Construindo comunidades de marca acadêmicas: diretrizes para fomentar vínculos afetivos por meio das interações infocomunicacionais durante a graduação

Abstract

This study addresses the relationships between the formative journey of identity of graduates from Higher Education Institutions, during the period in which they are still linked to the institution, and the creation of Academic Brand Communities from the informational interactions present in this relationship that contribute to the construction of bonds that persist after graduation. Its objective is to establish a theoretical basis that allows identifying how informational interactions between undergraduate courses and students can be worked on to sustain the formation of affective bonds among students themselves, with the course, and consequently, with the institution, in order to strengthen feelings of loyalty, sympathy, and mutual help, aiming to support the construction of future brand communities involving both undergraduate courses at public universities and these educational institutions. The theoretical approach adopted maintains its focus on the analysis of Maffesoli's concepts of emotional community, tribalism, identification, and sociality, as well as on the importance of information for creating meanings, as treated in Choo's work. The analysis is based on the psychological perspective of John Bowlby's Attachment Theory, relating all this framework to the info-communicational interactions between undergraduate courses and their students. Associated with this theoretical corpus is the approach originating from marketing studies regarding the stimulation of attachment and loyalty relationships in the establishment of brand communities in the academic context. This research, of bibliographic nature and qualitative approach, was developed based on investigations carried out in documents established within the scientific domain, including scientific articles published in journals, books, and critical scientific essays, being conducted without the realization of experiments or empirical verifications. The results confirmed the importance of stimulating bonds from the beginning of the relationship between students and their educational institutions, emphasizing the central role of info-communicational interactions in this process. Based on the research conclusions, a model with 21 adaptable strategies for academic units of public universities is proposed with the objective of promoting the formation of bonds and organic interactions that enable the development of brand communities.