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Co-operative managers must invest appropriately to strengthen member relationships, such as by initiating corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions or providing members with more relational benefits. This paper aims to investigate how members’ motives (collectivistic vs individualistic) might influence the effectiveness of these investments in terms of enhancing members’ trust and loyalty intentions.

This research combines an exploratory approach, based on six focus groups, with a confirmatory approach based on a field study and two scenario-based experiments.

Members tend to regard the two motives in contest and infer a “more CSR versus more benefits” arbitration effort by co-operatives, such that they appear to prioritize one motive over the other. Members with individualistic motives principally support co-operatives’ arbitration toward relational benefits, so the positive effects of CSR initiatives on their trust and loyalty intentions are weaker (Study 1). Both CSR and relational benefits can be more or less efficient, depending on members’ motives (Study 2).

Reflecting their contrasting motives, members infer arbitration by co-operative managers, reflected in their “more CSR versus more benefits” belief. This insight and the related implications for trust and loyalty intentions have not been addressed in prior research.

Managers can avoid the negative consequences of “more CSR versus more benefits” inferences by ensuring a good fit between their investments and their members’ prevailing motives. If members have more collectivistic (cf. individualistic) motives, CSR initiatives (cf. relational benefits) enhance their trust and loyalty intentions more effectively.

This research builds on previous work on members’ relationships within co-operatives and on members’ motives. Results find that the effectiveness of co-operatives’ investments to strengthen members’ loyalty intentions depends on members’ prior motives.

This study aims to understand the values around which stakeholders of a place brand within a community can align.

A content analysis of websites provided a description of region brands. In-depth interview data from representatives of two communal region brands provide a foundation for investigating the attitudes and behaviors of 20 place brand managers depending on their value orientation.

Two categories of communal region brands are found, of which one reflects terminal values whereas the other is based on instrumental values. Instrumental values appear more efficient for promoting the place through stakeholders than terminal values.

This exploratory research highlights some particularities of place brand communities and adds instrumental value to the classic terminal value identified within commercial brand communities.

Place brand managers gain insights into the values around which they can align stakeholders of their brand.

Brand community literature focuses mostly on specialty or convenience product-oriented communities. By investigating a place as a different type of “product”, this study demonstrates that place brands draw on communal arguments to function like master brands. Furthermore, terminal values can be replaced by more instrumental values in the context of place branding, because agreement on broad terminal values by individual members of the community is unlikely to be achieved whereas specific instrumental values can serve their individual interests.