TRIBAL MARKETING: THE TRIBALISATION OF SOCIETY AND ITS
Contents
1. Market Oriented Ethnography Interpretation Building and Marketing Strategy Formulation Journal of Marketing Research Vol XXXI pp 484 504 Aubert Gamet V 1997 Twisting Servicescapes Diversion of the Physical Environment in a Re Appropriation Process International Journal of the Service Industry Management Vol 8 N 1 pp 26 41 Aubert Gamet V and Cova B 1999 Servicescapes From Modern Non Places to Postmodern Common Places Journal of Business Research Vol 44 N 1 pp 37 45 Badot O Bucci A and Cova B 1993 Societing Managerial Response to European Aestheticization European Management Journal Special issue EAP 20th Anniversary pp 48 55 Bauman Z 1990 Thinking Sociologically Blackwell Oxford Belk R W and Coon G S 1993 Gift Giving as Agapic Love An Alternative to the Exchange Paradigm Based on Dating Experience Journal of Consumer Research Vol 20 December pp 393 417 Bounds E M 1997 Coming Together Coming Apart Religion Community and Modernity Routledge New York Brito C and Araujo L 1993 A Model of Collective Action in Industrial Networks Proceedings of the 9th IMP Conference Bath Sept Bromberger C Ed 1998 Passions ordinaires du match de football au concours de dict e Bayard Paris Brownlie D Saren M Wensley R and Witthington R 1999 Marketing Desequilibrium On Redress and Restoration in Brownlie D Saren M Wen2. visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent And moreover companies willing to do marketing with the in line roller tribe considered that beyond their products of services they might have a brand or corporate linking value by the way they interacted with the tribe helping in the mobilising of the collective competencies of its members ascribing value to the shared emotion of its members supporting the re construction or re possession of meanings by the tribe assisting the tribe in its interactions with other collective actors in order to influence the public domain Some marketing activity takes place outside the context of rituals and tribal supports Such activity is primarily aimed at the fraction of tribal sympathisers who identify with but stand silently apart from the mainstream tribal membership extensive tribal marketing For instance Ford launched Ka Roller a limited series of 3000 units to capitalise on the trend Its advertising slogans showed that Ford was promoting a product more than a bond With Ford Ka you will thread your way through the city like a skater With my Ka Roller everything 1s in line Brands like Tatoo built on tribal bonds with in line skaters to emphasise the bonding value of its offer In this instance the tribe of in line skaters was the foc
3. Visi QTReHNg COM Marketing anc Information Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent Appendix 1 The Latin School of Societing The vast majority of French Italian and Spanish marketing researchers do not emphasise their differences with North American or North European thinking They position themselves or within the dominant North American stream of marketing management or within the promising stream of Relationship Marketing while displaying their virtual membership in the Nordic School of Services Marketing or and in the Scandinavian School of Industrial Marketing In contrast a group of French Italian and Spanish researchers are gathering around what we call the Latin School of Societing Their common denominator is to be born on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea a small warm closed piece of water compared to the vast Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and to assert their identity Cassano 1996 Their shared thinking can be traced in the following simple manifesto which 1s clearly embedded in the Mediterranean way of life Cova 1997a people like to gather together in tribes even and especially in the age of individualism everyday practices are made of re appropriation diversion and distortion of the dominant system of
4. alternatives life mode communities p 156 or life mode cultures p 158 They position these social alternatives as enclaves p 160 outside the society This is not the Latin way of seeing things Tribes are more than a residual category of social life 6 _ nassociation with Visi gt neting com Marketing and Information Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent They are the central feature and key social fact of our own experience of everyday living even and maybe because they are difficult to catch Therefore they can exist often unnoticed side by side with modern society in a complex and intertwined fashion In a Latin approach Club de Marseille 1994 Maffesoli 1996a society resembles a network of societal micro groups in which individuals share strong emotional links a common subculture a vision of life In our times these micro groups develop their own complexes of meanings and symbols and form more or less stable tribes which are invisible to the categories of sociology Each individual belongs to several tribes in each of which he might play a different role and wear a specific mask this means that the rational tools of sociological analysis cannot classify him And belonging to these tri
5. include the use of sacred or cult objects ritual clothing sacred or ceremonial places magical or ritual words idols icons and sacred images For the tribe of in line skaters it is clear that the notion of ritual provided manufacturers and marketers a number of opportunities to strengthen the tribal bond Take cult objects for example Rollerblade the brand of the founding father of in line skating and professional hockey player Scott Olsson springs to mind In the early 1980s Scott Olsson had the brilliant idea of replacing the blade of his hockey skates with four in line rollers Another firm Roces immediately recognised the value of Olsson s idea and signed a licensing contract with him Roces then handled the research and development of the product while Olsson through Rollerblade handled marketing and sales In 1999 Rollerblade was owned by Benetton and remained a cult object among the members of the in line skating tribe even in the face of stiff opposition from the likes of Salomon Fila and many others K2 Razors Oxygen Tecnica Rossignol Roces Nike Look now at the manufacturers of ritual clothing for in line skaters This encompassed a full range of accessories including shoes key chains hats belts backpacks sunglasses the list is endless Many companies have jumped into the market Pawn Senate USD England They have positioned themselves in such a way as to target sub tribes e g stunt skaters which had
6. subversions attempted by the consumers Firat and Dholakia 1998 p 64 Globally Societing would be another vehicle of hypercapitalism Rifkin 2000 On the contrary 7 Game of bowls 2 nassociation with Visi fing com Marketing and Information Stems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent we think these critics neglect a reverse movement of hypocapitalism that forces business firms to relinquish part of their power in dealing with tribes of enthusiasts This movement pushes companies outside the market sphere and involves them in societal efforts To be intimate with tribal enthusiasts requires the firm to act as a voluntary organisation In fact we are not so sure that there is only one move the invasion of the societal sphere by the market sphere There may well be a reverse move the invasion of the market sphere by the societal sphere More and more tribes of enthusiasts want to play a part in the firm s decisions that concern their object of passion And this phenomenon is likely to take a new and larger shape with the development of the Internet On the Internet virtual tribes structured around a shared passion are growing rapidly Rauch and Thungqvist 2000 These emotional tribes that we see as something more than just
7. meanings not only of mere participation in this system Actors of the Latin School call for a knowledge of the Southern type Maffesoli 1996b p 217 They believe that there is a close connection between individualism rationalism utilitarianism and universalism which reflect Northern thinking and that there is a close relation between community affectivity futility and resistance which are characteristic of Southern thinking Morace 1996 Latin researchers also hold Club de Marseille 1994 that Mediterranean specific cultural traits have fostered the development of human attitudes oriented towards being experiencing and gathering together that is to say a high propensity to self organise in micro groups Parier sur Phomme Betting on the Human the title of Club de Marseille s book is a paradigmatic axis for research programmes we cannot live without human relationships and shared emotions they are at the centre of our everyday life and therefore orient our research on Societing Societing has been defined by Latin researchers Badot et al 1993 p 51 as a socially relevant perspective of the marketing design and R amp D interface In a societing approach the company is not only a simple economic actor adapting to the market but a social actor relating to the societal context Badot et al 1993 p 51 27 nassociation with Visi gt neting com Marketing and Information Systems
8. of enthusiasts or devotees This includes anything that strengthens community links and fosters a sense of tribal belonging and membership The key word here is the linking value of the product service Cova 1997b This refers to the product s or service s contribution to establishing and or reinforcing bonds between individuals Such linking value is rarely intentionally embedded in the use value of the product service concept yet it is a quality that merits our careful attention The greater the contribution of a product or service to the development and strengthening of the tribal bond the greater its linking value will be q10 n association with Visi gt fing com Marketing and Information Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent The Latin approach to marketing 1s also challenging the way customer loyalty can be built In this alternative view one to one marketing and other relationship marketing panaceas can be criticised on two fronts Cova 1997a e they are limited in their attempt to be the closest to known customers without sharing any emotion with them They confuse proximity and intimacy and base everything on customer service In fact increasingly people do not want to be simply the object of an individualised
9. service in terms of customisation of functions They also want a personalised link in terms of emotion e relationship marketing approaches are shortsighted in how they look at what they call the relation Whereas the individualistic approach to relationship marketing aims at creating and developing a relation between the brand or the firm even a member of the firm and a customer the tribal approach to marketing prefers to recreate and support the relation between customers Products services physical supports and employees are dedicated to supporting the tribal link not substituting for it an often unfeasible and counterproductive task As a consequence it is possible to oppose a tribal way of building customer loyalty to an individualistic one e Whereas the individualistic approach focuses on the customer company relationship the tribal approach focuses on the customer customers relationship e Whereas the individualistic approach positions the company as a pole of the relationship the tribal approach positions the company as a support of the relationship company s members products services and servicescapes are there to support the link between customers e Whereas the individualistic approach uses such cognitive means as loyalty cards bulletin boards and so on the tribal approach relies on rituals and cult places e Whereas the individualistic approach develops cognitive loyalty the tribal approach aims at building affect
10. such an approach Thus the company is not only a simple economic actor adapting to the market but a social actor relating to the societal context Badot et al 1993 p 51 Conclusion In this paper the tribe of in line skaters has been used to illustrate the marketer s exciting task of identifying supporting and integrating neo tribes in today s society Opportunity depends on a willingness to discard mechanical marketing thinking and adopt a fuzzy logic which places the link at the heart of the offering strategy This implies both in market research and in offering strategies the tempering of psychosocial view with an ethnosociological approach which is able to take into account the shared experience of consumers in their tribal groupings in order to integrate it into the business model The Internet which provides a powerful tool for people to link and act together in tribes without restrictions of time and space is bringing to light the need to develop a 22 nassociation with Visi gt fing com Marketing anc Information Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent Societing approach to go hand in hand with the increasing trend of re socialisation of the individuals References Arnould E and Wallendorf M 1994
11. that any attempt to capitalise on a tribe will melt into thin air We are not sure that the concept of enclave is fit for tribalisation Tribes can co exist side by side with mainstream society in a complex and intertwined fashion allowing many re combinations The soft marketisation of some of the tribe symbols and recreated meanings with its agreement and its help is not always synonymous with colonisation and consequently rejection by the tribe members Some managers could say that here is nothing new under the sun and that these kinds of tribal support have always existed As a matter of fact they may have existed in a premodern form but have vanished from marketing today For example in the South of France Ricard which produces a very well known alcoholic beverage Pastis has supported the p tanque groupings and competitions for many years It is noteworthy that this support was dedicated to a geographically bounded group of people whereas tribes are more conceptually bounded and that there was no attempt to co opt and integrate customers competencies whereas tribal approaches are willing to open the company to an outside collective actor Finally even the return to premodern practices can be seen as a way of softening the pure business orientation of the company Other authors argue that Societing is just another buzzword to hide the ability of the market to co opt usurp and commodify as a part of mainstream culture the
12. their special practices and rituals and their own special dress codes There were also companies which offered special events or places for tribes of in line skaters As was mentioned above Tatoo the pager or bipper launched by France T l com organised the Tatoo Roller Skating in Paris and sponsored a series of events around the country They have even increased their commitment by opening a website dedicated to in line roller skating Salomon organised a night time skating escapade through the city of Strasbourg with 3000 participants and Kellogg s supported a number of active skating clubs affiliated with the French Federation of Roller Skaters FFRS Then there were the many special words that belong to the vocabulary of the skating tribe In France tribe members used English words like stunt tricks shine and mega It is difficult to give examples of companies which were positioned in this segment apart from tribal magazines such as Crazy Roller Urban Roller Saga or Roller Mag Finally there were the high profile idols and icons the divas of in line skating who were supported by leading firms Internationally they included Aaron Feinberg sponsored by Salomon Matt Salerno under contract with Fila and many many others Such sponsorship could be found at both the local and national level 16 n association with Visi gt neting com Marketing and Information Systems This material is published on http
13. they share the same characteristics who are not connected to each other a segment is not capable of collective action its members are simple consumers Tribal membership arises from a shared experience of reality and is not derived from an ordained consumer identikit based on quantitative analysis or otherwise Tribal analysis may defer to a kind of behavioural segmentation when all tribe members display similar behaviours or attitudes with respect to a given product or service but in general multiple tribal membership virtually precludes consumer segmentation since membership of one tribe is hardly meaningfully discriminating Finally the tribe is more than an all pervasive vogue or society engulfing trend Morace 1996 Vogues and trends tend to ignore the shared emotions and interactions amongst individuals but tribes in contrast set great store by them This is why Latin thinking is uneasy with some concepts such as life mode communities Firat and Dholakia 1998 that are positioned at the crossroads of trends communities and lifestyles Are they aggregated actors without shared emotions or are they concrete actors The key concern of tribal marketing is to know which tribe s to support in marketing terms The tribal marketing approach places less emphasis on the product or service for a specific average consumer or indeed a segment of consumers Instead it supports products and services that hold people together as a group
14. 43 61 Segalen M 1998 Rites et rituels contemporains Nathan Paris Shankar A and Elliott R 1999 Consuming Popular Music Critical Socio Cultural Perspectives and Research Implications WP Bristol Business School Sherry J F 1991 Postmodern Alternatives The Interpretive Turn in Consumer Research in Robertson T and Kassarjian H Eds Handbook of Consumer Behavior pp 548 591 Prentice Hall Englewood Cliffs Sherry J F ed 1995 Contemporary Marketing and Consumer Behavior An Anthropological Sourcebook Sage Thousand Oaks Sherry J F 2000 Distraction Destruction Deliverance The Presence of Mindscape in Marketing s New Millenium Marketing Intelligence amp Planning Vol 18 N 6 7 pp 328 336 Sikka P 1999 Critical Management Reaching Beyond the Academy Opening speech of the Critical Management Studies Ist Conference Manchester July Thompson C J et Holt D B 1996 Communities and Consumption Research on Consumer Strategies for Constructing Communal Relationships in a Postmodern World Advances in Consumer Research Vol 23 pp 204 205 ACR Provo UT Venkatesh A 1995 Ethnoconsumerism A New Paradigm to Study Cultural and Cross Cultural Consumer Behavior in Costa J A and Bamossy G J Eds Marketing in a Multicultural World Ethnicity Nationalism and Cultural Identity pp 26 67 Sage Thousand Oaks 26 n association with
15. Our era can therefore be understood as a period of severe social dissolution and extreme individualism But attempts at social re composition are also visible people who have finally managed to liberate themselves from social constraints are embarking on a reverse movement to recompose their social universe They are increasingly gathering together in multiple and ephemeral groups and such social proximate groupings have more influence on people s behaviour than either modern institutions or other formal cultural authorities Our era then does not crown the triumph of individualism but rather heralds the beginning of its end We can speak of the emergence of a reverse movement a search for maintaining or re creating the social link Maffesoli 1996a In fact it is sometimes claimed that the social dynamics characteristic of our postmodern era are made up of a multitude of experiences representations and emotions that very often are not properly understood Although most of the time such dynamics are explained by individualism we can readily observe the emerging of tribalism Bauman 1990 Maffesoli 1996a Why is it relevant to use the tribal metaphor in order to describe these social dynamics If we accept with Maffesoli 2000 p 13 that postmodernity is synergy between archaism and technological development we should recognise the movement of re rooting of the individuals that comes with their continuous uproo
16. This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent Revised Paper for the European Journal of Marketing Special Issue Societal Marketing in 2002 and Beyond Version January 2001 TRIBAL MARKETING THE TRIBALISATION OF SOCIETY AND ITS IMPACT ON THE CONDUCT OF MARKETING Bernard Cova and V ronique Cova Address correspondence to Bernard Cova ESCP EAP 6 Av de la Porte de Champerret 75017 Paris France email bcova escp eap net phone 00 33 1 44 09 35 59 fax 00 33 1 44 09 30 71 The authors wish to thank Kenneth Cassler for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper 1 Professor ESCP EAP European School of Management Paris Oxford Berlin M adrid 2 Associate Professor U niversity of Toulon Var _ nassociation with Visi arneting comi Marketing and Information Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent TRIBAL MARKETING THE TRIBALISATION OF SOCIETY AND ITS IMPACT ON THE CONDUCT OF MARKETING Abstract This paper presents an alternative Latin vision of our societies Here the urgent societal issue is not to celebrate fre
17. alist websites where skaters met to chat and connect with fellow members of the tribe The invisible side was equally rich in tribal potential Daily skating offered benefits to fitness freaks as well as to stunt skaters It has been estimated that there were over 2 million in line skaters in 1999 France compared with only 10 000 just 15 years before There were as many female as male skaters who skated either for fun as a means of transport or as a sport Hard to estimate because they were less visible was the number of people who were part of the in line skating vogue maybe not skaters but enthusiasts who relate to the more active members of the tribe There were even smaller tribal factions which found expression through internal rivalries for example fitness skaters and stunt skaters belong to antagonizingly different worlds Imaginary A Axis of nvisibility Millions of Sympathizers 15 000 Participants to 28 000 A ssociate Oe ee or ee ee ee Occasions the Roller City tothe FFRS Institutions eee eee eee en gt Paris Sept Asicuk Visibility 2M illions of 3 000 Participants to Pracucioners the Friday Night Fever i Associations Paris Rollers Rollers et Coquillages Everyday Life Roller Squad Institut y of the Place d Italie every week Figure 4 The In Line Skaters Tribe in 1999 France The primary task of tribal marketing is to consider the product or serv
18. and trends and is marginally virtually integrated to the tribe The clover is directly linked with superstition and so with archaic values 13 n association with Visi gt neting com Marketing and Information Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent Tribal marketing can take aim at all the members of the tribe at once or focus on a cross section with a view or not to reaching the whole tribe Imaginary Trends 7 TN 7 S Sympathizers ATTN ib J N Occasions Institutions G atherings Participants 3 jip o A ssociations amp oL Q evotees l Sects ri NI A N S S r N L a Practitioners N N L _ a Everyday Life D ay to D ay Practices Figure 3 Roles of Tribe Members Case study marketing to the urban tribe of in line roller skaters Like all tribes in line skaters have their in groups and out groups The ins share an experience which produces a bond and distinguishes them from others we are tempted to say from normal people who are out To quote a Parisian skater in the street cars blast their horn at you and run you down in the bike lanes it s the riders who yell and holler at you and on the sidewalk it s the pedestrians who scream in
19. anger The in line skaters have been around as a recognisable tribal group since the mid 1990s In 1999 this group was identifiable in a number of ways Figure 4 Visible traces include physical gatherings of urban skaters e two large national gatherings took place in Paris during 1999 in September Roller City brought together 15 000 people for a skate through the city in October Tatoo Roller Skating assembled 10 000 for the same purpose e regular local gatherings called Friday Night Fever took place weekly naturally on Friday evening in Paris at around 10 PM at Place d Italie anywhere from 3000 to 5000 skaters congregated and set off for a night time skate through the city similar gatherings also took place on Friday evenings in Bordeaux Lyon Marseilles Rennes and Strasbourg 14 In E a with This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent Other visible traces included the public meetings of such Parisian associations as Roller amp Coquillages Paris Roller and the Roller Squad Institut Nationally there was the French Federation of Roller Skating established in 1990 with 28 000 card carrying members There were also special gatherings like the Plage du Prado in Marseilles where hundreds of skaters congregated daily and also speci
20. au At the same time it continued to stress the themes of genuineness and quality In its 1998 99 advertising campaign this resulted in an emphasis on the sporting goods connection of its products and the upmarket quality of its label Its advertising campaign included images of skiers being dropped high up on the mountain slopes by helicopter What happened to the rapper The company side of tribal marketing Salomon In 1994 Salomon was a very traditional brand a little bit outdated but still a world leader in winter sports equipment It served people skiing on closed tracks and was completely excluded from new open winter playgrounds where style sports were practised This also means it was excluded from new forms of distribution channels One of these style sports was the snowboard Snowboarding was not considered a winter 17 nassociation with Visi gt neting com Marketing and Information Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent game its roots were to be found in urban passions Snowboarders represented a marginal group a tribe which structured itself against the whole universe of skiing federations clothes brands They wanted to stay apart from traditional skiers They had their own small manufacturers mor
21. bes has become for that individual more important than belonging to a social class or segment The social status that is to say the static position of an individual in one of the social classes is progressively replaced by the societal configuration that is to say the dynamic and flexible positioning of the individual within and between his tribes On this Latin analysis of society we can build a view of marketing as a vector of the tribal link Cova 1997a and 1999 R my 2000 In other words we can hypothesise that consumers value the goods and services which through their linking value permit and support social interaction of the tribal type products or services that support AB and not the fact of being A or B Ephemeral tribes which need to consolidate and affirm their union are in fact on the look out for anything that can facilitate and support the communion a site an emblem the support of a ritual of integration or of recognition Thompson and Holt 1996 Thus to satisfy their desire for communities consumers seek products and services less for their use value than for their linking value Godbout and Caill 1992 Godbout 2000 Consequently we see marketing as the activity of designing and launching of products and services destined to facilitate the co presence and the communal gathering of individuals in the time of the tribes a kind of tribal marketing The credo of this so called tribal marketing is that today consume
22. communities of interest cf Northern cybermarketing approaches are to be considered with care online consumers are much more active participative resistant activist loquacious social and communitarian than they have previously been thought to be Kozinets 1999 p 261 In order to support these e tribes it 1s not enough to open a new website It is important to support the myriad websites that already exist The goal is not to control the information but to use it wisely in order to build solid long lasting relationships Kozinets 1999 p 263 For example the French automotive manufacturer Citro n undertakes tribal marketing on the web in support of a selected number of the 1500 Citroenthusiasts sites This is in addition to its official Citro n website In doing so Citro n facilitates the emotional experience these enthusiasts can have on the Web But even this is not sufficient Tribes of cyberenthusiasts want to take part in decisions and they have the power to do so In fact if you don t want to play with tribes of enthusiasts never mind they will play with you anyway And they will force the company to adopt Societing Societing is an approach which is willing to establish mutually beneficial compromises between market and society rather than an approach that targets the colonisation of one by the other or the enclavisation of one versus the other The notion of tribe gives the business firm the opportunity to develop
23. d observation de la consommation in Cabin P Rochefort R Desjeux D et Nourrisson D Eds Comprendre le Consommateur pp 37 56 Sciences Humaines Paris Dibie P 1998 La passion du regard essai contre les sciences froides M taili Paris Durkheim E 1912 Les formes l mentaires de la vie religieuse Alcan Paris Elliott R 1997 Existential Consumption and Irrational Desire European Journal of Marketing Vol 31 3 4 pp 285 296 Elliott R 1999 Symbolic Meaning and Postmodern Consumer Culture in Brownlie D Saren M Wensley R and Whittington R Eds Rethinking Marketing Towards Critical Marketing Accountings pp 111 125 Sage London Firat A F and Dholakia N 1998 Consuming People From Political Economy to Theaters of Consumption Sage London Firat A F and Shultz II C J 1997 From Segmentation to Fragmentation Markets and Marketing Strategy in the Postmodern Era European Journal of Marketing Vol 31 3 4 pp 183 207 Firat A F and Venkatesh A 1993 Postmodernity The Age of Marketing International Journal of Research in Marketing Vol 10 pp 227 249 Godbout J T 2000 Le don la dette et lidentit homo donator vs homo oeconomicus La D couverte Paris Godbout J T and Caill A 1992 L esprit du don La D couverte Paris 24 nassociation with Visi arneting comi Marketing and Information Systems This material is
24. e the consuming individual should be conceived as a tribe member Ostergaard and Jantzen 2000 p 18 and not only as an animal buyer behaviour a computer consumer behaviour or a tourist consumer research The consuming individual as a tribe member exists beyond the emotional and narcissistic project described in the consumer research category The tribe members still have some of the tourist s emotional aspects but the individual is no longer viewed as an independent self who is trying to collect ever more experiences Instead of being based on personal emotions the consuming individual is a member of a tribe where the product symbolism creates a universe for the tribe Ostergaard and Jantzen 2000 p 18 The Latin approach makes an epistemological choice to look at consumption at the micro social level This does not mean that other levels are useless It only means that the Latin approach is focusing on something relatively neglected in Northern approaches Tribal marketing versus transactional and relational marketing So the Latin approach of tribal marketing has virtually rejected such concepts as consumer segments market niches and life styles 1 e the very macro social constructs that underpin Northern marketing management Neither do Latin marketers attach too much importance to coherent consumer groupings because their belief is that such groupings are based on imagined implausible consumer pro
25. e of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent Introduction a Latin view The Latin School of Societing that represents the focal point for this paper provides a basis for a retrospection of the role of marketing in 2002 and beyond see appendix 1 The central leitmotif of Societing the link is more important than the thing leads researchers to analyse economic activity not as an independent activity but as one embedded in a societal context which at the same time encompasses it and renders it possible Cova 1999 p 80 Consequently this Latin view makes salient a number of societal issues overlooked or neglected in Northern approaches of marketing Cooper and McLoughlin 1998 The Northern school of thought sees consumption as self defining whereas the Latin School espouses the view that products and services are consumed as much for their linking value as their use value In this paper we will develop one of the aspects of the Latin approach namely tribalism and tribal marketing The aim is not to replace a Northern marketing by a Latin marketing but to engage with more than one perspective to have a repertoire of more than one way of interpreting reality to stir marketing imagination from its apparent lethargy Brownlie et al 1999 The aim is also to mobilise marketing researchers and practitioners around what we think is right Sher
26. e reciprocity in exchange for what it gives the tribe The tribe and the business firm are more in a system of perpetual mutual indebtedness than in a system of reciprocity The partner in the exchange is not viewed as a commodity it comes to be seen as part of the extended self The return on investment will come later or perhaps never The company s first move is non market and has a purely societal anchoring whereas the second move will allow the company to return to the market with the support of the tribe a kind of partnership to influence the public domain It has a clear market anchorage The core of the Societing effort is to Support a tribe of enthusiasts whereas the core of the marketing effort is to serve a market Figure 5 20 n association with Visi gt arneting comi Marketing and Information Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eting Journal T his online publication has been undetak en with the authors consent e Consumer e Client e User e Buyer From segments of Totribes of consumers enthusiasts With feedback effect Figure 5 A Different Anchorage of the Effort Some researchers could put limits on these efforts arguing that consumers would not like the experiential enclaves contaminated by intrusions from other enclaves Firat and Dholakia 1998 p 158 and
27. e than 150 craftsmen their own distribution channels Pro Shops their cult brand Burton and they hated Salomon which was considered a daddy s brand In 1994 Salomon decided to focus on the snowboard phenomenon The watchword was be humble we are starting from scratch we will be low profile we will go there to listen The aim was to build and develop proximity between Salomon and the snowboarders This was mainly done through participant observation by Salomon people In 1995 Salomon decided to set up a marketing unit made up of snowboarders It designed a specific logo for its snowboard activities and supported a team of good snowboarders fitted out with non Salomon boards Salomon boards did not yet exist Some of the tribe members were invited to join the design of Salomon projects In 1996 Salomon was ready to launch its snowboard production No advertising just physical presence at Summer camps and the launching of an advanced batch of 200 boards for the pro shops not the traditional winter sports channels At the Grenoble exhibition Salomon boards were on pro shop stands not on Salomon s clearly showing clearly a different type of approach Salomon respected the special nature of the tribe The following year Salomon launched its marketing approach of the snowboard tribe e huge presence on playgrounds with boards to be tested by snowboarders without any incentive to buy we are just there e prese
28. e time and space traces exhaust the full potential of tribes Tribal belonging exists on a daily basis at home as well as occasionally and informally with others anywhere Some also advocate that a tribe can be just a feeling a fancy a fantasy Tribal members are never alone because they belong in fact or virtually to a vast and informal community Maffesoli 2000 The recognition of tribes requires a different and special effort Maffesoli 1996b The marketer is well advised to cast aside the more traditional mono disciplinary systemic approaches and to favour practices based on detecting signs foraging for hints and exploring the unusual by undertaking e desk research on everything that can be said or written about the tribe in newspapers and books on chat lines diffusion lists Net forums all that done in a similar approach to the one developed by Kozinets 1997 for his X Philes netnography in the US 12 nassociation with Visi gt neting com Marketing and Information Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent e semi structured interviews and non structured interviews with members on an individual or group basis focus groups e participant and non participant observations on specific places where the tribe or
29. ective actor that represents a counterpower to institutional power 4 _ nassociation with Visi gt fing com Marketing anc Information Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent e they do not rally people around something rational and modern a project a professional occupation the notion of progress but around non rational and archaic elements locality kinship emotion passion e they are close to clans and other ethnic flavoured groupings in the sense that they participate in the re enchantment of the world Maffesoli 1996a These tribes do not limit themselves to teenage groupings as shown by the number of adult tribes where people gather around shared ordinary passions Bromberger 1998 In fact the common denominator of postmodern tribes is the community of emotion or passion So why not to call them communities Bounds 1997 looks at the variety of uses of the concept of community in the US For her community serves a metaphor for those bonds among individuals that the market is eroding and is a reaction to globalisation They are reactions to a sense of uprootedness which is countered by seeking roots connections through forms of associations which preserve particular memories of the past a measure of
30. edom from social constraints but to re establish communal embeddedness The citizen of 2000 is less interested in the objects of consumption than in the social links and identities that come with them This Latin view holds that people like to gather together in tribes and that such social proximate communities are more affective and influential on people s behaviour than either marketing institutions or other formal cultural authorities There is also an element of resistance and re appropriation in the acts of being gathering and experiencing together This view of the shared experience of tribes sets it apart from both Northern notions of segmented markets and one to one relationship In this Latin view the effective marketing of 2002 and beyond is not to accept and exploit consumers in their contemporary individualisation as Northern approaches might Rather the future of marketing is in offering and supporting a renewed sense of community Marketing becomes tribal marketing In a marketing profession challenged by the Internet phenomenon tribal marketing is by no means just another passing fad but a Trojan horse to induce companies to take on board the re emergence of the quest for community Key words Community Enthusiast Postmodern Societing Tribe 2 _ nassociation with Visi fH g COM Marketing and Information Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official releas
31. files The unit of reference used in tribal marketing is more a micro social cohort of individuals who share similar experiences and emotions and who bond together in loosely interconnected communities e g tribes Examples include Lomo fans exhibit 1 Magic The Gathering players the card game 2C V enthusiasts the old Citro n small car In consumer terms the notion of tribes is not particularly revolutionary It can be said that they have always existed under various names e g even the Mods Teddy Boys or Skinheads of the 60s and 70s can be called tribes but the difference is that nowadays individuals can belong to more than one neo tribe whereas with earlier youth subcultures it would have been impossible Shankar and Elliott 1999 Indeed former groupings were more stable and more constraining than today s The major difference lies in the dual identity of postmodern tribal groupings they are simultaneously primary and secondary group structures As in the primary groups members are bonded by shared and concrete experiences of everyday life But these tribes do not withdraw into themselves because similarly to secondary groups the very condition of their existence is to interact with other collective actors to influence the public domain through the valorisation of the shared emotion of its members Q nassociation with Visi gt fing com Marketing and Information Systems This material is published on htt
32. ial Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent as industrial districts or inter firms networks in business to business markets Brito and Araujo 1993 Thus the Latin approach to marketing is more distinguishable from other forms of marketing by its more holistic and less individualistic way of looking at consumption rather than by its territory In this way it is not without link with ethnoconsumerism Meamber and Venkatesh 2000 Venkatesh 1995 which studies consumption from the point of view of the social group or cultural group that is the subject of the study The meanings of tribal symbols do not exist in isolation but are constructed within the tribal culture negotiated and interpreted by individuals in that specific subculture The meaning ascribed to products and services is related to collective experiences that constitute opportunities to affirm evoke assign or revise these meanings Consequently the objective is to pin down elements of an intangible nature which are imperceptible taken one by one but which can be discerned in collective experiences taking place in a subcultural context The Latin view looks at consumption from a micro social perspective Figure 1 AGGREGATED ACTORS Cultures Generations MA C RO SO C IAL Genders Social Classes Life Styles CONCRETE ACTORS MICRO SOCIAL Interactions Practices Tribes Subcultures o SINGLE ACTOR Indi
33. ice from the angle of its linking value rather than its use value Cova 1999 It is more important for the firm to know how its product or service can support the tribe in its very being than how to deliver the offer to the consumer Here the notion of ritual is critically important to describe the way companies marketed to the in line roller tribe intensive tribal marketing Durkheim 1912 discovered that rituals endow a social entity with permanence Just as every lasting social relationship requires some kind of ritual to establish and sustain itself so too a tribe relies on rituals to pronounce its existence and 15 n association with Visi gt fing com Marketing and Information Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent sustain its membership Large social events and small local gatherings display rituals which can be leveraged by tribal marketing activities Such meetings are opportunities to reaffirm and strengthen the underlying values of the group at the same time that they bring together and bond the individual member with the tribe Rituals are a tribe s expression of shared beliefs and social belonging Segalen 1998 To perform their function at social gatherings rituals need to be supported in various ways Examples
34. ie sociale in Moscovici S dir Psychologie sociale 7th edition pp 5 22 PUF Paris Ostergaard P and Jantzen C 2000 Shifting Perspectives in Consumer Research From Buyer Behaviour to Consumption Studies in Beckmann S and Elliott R H Eds Interpretive Consumer Research Paradigms Methodologies amp Applications pp 9 23 CBS Press Copenhagen Prahalad C K and Ramaswamy V 2000 Co opting Customer Competence Harvard Business Review January February pp 79 87 Rauch D and Thunqvist G 2000 Virtual Tribes Postmodern Consumers in Cyberspace Unpublished Master Thesis The Market Academy Stockholm University R my E 2000 Le lien social dans les changes marchands de service concept de services de lien et habillage social Unpublished Ph D thesis University of Rouen 25 n association with Visi fH g COM Marketing and Information Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent Rifkin J 2000 The Age of Access The New Culture of Hypercapitalism where All Life is a Paid for Experience Putnam s Sons New York Schouten J W and McAlexander J H 1995 Subcultures of Consumption An Ethnography of the New Bikers Journal of Consumer Research Vol 22 June pp
35. ive loyalty Identifying the Tribe seeing the ordinary with fresh eyes Compared with consumer segments tribes are not easy to identify using modern marketing variables Perhaps a metaphor from quantum physics can be helpful in illustrating this difficulty Tribes are like elementary particles hard to measure because they exist but do not exist Tribes are fuzzy more societal sparkle than socio economic certainty They are shifting gatherings of emotionally bonded people open systems to which a person belongs and yet doesn t quite belong It takes a disruption in marketing know how to understand tribes Modern rational analysis likes to define the scope of a thing to describe its specific characteristics But tribes will not brook this approach their logic is too frail Take the tribe of Citro n 2 CV gt enthusiasts How many 2 CV enthusiasts are there According to the Citro n Car Club the official international club there are around 120 000 members But what is the significance of the response when you know that there are more than 500 000 2 CVs still in circulation It is the difference between the number of individuals that form the hard core of the community actively contributing to 5 The 2CV is the cheap car launched by Citro n at the beginning of the fifties This ugly car was in production until the end of the eighties It is now a cult object 11 nassociation with Visi gt fing com Marketing and Inf
36. k eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent In 1999 Salomon achieved 15 of its turnover in snowboard and in line skate activities Salomon became number 3 in the world for in line products This has changed the positioning of the brand in the mind of the consumers Salomon organises now its marketing approach around the ideas of practices tribes and passions It has a new slogan Freedom Action Sports a new graphic identity the logo of the snowboard activities becomes the logo of the brand and a new type of communication more non verbal than verbal Now Salomon focuses on increasing tribal marketing approaches with such tribes as snowbladers One way to measure the quality of Salomon s approach is to compare it those approaches developed by its direct competitors on the same market In 1997 there were four major companies seeking to penetrate the in line roller market Salomon Nike Fila and Rossignol Only Salomon succeeded Fila and Rossignol faced major sales disillusions in trying to enter the tribal market as if it were a classical market 1 e starting with a product offer Nike also threw in the towel after a while In contrast people from Salomon humbly approached the tribe they did not seek to get a market foothold but to join a tribe and to support its rituals If we pursue the parallel with business to business markets Hakansson and Snehota 1995 we can say that they gained a ne
37. l this contributes to a loss of control on the part of the company in its relation to the market and the consumers Marketers in Salomon aim more at supporting the tribe than at controlling the tribe They treat members of the tribes as partners in market and non market activities In doing so Salomon breaks down the wall between the sphere of the market and the sphere of society In its search for authentic interaction with the tribe the company is progressively obliged to adopt some of the rules and norms of the tribe This has direct consequences on the way people are managed inside the company some of its operating modes in terms of human relations may be altered R my 2000 It is 1Q9 n association with Visi gt fing com Marketing and Information Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent not just a question of serving a community it is a question of being a member of it And this community is not necessarily a brand community Kotler 1999 p 160 but a community supported by a brand which is slightly different The very idea of building a brand community is in fact a Promethean dream of marketers which rarely becomes reality It is much more interesting and socially responsive to support social tribes than to dominate market
38. na s Kunsthalle a contemporary art space Lomography has an anarchic approach to the world of pictures says Matt It s about fast shots impossible perspectives gloomy and spectacular colours anonymity The whole Lomo thing doesn t care if it is art or not So postmodern tribes present some clear differences with archaic tribes such as Indian tribes in the US e They are ephemeral and non totalizing groupings Archaic tribes were permanent and totalizing e A person can belong to several postmodern tribes In an archaic tribe a person could only belong to one tribe e The boundaries of a postmodern tribe are conceptual They were physical in the archaic tribes e The members of a postmodern tribe are related by shared feelings and re appropriated signs Members of archaic tribes were related by kinship and dialect Indeed for postmodern people the fact of belonging to a tribe does not exclude the possibility to live a normal life instead of constantly remaining within their singularly preferred countercultural domain they participate in mainstream life behave and dress differently and work in mainstream jobs they participate as students staff or faculty in educational institutions They also occasionally cross over and participate in other countercultural scapes Firat and Dholakia 1998 p 144 Here it is interesting to note that Firat and Dholakia 1998 prefer to use other terms to describe these social
39. nce at cult places e advertising in tribal media with a great variety of visuals e support for contests and events In 1999 Salomon rose to N 3 in the snowboarding French market Along with this first foray into the tribal world with the snowboard Salomon investigated the ways of supporting the in line roller tribe This approach was more systematic Phase 1 Ethnomarketing Salomon moves closer to the in line skaters 1995 1996 Analysis of rituals and practice codes Encounters with the milieu Presence on in line events Participant observation of in line skaters Phase 2 Co Design Salomon launches its in line activities 1997 1998 Design of products in collaboration with skaters Work on distinctive features of the product with skaters Product tests by a team of skaters supported by Salomon Phase 3 Tribal Support Salomon takes root in the in line skate tribe 1999 Salomon is an embedded actor who shares the values of the tribe Salomon supports in line events not by placing an ad streamer but by promoting the practice contests Salomon creates new events and helps in the building of in line structures Salomon supports the shared passion of in line skaters 18 nassociation with Visi arneting comi Marketing and Information Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ar
40. ormation Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent its organisation and life and the total number of individuals who still drive this legendary car How many people identify or sympathise with the 2 CV when for example there is a special gathering in Canada or in France And participating in these 2 CV gatherings does not exclude being a Beetle enthusiast either So what are the characteristics of the 2 CV tribe members Who are these people gathering together and chatting about this ugly old car Are they all old guys Are they young and nostalgic for a lost world The Citro n Car Club gives some indications about their profile people are anywhere between 18 and 76 years old They are students white collar workers or retirees The analysis is meaningless The one significant fact is that 2 CV enthusiasts tend to be found outside big cities Maybe not such a coincidence after all since big cities are rather dangerous for such a car In fact the bond of the 2 CV tribe its underlying logic its shared experience interpretation representations discourse and action goes unnoticed through statistical surveys Everything unquantifiable and qualitative slips through the filter What the 2 CV tribe members have in common is the pleasure of driving a car
41. p visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent Of course tribal groupings are not directly comparable with reference groups or psychographic segments On the one hand they differ from reference groups in that they do not focus on the normative influences of the group or of individual group members on each other Instead tribes concentrate on the bonding or linking element that keeps individuals in the group Tribes differ from psychographic segments by their short life span and their diversity It is fair to say that postmodern neo tribalism translates a need to belong not just to one but to several groups simultaneously and that tribal membership does not involve set personality traits or same values but expresses a shared experience of maybe only some aspects of a person s personal history Where the notion of tribe achieves a break with Northern marketing is in the comparison with the concept of segmentation which until recently was thought to provide reliable consumer profiles to the marketer e A tribe is defined as a network of heterogeneous persons in terms of age sex income etc who are linked by a shared passion or emotion a tribe is capable of collective action its members are not simple consumers they are also advocates e A segment is defined as a group of homogeneous persons
42. part of the tribe gathers Figure 2 illustrates somewhat metaphorically the signs that can be found in the environment Imaginary A Axis of nvisibility THE THE Occasions GATHERINGS PLACES Institutions lt q ee a a aaa ee ee gt Axis of THE Visibility DAY TO DAY PRACTICE Everyday Life Figure 2 The Tribal Clover In this framework the physical evidence of tribes are located on the horizontal or visible axis traces or evidences This includes on the temporal plane the moments when tribal members come together for their rituals occasions and on the spatial plane the physical meeting places and virtual spaces institutions where tribes convene On the vertical or invisible axis hints or shadows we detect the signs coming from day to day activities the personal and shared experiences as well as the trends and vogues and other constituents of fantasy and imagination that sweep briskly through society From this clutch of evidence we can work out the roles adopted by tribal members in their dealings with each other and their surroundings As Figure 3 illustrates tribal members can adopt four roles These are a member of institutions associations religious sects a participant in informal gatherings demonstrations happenings a practitioner or adept who has quasi daily involvement in tribal activities a sympathiser or fellow traveller who moves with the vogues
43. published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent Hakansson H and Snehota I Eds 1995 Developing Relationships in Business Networks Routledge London Kotler P 1999 Kotler on Marketing How to Create Win and Dominate Markets The Free Press New York Kozinets R V 1997 I Want To Believe A Netnography of the X Philes Subculture of Consumption Advances in Consumer Research Vol 24 pp 470 475 ACR Provo UT Kozinets R V 1999 E Tribalized Marketing The Strategic Implications of Virtual Communities of Consumption European Management Journal Vol 17 N 3 pp 252 264 Maffesoli M 1996a The Time of the Tribes Sage London Maffesoli M 1996b Eloge de la raison sensible Grasset Paris Maffesoli M 2000 L instant ternel le retour du tragique dans les soci t s postmodernes Paris Deno l Meamber L and Venkatesh A 2000 Ethnoconsumerist Methodology for Cultural and Cross Cultural Consumer Research in Beckmann S and Elliott R H Eds Interpretive Consumer Research Paradigms Methodologies amp Applications pp 87 108 CBS Press Copenhagen Morace F 1996 Metatendenze Percorsi prodotti e progetti per il terzo millennio Sperling amp Kupfer Milano Moscovici S 1998 Le domaine de la psycholog
44. rs are not only looking for products and services which enable them to be freer but also products services employees and physical surroundings which can link them to others to a tribe Tribal consumption worth a second look The Latin view of marketing proposes to put into play such notions as that of tribes and linking value in order to bring into focus blurred or fuzzy groupings of people in today societies In this way it participates in the interpretive trend in consumer research Sherry 1991 which focuses on the consumer experience to interpret it with as many approaches as there are possible related theories One of the relevant approaches to consumption today is the ethnosociological approach Dibie 1998 which offers a useful counter to the dominant psychosocial approach Moscovici 1998 that of the vast majority of marketers Where psychosociology focuses on the influence of A on B A being a person or a group or on the power of A upon B or on the contamination of B by A or on the imitation of A by B ethnosociology will focus on what makes the glue between A and B or the shared emotion between A and B or the being together AB Ethnosociology will focus on the tribe as an actor capable of collective action such 7 _ nassociation with Visi gt neting com Marketing and Information Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Spec
45. ry 2000 Sikka 1999 re socialising people more than liberating them Thus the urgent societal issue is not to celebrate freedom from social constraints but to re establish communal embeddedness A kind of emancipation from the projects of emancipation Firat and Dholakia 1998 The path we follow to catalyse moral insurgency beyond the schoolyard Sherry 2000 p 333 is to offer tribal marketing as an appealing alternative to the dominant discourse in marketing In this paper we will first discuss the sociological foundations of such an approach then present a case study on the in line roller tribe in order to investigate possible ways for marketers to support and capitalise on the link between members of a tribe Tribalism the strangeness of postmodern social dynamics Our era is often characterised in Northern countries by individualism Firat and Venkatesh 1993 Firat and Shultz I 1997 the logical conclusion of the modern quest for liberation from social bonds The right to liberty unbounded in theory but until now limited to the economic political and intellectual field affects all aspects of daily life Gaining ground is the idea of a social condition in which individuals freed from the constraints of collective ideals in matters of education the family sex are operating a process of personalisation as a way of managing behaviour They do this not through the tyranny of details but with as few constraints and as man
46. s Here the idea of partnership between the company and the tribe is another crucial dimension of the tribal approach If we consider the tribe an actor capable of collective action such as are industrial districts or industrial networks it is possible to incorporate the tribal experience into the company model customers are co developers of tribal experiences and tribal competencies that can be mobilised by the company just as Salomon did when co opting skaters to co design its products The recognition that tribes are a source of competencies forces marketers to lower the boundaries of the company Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2000 the tribe is not outside the company it s part of the company network just as the company is part of the tribe All these connoisseurs regulars adepts and other collectors produce in their shared experiences of re appropriation a collective expertise of the product service or brand that can be beneficial for the company if taken into account by the marketers and if not it may be a source of negative rumours The central leitmotif of Societing the link is more important than the thing is clearly perceptible in these examples of tribal marketing approaches The business firm acts at the societal or micro social level which is the level of concrete actors Desjeux 1998 It operates in a way close to the social exchange as defined by Belk and Coon 1993 it does not look for a balanced or even negativ
47. sley R and Whittington R Eds Rethinking Marketing Towards Critical Marketing Accountings pp 1 22 Sage London Cassano F 1996 Il pensiero meridiano Laterza Milano Cathus O 1998 L dme sueur Le funk et les musiques populaires du XXe si cle Descl e de Brouwer Paris Club de Marseille 1994 Parier l homme Editions de l Aube Paris 23 ln association with Visi fH g COM Marketing and Information Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent Cooper S and McLoughlin D 1998 A Semiotic Analysis of the Simpsons Proceedings of the 27th EMAC Conference Stockholm Cova B 1997a Relationship Marketing A View from the South in Meenaghan T Ed New and Emerging Paradigms AMA Special Conference pp 657 672 University College Dublin June Cova B 1997b Community and Consumption Towards a Definition of the Linking Value of Products or Services European Journal of Marketing Vol 31 3 4 pp 297 316 Cova B 1999 From Marketing to Societing When the Link is More Important than the Thing in Brownlie D Saren M Wensley R and Whittington R Eds Rethinking Marketing Towards Critical Marketing Accountings pp 65 83 Sage London Desjeux D 1998 Les chelles
48. stability in the present and particular expectations for the future Bounds pp 2 3 This is particularly in tune with postmodern social dynamics but the concept of community as used in the English language suffers from an excessive modernist bent since it characterises a body of people with something in common e g the district of residence the occupational interest without implying the existence of non rational and rather archaic bonds This is completely different in Latin countries where the word communaut in French or communita in Italian conveys the existence of blood related bonds Furthermore with the development of Internet it would appear that the concept of community is now conjoined with that of interest The latter has little to do with archaic values which is why we do not use the concept of community to define postmodern social dynamics even if they can be described as temporary or momentary communities Firat and Dholakia 1998 p 155 Postmodern tribes are inherently unstable small scale affectual Maffesoli 1996a and not fixed by any of the established parameters of modern society Instead they can be held together essentially through shared emotion and passion They exist in no other form but the symbolically and ritually manifested commitment of their members They cannot count on the strength of neighbourly bonds or the intensity of reciprocal exchange Tribes are con
49. stantly in flux brought ever again into being by the repetitive symbolic ritual of the members but persisting no longer than the power of attraction of these rituals and of their cult objects In fact the re construction or re possession of meanings through shared experiences and their enactment through rituals is the most potent form of maintaining tribal identity in our postmodern societies Take the Lomo tribe as an example exhibit 1 The whole tribal phenomenon around Lomo is an ephemeral joint construction of the reality a shared feeling about what is going on around the tribe supported by numerous rituals and the collective re construction or re possession of meanings Because the newly appropriated sign given to the Soviet camera is common only to the tribe its apparent secrecy lends added identity to the Lomo tribe Exhibit 1 The Lomo tribe 5 _ nassociation with Visi HEN COM Marketing and Infonmation Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent L O M O stands for Leningradskoye Optiko Mekhanicheskoye Ob edinyeniye The Lomo is a small low tech camera there is no need to focus set a light meter use a flash or for that matter look through a viewfinder Photography is heavyweight serious demanding and difficul
50. t says Stephan Pauly a Lomo tribe member from Berlin Lomography is charming easy nice happening Fun In 1991 Austrian student Matthias Fiegl found an old metal Russian camera in a dusty shop in Prague and brought it back to his Vienna flat During one of the wild open house parties he and his room mate Wolgang Stranzinger used to throw Fiegl began snapping pictures of everyone and everything He held the camera at his hip or above his head The results were blurred distorted abstract and exciting Lomography was born What began as a parlor trick has become a tribal movement across Europe Fiegl and Stranzinger tacked their new images up on a kitchen bulletin board and called it LomoWall They founded the Lomographic Society They started bringing more Lomos from Eastern Europe and once 100 people had the cameras the group mounted its first exhibition in Vienna Now about 35 000 people own the cult object including David Byrne and Brian Eno and the most enthusiastic preachers have been designated Lomo ambassadors running embassies everywhere from Cuba to Japan In 1998 the first Lomo Congress was held in Madrid with 15 000 images on a 108m long LomoWall while a Lomomobil a schoolbus toured Western Germany displaying pictures and renting out Lomos to curiosity seekers Lomo creates a shared feeling about what is going on around you In the end Lomography is a product of communication explains Gerald Matt director of Vien
51. ting caused by progress What they seek through the experience of shared emotion may be considered a return of the pre modern imagination which has been rejected by modern thinking This pre modern imagination values notions contrary to progress such as community locality nostalgia The word tribe refers to this re emergence of quasi archaic values a local sense of identification religiosity syncretism group narcissism and so on It is borrowed from anthropology which used it in order to characterise archaic societies where social order was maintained without the existence of a central power The notion has been used largely in politics to describe any collective behaviour in these archaic societies that resist the construction of modern state institutions Finally the word tribe conveys the same characteristics as the notion of ethnic group but on a smaller scale local linguistic and cultural homogeneity In the same vein it conveys the same characteristics as the notion of clan but on a larger scale kinship lineage and other blood related attributes Postmodern social dynamics can metaphorically be defined as tribes because much like the tribes of the archaic societies e they cannot rely on central power to maintain social order or coerce their constituency into submission to collective rules seldom do they have clearly codified rules to which submission could be demanded e they constitute a coll
52. twork position After that they were allowed to think about bringing their products to the members of the tribe Tribal marketing and after Societing Tribes such as in line skaters provide opportunities for marketers to engage in symbiotic relationships with groups of consumers The best thing about these tribes is that they do not wait to be invited to participate Aubert Gamet 1997 they just get on with it Marketers who understand the structure and ethos of a tribe as Salomon has done can profit from supporting it In addition to providing necessary supports for the functioning of the tribe marketers can also assist in the socialisation of new members facilitate communications within the tribe and support events and other experiences that provide havens for the activities of the tribe Schouten and Mc Alexander 1995 And rather than limit themselves to the status of non participant observers marketers can involve themselves with members of the tribe in shared high emotion and ritual experiences These methodologies are based on high emotional involvement with consumers and resemble an anthropology of consumption Sherry et al 1995 Some define this range of methods as market oriented ethnography or ethnomarketing Arnould and Wallendorf 1994 These methods enable observation of how the meaning embedded in products is transferred from the product to consumers or how it is altered diverted and twisted through everyday experiences Al
53. us of marketing and an important element of brand identity together with an ingredient of global offering Tatoo enabled tribal members to stay in contact whether they belong to the tribe of in line skaters or another tribe Like Magic fanatics who haunt Magic Caf s everywhere the simple fact that there was a fanatical tribe of in line skaters legitimatised the linking value of Tatoo In contrast an effort by the French bank Caisse d Epargne to promote atribal savings account named Tribu has been a dismal failure because there was no specific linking value in the offer Of course the approach has its limits and Tatoo had to be cautious not to position itself as the pager of in line skaters Tatoo s target market was much bigger than the in line skaters tribe as its advertising spots wittily demonstrate Tatoo used imaginary tribes such as the Tribe of Santa Clauses and the Tribe of Snowmen to avoid narrow identification with an existing tribe thus extending its appeal The astonishing success of the brand Helly Hansen also illustrates the point Popular among skippers of racing yachts the Helly Hansen line of clothing has become the rage among rappers Its Bubble garment became a cult item in France and in one year 1997 sales jumped from 100 to 10 000 and now represents an estimated 15 of world wide sales Rather than ignore the surprising success of its brand Helly Hansen softly supported it by sponsoring rap groups like Man
54. viduals Subjects Cognition M otivation The Unconscious N utrition Figure 1 Levels of Observation of Consumption adapted from Desjeux 1998 This micro social level is one of interaction between people whether face to face or in large gatherings It is the forgotten level in consumer research which has been mainly devoted to the individual and macro social levels of analysis consequently both group and non problem solving behaviours have been neglected Sherry 1995 p 12 This is the societal level as named by Maffesoli 1996a that is to say the level of the primary sociality Godbout and Caill 1992 which is made up of everyday interactions and 8 nassociation with This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent daily emotions and which differs from the secondary sociality that deals with more official belongings and participation such as occupational ones At this micro social level to consume is above all to create social links to build a societal frame Desjeux 1998 p 48 This micro social perspective of consumption has been positioned by Ostergaard and Jantzen 2000 as consumption studies one as opposed to buyer behaviour consumer behaviour and consumer research In this perspectiv
55. with a maximum speed of 85 kilometres per hour and so to experience as soon as they sit in it a sudden break with today s high speed world 2 CV enthusiasts are weekend warriors of sorts The shared experience of breaking free from the stressing work week is a more powerful selector than any socio demographic category Tribes convey signs that members identity with Such signs or traces of identity cannot express the totality of belonging but provide helpful hints and put us on the path of understanding We would argue that there are at least two types of tribal traces temporal traces and spatial traces In temporal terms tribes emerge grow reach their zenith languish then dissolve Their underlying logic is timeless and fragmented For example in the funky music scene Cathus 1998 p 92 the tribe exists when it springs to life with the crowd The coteries rock groups and possees each with their own identities dissolve in the crowd for a brief moment of existence All differences vanish for an instant Even the most exclusive coteries join the flow and allow themselves to be Swept away by the flood Tribes also exist and occupy space physically The tribe or at least some of its members can gather and perform its rituals in public spaces assembly halls meeting places places of worship or commemoration These spaces are anchoring places Aubert Gamet and Cova 1999 which provide a momentary home for the tribe None of thes
56. y choices as possible It has been said that we have now entered the era of the ordinary individual that is to say an age in which any individual can and must take personal action so as to produce and show one s own existence one s own difference Elliott 1997 and 1999 The fragmentation of society fostered by the developments of industry and commerce is among the most visible consequences of this individualism Products and services 3 Also called the Southern School of Marketing or the Mediterranean School of Marketing 4 In line roller skates resemble ice skates with the blade replaced by four in line rollers 3 nassociation with Visi HEN COM Marketing and Information Systems This material is published on http visionarymark eting com prior to the official release of this text in the 2002 Special Issue of the M ark eing Journal T his online publication has bem undetak en with the authors consent have progressively freed people from the many alienating tasks left behind by tradition even shopping itself From one s own home and without physical social interaction one can obtain almost everything one desires All the technology increases isolation while permitting one to be in virtual touch with the whole world via fax TV telephone Internet The process of narcissism induced by the development and widespread use of computers in all aspects of human existence seems to characterise our daily life
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