Type the reportTranscendent custome

Type the reportTranscendent customer experiences can enhance people’s

relationships with other people, with objects, with activities,

with values, and with symbols. Belk (1988) articulated how

various kinds of experience lead to object cathexis, thereby

becoming regarded as integral to a person’s sense of self.

Dodson (1996), found that peak experiences strengthened

individuals’ ties to both a consumption activity (mountain

biking) and an instrumental possession (the mountain bike).

In the case of river rafting (Arnould and Price 1993) tran-
scendent experiences facilitate consumers’ relationships with

nature, with specific places, with service providers (their

guides on the river), and with other consumers, even to the

formation of temporary customer communities. Skydivers

also experience enhanced relationships with other consumers

(jumpers), with service providers (pilots and instructors),

with places (specific drop zones), and with values (e.g.,

mastery and risk) (Celsi et al. 1993). Participants in Jeep

Jamborees transferred good feelings from their experiences

to their own Jeeps, to the Jeep brand and company, and to

other Jeep drivers (McAlexander and Schouten 1998).

Impact on brand community

A brand community includes users of a brand who relate to

each other in ways that include perceived similarity,

tradition, patterns of consumption, and a sense of respon-
sibility for the brand’s welfare (Muñiz and O’Guinn 2001).

Both ethnographic and quantitative empirical research

(McAlexander et al. 2002) demonstrate that:

& The strength of a brand community and an individual

customer’s integration therein lie in a web of relation-
ships that customers perceive themselves to have with a

brand, a company, its products, and its other customers.

& Individual integration in a brand community constitutes

a powerful form of customer loyalty with all its

attendant benefits to the marketer, including customer-
initiated marketing, repeat purchasing and trading up,

receptivity to brand extensions, and higher tolerance for

quality lapses.

& Participation in brandfests (marketer-facilitated con-
sumption activities) strengthens each of the component

customer relationships, increases individual customers’

integration in a brand community, and thereby strength-
ens the overall community.

& The impact of a brandfest is greatest for customers who

have less experience with the brand and less commit-
ment to it, making the brandfest a strategically powerful

tool for building customer loyalty.

We now propose that the hallmark of a successful brandfest

and the key to a strong brand community is the facilitation

of transcendent customer experiences.