Making Marketing Effortless: Creating Online Brand Communities

Dear Colleagues,

In the modern hyperconnected world, the relationship between organizations and consumers is being reshaped by the power of online brand communities. These virtual spaces—spanning social media platforms, discussion forums, and brand-owned digital ecosystems—have become central to how consumers engage with brands, share experiences, and co-create value. As marketing increasingly transitions from persuasion to participation, understanding how to design, nurture, and sustain online brand communities has never been more crucial.

The rapid advancement of mass media and new telecommunications technologies has given rise to modern marketing within consumer culture, first emphasizing shared brand experiences and later positioning the brand itself at the core of certain communities’ collective identities. As communication became more affordable and accessible, individuals gained the ability to form both practical and emotional connections, establishing brand communities as dispersed networks of social relationships grounded in shared affinities and emotional ties within the context of consumption. An online brand community, in particular, represents this phenomenon in a virtual environment, where members’ interactions occur primarily through Internet-mediated platforms (Füller et al., 2007).

This Special Issue of Administrative Sciences, “Making Marketing Effortless: Creating Online Brand Communities”, invites scholars, practitioners, and interdisciplinary researchers to submit studies that explore how digital technologies, community dynamics, and organizational strategies converge to make marketing more organic, authentic, and self-sustaining. We particularly welcome research that investigates how trust, identity, and emotional connection emerge within online communities, as well as how these elements drive loyalty, advocacy, and innovation.

We encourage submissions that employ diverse methodologies—quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-method approaches—and which contribute to the theoretical advancement and managerial understanding of online brand communities. By gathering cutting-edge research and case-based insights, this Special Issue will illuminate how brands can transform marketing from a deliberate effort into a naturally occurring outcome of meaningful digital relationships.

The focus of this Special Issue is to advance our current understanding of online brand communities as strategic assets that make marketing more effortless, adaptive, and human-centred. We aim to explore how technological innovation, consumer culture, and digital communication intersect to create self-sustaining ecosystems of engagement and advocacy.

The scope of this Special Issue spans theoretical and empirical research across the fields of marketing, management, communication, and information systems. We seek contributions that examine consumer-driven and organization-led communities, exploring the mechanisms that foster a sense of belonging, trust, and value co-creation. Topics may include community governance, digital storytelling, algorithmic mediation, and the interplay between authenticity and commercialization in virtual brand spaces. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following areas:

• Strategies for fostering engagement and participation in virtual brand ecosystems;
• The role of AI, influencers, and personalization in shaping community experiences;
• Governance, ethics, and transparency in digital community management;
• Consumer co-creation, storytelling, and user-generated content as effortless marketing tools;
• Measuring community success and its impact on brand performance;
• Primary and extended online brand communities;
• The ways in which brand communities create value;
• Managing social networks and online communities;
• The construction of brand culture through online brand communities;
• Excessive marketing fatigue of online brand communities;
• The positive contributions of customer engagement in online brand communities;
• The creation of virtual consumer communities;
• The development and validation of scales;
• Theories explaining online brand communities;
• The practices of online brand communities;
• Narratives in word-of-mouth marketing in online communities.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to provide an integrated platform for researchers to understand how online communities redefine traditional marketing boundaries and shift control from brands to consumers. This Special Issue will generate practical insights for managers seeking to design more participatory, transparent, and resilient digital ecosystems.

This Special Issue will supplement current scholarship by bridging the gap between marketing strategies and digital sociology, moving beyond transactional models of engagement to relational, community-based frameworks. While prior research has explored online engagement, loyalty, and influencer dynamics separately, this Special Issue will emphasize their convergence within holistic community contexts. It will extend theoretical perspectives such as service-dominant logic, social capital theory, and digital consumer culture by examining how they manifest in real-world online brand communities. Ultimately, we aim to enrich both theory and practice by redefining marketing as a collaborative, effortless process of community-building.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200–500 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editor or to the Assistant Editor, Ms. Zoya Zhang (zoya.zhang@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of this Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

Abstract Submission Deadline: 31 July 2026

Notification of Abstract Acceptance: 31 August 2026

Füller, J., Jawecki, G., & Muhlbacher, H., 2007. Innovation creation by online basketball communities. Journal of Business Research, 60 (1), 60–71.

Dr. Armand Faganel
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Administrative Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• online brand communities
• online consumers
• brand performance
• collaborative community building
• brand management
• collaborative marketing