It is a common strategy for every brand in the world to develop a strong base of brand loyal customers. Due to immense competition, brand loyalty has become a `Holy Grail' for the brands. All brands are running to build brand loyal customers. Therefore, the pertinent question is how to develop this base of brand loyal customers? According to Porter (1990), in the world of competition, the companies, which want to get success, have to follow any of the three generic strategies. These are cost leadership, differentiation and focus. Some international brands have followed the strategy of differentiation and initiated `brand communities'. These brand communities are not specific to any particular product category. Be it a motorcycle brand as Harley Davidson, or Apple Computers, all are putting considerable emphasis in developing brand community for their brands. Through these brand communities, they will be able to develop a strong bonding of their customers with their brands, which can further deepen the brand loyalty. This paper studies the concept, and its positive and negative facets by emphasizing on its management perspectives for the international brands.

From the time the orientation of businesses shifted from production to marketing, the entire focus of the companies moved from product to customers (Sheth et al., 1988). The companies have realized that the customers are the beginning and the end of any business. A business can only survive with growth, if it find out and satisfy the needs and wants of the customers. Later the idea to satisfy the customers further looked upon and the businesses moved ahead of mere customer satisfaction, to customer's delight. The increase of competition in the marketplace which gave an opportunity to the customers to choose among various alternatives, reinforces the idea of customer's delight for the businesses. The sole reason of this is to create loyal customer base of a company. This loyal customer on one hand will continue buying the company's product. On the other these loyal customers act as an advocate of the product. This advocacy for the product will generate positive word-of-mouth communication (Brooks, 1957; Engle et al., 1969; Haywood, 1989; and Ennew et al., 2000).

Later on with the emergence of globalization in the economy of many countries, the competition has increased massively. In this context, Mr. Rajeev Bakshi, managing director, Cadbury's India, in an interview to Indian Express (August 31, 2000) mentioned that "customer loyalty is fast becoming a disappearing phenomenon, with an increasing demand for brand variety". Although the environment was asking for something more than brand loyalty among the customers, many businesses were striving to achieve the requirement of brand loyalty among customers. Businesses were running to achieve brand loyalty as `Holy Grail' (McAlexander et al., 2002). As stated by Rosenberg and Czepiel (1984) "customer loyalty erodes when there is a wide range of nationwide products and retailers" (p. 46). The objective of customer retention by developing loyal customers, market-oriented companies (Gronroos, 1989) were forced to innovate continuously to offer customers something different from its competitors, in view of gaining high acceptability followed by retention substantiated with loyality.

Brand Management Journal, Conceptual Study, Brand Communities, Brand Loyal Customers, Apple Computers, Global Economy, Customer Loyalty, Market-oriented Companies, Human Civilization, Virtual Community, Marketing Theory, Market Oriented Approach, Customer Empowerment, Indian Customers, Brand Community.