How entrepreneurs build brand communities in foreign markets : a secondary data analysis of global startups’ online engagement strategies
Kien, Nguyen (2025)
Pro gradu -tutkielma
2025
School of Business and Management, Kauppatieteet
Kaikki oikeudet pidätetään.
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2025060358206
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2025060358206
Tiivistelmä
Establishing brand communities is now a powerful digital marketing tactic for entrepreneurs who want to extend their businesses to foreign markets. The study here investigates the process by which entrepreneurial businesses build, cultivate, and perpetuate online brand communities when venturing into foreign markets. Through a secondary methodology involving document analysis and existing case studies, the study looks at practical cases of successful entrepreneurial endeavors that have used digital marketing to build active communities across international boundaries.
The research uses a multiple-case analysis approach, studying documented cases of entrepreneurial ventures across different industries such as consumer products, technology, fashion, and services that have successfully internationalized by developing web-based brand communities. The research specifically targets the way such ventures pick and leverage digital platforms, adapt their community-building strategies to the culture, and overcome cultural differences and resource constraints.
Evidence from this analysis supports the outstanding contribution brand communities make in enhancing consumer allegiance, creating word-of-mouth publicity, and considerable reductions in international marketing expenses for small businesses. Successful strategies have tended to exploit localized content, the use of local community administrators or brand ambassadors, and cross-culture management online. Existing despite obvious benefits, however, are significant deterrents such as the management of authenticity across multiple cultures, matching the values of the brand with expectations within the culture, and the long-term management of community.
This dissertation offers a distinctive insight into entrepreneurs and augments International Business and Entrepreneurship knowledge by outlining effective, low-cost branded communities’ creation strategies essential for international expansion. It also points out the following as possible avenues for further research: comparative studies of branded communities’ creation strategies across online and offline spaces and examinations of branded communities development.
The research uses a multiple-case analysis approach, studying documented cases of entrepreneurial ventures across different industries such as consumer products, technology, fashion, and services that have successfully internationalized by developing web-based brand communities. The research specifically targets the way such ventures pick and leverage digital platforms, adapt their community-building strategies to the culture, and overcome cultural differences and resource constraints.
Evidence from this analysis supports the outstanding contribution brand communities make in enhancing consumer allegiance, creating word-of-mouth publicity, and considerable reductions in international marketing expenses for small businesses. Successful strategies have tended to exploit localized content, the use of local community administrators or brand ambassadors, and cross-culture management online. Existing despite obvious benefits, however, are significant deterrents such as the management of authenticity across multiple cultures, matching the values of the brand with expectations within the culture, and the long-term management of community.
This dissertation offers a distinctive insight into entrepreneurs and augments International Business and Entrepreneurship knowledge by outlining effective, low-cost branded communities’ creation strategies essential for international expansion. It also points out the following as possible avenues for further research: comparative studies of branded communities’ creation strategies across online and offline spaces and examinations of branded communities development.