Brand community membership and the construction of meaning

•We investigate the Ducati brand community.•We examine why people decide to join the community.•We also explored how reasons influence the customers’ decision-making process.•People look for a strong personal involvement with the company and its social relatedness and symbolic meanings.•We disclose the multiple pathways through which customers are being branded by the community and the company.

SummaryWe investigate one way that consumers find meaning in their lives through the joint experience of a brand with friends in a brand community. Using the laddering technique, we disclose the sense-making related to the participation of 174 members of Ducati motorcycle communities. The emergent cognitive map reveals that the members’ sense-making is related to a strong personal involvement with the focal brand and its social relatedness and symbolic meanings. These variables and their interconnections allow customers to define their relationships through the community. We also explore how elicited explanations for joining a community are efficacious in decision-making processes, through their influence on variables included in the theory of planned behavior. The findings provide a clearer explanation of consumer membership in brand communities than extant approaches and how customers define their identities through the centrality of the brand in their lives.