Learning to be tribal: facilitating the formation of consumer tribes

Purpose Studies of marketplace cultures emphasize the benefits of communal consumption and explain the ways that brand managers can leverage subcultures and brand communities. The ephemeral and often non‐commercial nature of consumer tribes means that they are more difficult to manage. This paper, aims to suggest that a necessary pre‐requisite for understanding how to engage with consumer tribes is to identify how consumers become members of tribes. Design/methodology/approach Data are drawn from a five‐year ethnographic study of the archetypical club culture tribe that utilized a variety of data collection methods including participant observation and in‐depth interviewing. Findings The paper identifies “learning to be tribal” as a communal practice that occurs through three interconnected processes of engagement, imagination and alignment. Originality/value This paper makes three contributions: it clearly distinguishes between the three main forms of communal consumption found in the marketing literature; it identifies how consumer tribes are formed; and it questions received wisdom and shows how tribal theory can guide managers to offer products and services as learning resources that facilitate tribal practices.