Collective value creation within a Community of Practice: An ethnography with a community of salsa dancers

Abstract

A recurrent theme within the CCT research tradition is studying how consumers create value as part of a community. However, researchers focused mostly on brand communities where consumers associate around an interest for a firm or its products. While the study of brand communities reveals important insights regarding the interaction among consumers, brand communities tend to overemphasize social aspects binding consumers together, and thus formative aspects of shared practices remain under-studied. What remains unknown is whether value can be collectively created by the performance of a shared practice. This paper mobilizes ethnographic qualitative methods to elaborate the socio-technical achievements necessary to constitute value in salsa dancing. We explain how salsa dancers manage a series of tensions regarding: equipping themselves with devices and clothing, framing the territory needed to dance salsa, meeting other skilled dancers, and flowing through music with techniques imprinted in their bodies. Theoretical contributions bridge the social dynamics of brand communities with the actual performance of a practice, which is required to better understand collective value creation.