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Social mediation of rewards in Thai car-consumer clubs

Laparojkit, Sumana 2012. Social mediation of rewards in Thai car-consumer clubs. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University.
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Abstract

The development of the Internet has created an innovative communication channel which has had a pervasive impact on consumers’ behaviour worldwide. This creates a new social construct in the form of virtual communities based on communal consumption, which are widely known as brand communities. To date a number of studies have researched brand communities by emphasising social theories and been conducted in a Western context. Few studies have addressed behavioural theories and investigated these groups in an Asian context like Thailand, which has a growing number of consumer brand communities. This thesis uses a behavioural perspective and highlights the role of intentional dimension in the analysis of consumer behaviour in these communities. The thesis aims to investigate and explain the rationale for rewards which maintain consumer participation in Thai car-consumer clubs. To do so it adopts the Behavioural Perspective Model (BPM) as a primary interpretive device to develop a qualitative multiple-case study of seven Thai car-consumer clubs. Rule-governed behaviour is also examined in this thesis. The results of the BPM interpretive analysis demonstrate that the members’ behaviours in the Thai car-consumer clubs take place in a relatively closed setting that is maintained by high levels of both functional reinforcement (such as car-knowledge) and symbolic reinforcement (such as friendship). Foremost of all, status is the key symbolic reinforcement which performs as a gateway to other rewards. The value of symbolic reinforcement such as status is derived from collective intentionality that can be found in cooperative behaviour and in the beliefs and attitude of the intentional language of people in a particular context. In essence, the emergence of Thai car-consumers clubs involves the capacity for behaviour to be reinforced through mutual rewards. Therefore, members’ participation in the car-consumer clubs is facilitated by the rewards which are socially mediated by members of the community.

Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
Status: Unpublished
Schools: Business (Including Economics)
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 30 March 2016
Last Modified: 12 Sep 2023 13:05
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/17639

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