The meaning of semiotics in advertising and brand community – theoretically revisited

Abstract

Abstract Despite the fact that neuromarketing used to respond to all the marketers’ questions, most of the neurologists came to the answer that the maximum of decisions humans had made was not intentional. This idea gives open space for the renaissance of semiotics in advertising consumer behaviour, which is based on the hypothesis that consumption of products (or brands) has essential meaning this can be used as symbols for the culture spread or personal spirituality as also as for consumer behaviour decision-making process. Nevertheless, in order to understand the meaning of an exact brand can be confusing since the information about symbolic consumption can be spread by the customers themselves. According to our idea, the symbolic meaning of a brand could be seen in the framework of specific brand communities reached by social network. The purpose of this paper is to discuss, conceptualize and evaluate a semiotic meaning to consumer consumption habits and the necessity to belong to a certain brand’s community. We propose that research with theoretical model which separates the diverse types of brand communities based on their essential reliable strength. In the model, we have found that the image-based (symbolic) brand communities who belonged to the brand-subcultures the members are more committed to each member then to the symbol.