Firm-brand community value co-creation as alignment of practices.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to contribute knowledge regarding the nature of successful and unsuccessful value co-creation processes between firms and brand communities and the strategies used to address the latter. Design/methodology/approach - The paper draws on a netnographic study of the online collaborative platform known as Alfisti.com, which carmaker Alfa Romeo launched to enhance co-creation with its most devoted consumers, the "Alfisti". Findings - The findings identify three groups of collaborative practices: interacting, identity and organizing practices. The paper details how firm and brand community members enact the elements - procedures, understandings and engagements - of collaborative practices and how the alignment of these enactments impacts value co-creation. Research limitations/implications - The paper suggests that co-creation of value succeeds when the enactment of collaborative practices aligns, i.e. when firm and brand community members enact practices in a similar way, and that co-creation fails when the enactment of practices misaligns. Firms and brand communities use three realignment strategies - compliance, interpretation and orientation - to address the misalignment and failure of co-creation. The fact that the research draws on a single qualitative case study is a limitation. Practical implications - Managerial implications include using realignment strategies to manage firm-brand community co-creation. Originality/value - Creating an empirical-based framework regarding successful and failing co-creation and how the latter is addressed in the context of brand community makes the paper original. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]