Why Do the Consumers Refuse to Join Online Brand Community?

The joining of consumers to online brand community provides the brand managers with potential opportunities offered upon extensive interactions and establishing strong emotional relations between the firms and customers. A review of the studies performed so far show that the research on the importance of the joining of consumers to Online Brand Community, as a first step toward having them engaged with the brand, is by far inadequate. Therefore, the aim of the present work is to fill in this research the gap and identify the factors hindering the virtual relationship between the firms and their customers. The required data was collected via a qualitative approach based on thematic analysis, purposive sampling, and interviews with 12 consumers of three internet service providers (Shatel, HiWeb, and Sabanet). The data was then, coded and analyzed, and the network of the extracted themes was developed. The main themes identified in this research included negative consumer’s attitude toward the social networks, the product type, preference of the company’s interests over the customer’s interests, lack of the customer’s awareness of the presence of the company on social networks, less than enough involvement of the consumer with the product, the consumer’s dissatisfaction with the brand, provision of alternative services, inappropriate image of the Online Brand Community, devaluation of the other members’ information, and failure to offer attractive financial incentives.