Brand On-line Communities and Companies: Living the "Social Media Revolution". the Use of Web 2.0 Tools for Interaction with Users

How can firms obtain users? involvement in the company?s Web 2.0 spaces and get high levels of participation together with user?s loyalty? Web 2.0 tools are becoming more and more popular and companies are facing a sort of ?social media revolution?. Traditional community and communication practices may not be sufficient for Web 2.0 initiatives and companies may invest a lot without obtaining the desired effects. We will fill this gap by developing a new conceptual model with contributions both from the community and the brand identity literature. This model then will be used to test empirically the success of some on-line communities. A survey will be proposed to users of two different types of communities: spontaneous users communities and communities created directly by companies. All these communities have however in common to be focused on a specific brand or product by an existing company.