such as "the tragedy of commons" should arise. The tragedy of commons metaphor highlights how individual actions can undermine the long-term interests of society: individual members of society maximise their own well-being by using more and more of natural resources while together they might completely destroy the replenishing capacity of nature and thus compromise the very source of their well-being. …