Preface Throughout the last years the brand community phenomenon gained increasing importance for companies and consumer alike. It offers companies the chance to increase the brand loyalty of their customers and to open up their innovation processes by integrating selected customers. Yet it also poses major questions to managers. Should we create our own brand community? How can we manage the permanent interaction with our customers once we started the brand community? Brand loyalty is strongly driven by brand community integration. In contrast to most of the literature which focuses on the static brand loyalty effects of firm-established brand community at a given time, Philipp Wiegandt examines in his analysis the dynamic brand loyalty effects over time. By doing so he analyses whether the so far observed brand loyalty effects are merely based on selection or if causality exists between firm-established brand community membership and brand loyalty. In his dissertation, Wiegandt undertakes a study of the value creation potential of brand communities for companies. Wiegandt contributed to the conception and realisation of a fi- established brand community in the automobile industry, whose creation he examined empirically. With a quasi-experimental design the creation of this firm-established brand community was examined concerning the brand loyalty effects it has on its members over time.

Parallel to his employment as project manager in the automobile industry, Dr. Philipp Wiegandt obtained his doctorate under the guidance of Prof. Dietmar Harhoff, Ph.D., at the Institute for Innovation Research, Technology Management and Entrepreneurship, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich.

Literature Review.- Derivation of Hypotheses.- Concept and Methodology of Empirical Analysis.- Summary and Outlook.