Background: Companies today face issues when it comes to reaching their customers through traditional marketing strategies. In order for companies to attract new customers, new methods are needed. Previous research in the role of tribal marketing has mainly focused on brand tribes, hence we aim to fill an existing gap by investigating consumer tribes in the Swedish outdoor sports market.

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to gain an understanding of which factors play a role when people are joining tribes in the Swedish outdoor sports market, and how companies can market themselves towards these tribes.

Method: Since we are interested in gaining deep insight in how companies can market themselves towards tribes, a qualitative research approach is appropriate. More specifically, semi-structured in-depth interviews has been conducted. A laddering technique was used during the interviews in order to encourage participants to exemplify or elaborate when there is a risk for misunderstanding. The interview questions were developed with help from the literature review.

Conclusion: Based on this thesis we find that evoked feelings, goal fulfilment and belongingness are central antecedents for joining outdoor consumer sports tribes in Sweden. Our results suggest that the membership role taken by different tribe members affect their purchasing behavior; the more time a member spends with a tribe, the more likely he or she is to spend money on goods and services related to tribal activities. We find support that satisfaction gradually transforms into loyalty. Furthermore we find that the suggested tools for building loyalty, in which we base this thesis on, are applicable to the sports tribes in Sweden. Lastly, we suggest four managerial adaptions to the applied framework, namely; tribal insight, tool usage, continuity, and implementation management.