Academic interest in brand community research has burgeoned in the past two decades. Despite its importance, there has been a paucity of effort in reviewing the growing research. Drawing on the Theory‐Context‐Characteristics‐Methods (TCCM) review framework, this research provides a comprehensive understanding of the dominant theories, contexts (i.e., industries and countries), characteristics (i.e., key variables and their relationships), and methods (i.e., research approaches and analysis techniques) employed in brand community research over last two decades (2001–2020). A systematic analysis of 285 articles reveals a focus on consumer‐specific theories and a scant application of multi‐disciplinary theories. Though the literature covers an array of industries to understand brand communities, there is a need for more research in the B2B context and the service industries. Furthermore, we detect a need for more research on the influence of brand/marketer‐related variables on brand communities, underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions for the key relationships in this area. This research presents four different stages of the evolution of brand community research over the years. Finally, we apply the TCCM framework to suggest fertile areas for future research.

This research examines the influence of brand community identification (BCI) on three measures of sponsorship effectiveness-brand advocacy, purchase intention, and sponsor-brand choice. Additionally, we investigate the psychological mechanism and the moderators between BCI and sponsorship outcomes. We collected data from members of two brand communities, across four experiments (2 × 2 betweensubject designs), during soccer league events. Our findings demonstrate that BCI increased brand advocacy and purchase intention. It shows a novel psychological mechanism (brand community engagement) between BCI and brand advocacy; both brand authenticity and sponsor-club congruence serve as boundary conditions.Counter-intuitively, our study revealed that both high-congruent and low-congruent sponsor brands could be effective, depending on consumers' identification with the brand community. Our research makes several meaningful theoretical and practical contributions. Sports clubs and sponsors must cultivate consumers' identification with the club's brand community, which offers two-fold benefits; it leads to greater effectiveness, measured in terms of club brand engagement and sponsor-brand advocacy. Moreover, our research demonstrates that consumers, regardless of their identification with the brand community, will stop supporting a sponsor brand if they perceive it as less authentic.