Convenience Cult?

This week in Consumed: Wawa: A low-glamour business enjoys surprising fandom. Maybe it’s the service.

The I Love Wawa group on MySpace.com has more than 5,000 members, making it the largest of several Wawa-related groups on the online-community site. Over on Livejournal.com, there’s a group called We Love Wawa, with about 950 members. This would be pretty ho-hum if Wawa were an indie band or video game. Instead, it’s a chain of convenience stores, with 550 locations in five states on the East Coast. Many of the postings to these groups involve praise for Wawa’s house-brand goods — coffee, hoagies, etc. But the most intriguing factor in Wawa loyalty may be something else: the service.

Continue reading at the New York Times Magazine site via this no-registration required link.

Additional links: I Love Wawa Myspace group; We Love Wawa’s LiveJournal; Wawa pool on Flickr.

Further diversion may be found at MKTG Tumblr, and the Consumed Facebook page.