Testing an extended model of consumer behavior in the context of social media-based brand communities

Due to the benefits of brand community initiatives and the potential advantages of social media, many marketing managers made significant investments in building brand communities based on social media. A noticeable issue is how to measure the success of such investments in ways that are understandable and comparable to other marketing initiatives. To address this issue, it is essential to understand how social media-based brand communities influence customers' perceptions and behaviors. The purpose of this article is to develop and estimate an extended model of how different aspects of customers' relationships with such communities influence their perceptions and behaviors. The paper describes a way a customer's identification with a brand influences relationships with brand community elements, brand community markers, and ultimately brand relationship quality and brand loyalty. Then using a large sample of brand community members in social media and structural equation modeling, the authors estimate how social media-based brand communities influence brand relationship quality and brand loyalty. Managerial implications are discussed.     

Role of social media community in strengthening trust and loyalty for a university

As the increasing internationalization of higher education creates competition among the universities, many institutions are making use of social media communities to attract and retain students. We surveyed 206 users of a university Facebook page to investigate how it may be related to their identification with the university community and the university brand. We further investigate how this identification is associated with the trust and loyalty to the institution and is likely to be linked to positive behaviors such as promoting the university to their peers as an active member of the university community. Our results show that the perceived strength of the Facebook community is related to the identification with the university community and the university brand which in turn are related to trust and loyalty. Higher loyalty is linked to citizenship behaviors such as increased contribution to the educational process labeled in-role behaviors and providing positive word of mouth about the university labeled extra-role behaviors. With the challenges of a diverse and global student body which is expected to continue increasing, universities can benefit from use of social media in developing identity, loyalty and trust.     

Can consumers be persuaded on brand microblogs? An empirical study

Building upon the persuasion theory in the social psychology literature, this study investigates how companies can use microblogging services to influence consumers’ participation and brand loyalty. We develop and empirically test our research model using an online survey in China. Our findings show that persuasion factors, including information quality, perceived similarity, and source credibility, increase community commitment. Perceived similarity and source credibility exhibit bias effects on information quality. Community commitment affects participation and brand loyalty, which is also influenced by participation. We expect that this research can contribute to the existing literature and provide marketers with important practical suggestions.     

A model for consumer knowledge contribution behavior: the roles of host firm management practices,technology effectiveness,and social capital

This study examines the effects of host firm management practices, social capital, and technological factors on consumer knowledge contribution behavior. Results from 403 respondents in a large firm-hosted virtual community showed that two host firm practices, promoting interaction and organizing offline activities, have positive effects on knowledge contribution behavior through the mediating role of social capital, while the practice of providing incentives has a negative effect. In addition, the impacts of social interaction ties and shared language on knowledge contribution behavior are stronger when the perceived effectiveness of the reputation system is high. The perceived effectiveness of media richness moderates the relationship between trust and knowledge contribution behavior by strengthening the relationship when the perceived effectiveness of media richness is high. Our study suggests that host firms can play an important role in promoting knowledge contributions in virtual communities; and they need to understand the consequences of different management practices, hence able to actively influence and encourage knowledge contribution in virtual communities.     

Trust and commitment within a virtual brand community: The mediating role of brand relationship quality

This study seeks to clarify the antecedents and consequences of trust and commitment within the brand fan page context on Facebook, examining a sample of 210 respondents using structural equation modeling. The results highlight the positive effect of economic and hedonic benefits on trust and commitment within the brand fan page. Mediation analysis reveals that trust and commitment developed within the brand fan page will be transformed into positive “word of mouth” for the respective brand if fans have a strong relationship quality with the brand. Further, we found that young and female fans with a high level of engagement, having a strong relationship with the brand, spread positive WOM. Our findings broaden ways for developing relational governance in a firm-initiated virtual brand community by providing new levers and guidance for marketers to build strong customer relationships.     

Brand interactions and social media: Enhancing user loyalty through social networking sites

This paper aims to investigate how user loyalty can be achieved and maintained through social networking sites. More specifically, we intend to test the relationships between brands, user loyalty and social media. The research thus provides insights into user-brand relationships through social media and argues how loyal customers can be through social networking websites. Although there are considerable numbers of studies about loyalty; there exists very limited work studying user loyalty through social networking websites. This research presents clearly the reasons for engaging with brands online and examines user behaviors and loyalty. Research provided strong evidence that majority of the social network users follow brand fan pages via social media, even though they have different reasons to do so. The study also measures users’ behavioral and attitudinal loyalty behaviors. Their level of trust to the information they obtained about brands through social media is also established. The hypotheses tested show that brands and customer satisfaction are both positively related to users’ behavioral loyalty.     

Mobile social commerce: The booster for brand loyalty?

In view of the deficiencies in current literature, this study seeks to examine if mobile social commerce continuance usage influences brand loyalty among customers, and assessed the inhibitor role of privacy concern in mobile social commerce usage intention. Privacy concern was measured by using concern for social media information privacy (CFSMIP). Therefore, this study proposes and empirically validated a model that combines CFSMIP, brand loyalty, and Expectation Confirmation Model, in the Asian context. The results suggested that users' CFSMIP does not inhibit them from the continuous usage of mobile social commerce, and influences their perceived usefulness on mobile social commerce positively. Moreover, all the paths in the baseline model of Expectation Confirmation Model have been reconfirmed in this study. Besides, users' continuance usage and satisfaction on mobile social commerce are proven to be boosters for brand loyalty. Relevant managerial implications are then discussed.     

The relationship between perceived e-service quality and brand equity: A simultaneous equations system approach

Using the data collected from the online banking users in Taiwan, we build a hierarchical model of e-banking service quality and investigate the relationships among e-service quality, trust, satisfaction, loyalty, and brand equity. Moreover, the simultaneous equations system approach is also applied to transfer the traditional satisfaction-loyalty path into the simultaneous relationships between trust and loyalty, and between satisfaction and loyalty. As the structural form coefficients demonstrate the direct relations between our research constructs, the reduced form estimates further disclose the total impacts of the quality of e-banking service on trust, satisfaction, loyalty, and brand equity, respectively. The results indicate that the perceived quality formed through interaction with an online banking service positively affects customer trust and satisfaction, which in turn influence loyalty and brand equity. The significant simultaneous relationships between trust and loyalty, and between satisfaction and loyalty, are confirmed by our data, implying that these relationships must be determined simultaneously, rather than sequentially.     

Assessing flow experience in social networking site based brand communities

The sustenance of the Social Networking Site (SNS)-based brand communities relies on user retention and their active participation. Therefore, understanding the intrinsic aspects of user behavior in such communities is important for devising strategies to ensure user retention and active participation. Especially, information about the elements that induce flow experiences—the intrinsically enjoyable and immersive experiences—of users in SNS has become important for organizations that host online communities. In our empirical study, we chose to focus especially on SNS-based brand communities, as they are increasingly interesting from an organization-community interaction perspective, but they lack the instruments needed for measuring user experience. The present study addresses this gap by developing an instrument aimed at measuring the user’s flow experience on SNS-based brand communities. A cross-sectional survey with 577 Facebook brand community users was carried out. The findings show that enjoyment, concentration, and social interaction are the components that constitute a user’s flow experience. In addition to providing a valuable tool for business practitioners, the developed instrument offers several theoretical and practical implications for improving user experience of social media.     

Consumer loyalty toward smartphone brands: The determining roles of deliberate inertia and cognitive lock-in

Research in commitment–trust perspective overlooks the effect of status quo bias on consumer brand loyalty. This study aims to integrate the bias including consumers’ deliberate inertia and cognitive lock-in with consumers’ trust and commitment in the perspective. We empirically analyze a research model and hypothetical relationships using structural equation modeling with survey data from smartphone consumers. The results show that the inertia meaningfully and positively enhances consumers’ brand loyalty, and the lock-in significantly predicts consumers’ deliberate inertia and commitment. The findings significantly advance extant knowledge with the positive effects of deliberate inertia and cognitive lock-in on consumers’ brand loyalty.     

Determinants of successful virtual communities: Contributions from system characteristics and social factors

Although there is growing interest in virtual communities, few studies have examined them from an integrated viewpoint including technical and social perspectives. By expanding on DeLone and McLean’s IS success model, the author constructed a model of the impact of system characteristics (e.g., information and system quality) and social factors (e.g., trust and social usefulness) in implementing successful virtual communities. Data collected from 198 community members provided support for the model. Results showed that both member satisfaction and a sense of belonging were determinants of member loyalty in the community. Additionally, information and system quality were found to affect member satisfaction, while trust influenced the members’ sense of belonging to the community. Finally, the findings provided understanding of the factors that measured virtual community success. Implications of my study are discussed.     

Brand followers’ retweeting behavior on Twitter: How brand relationships influence brand electronic word-of-mouth

Twitter, the popular microblogging site, has received increasing attention as a unique communication tool that facilitates electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). To gain greater insight into this potential, this study investigates how consumers’ relationships with brands influence their engagement in retweeting brand messages on Twitter. Data from a survey of 315 Korean consumers who currently follow brands on Twitter show that those who retweet brand messages outscore those who do not on brand identification, brand trust, community commitment, community membership intention, Twitter usage frequency, and total number of postings.     

Exploring success factors of video game communities in hierarchical linear modeling: The perspectives of members and leaders

Video games are enjoying fast-growing popularity, becoming a major component of young people’s social lives and leisure activities. Many players share information and conduct social interactions in virtual communities (VC). The current study sought to examine the relationships between members and leaders in such video game communities using a number of variables to describe the member (i.e., knowledge sharing, usefulness, enjoyability, off-site interaction, satisfaction, loyalty, and intention to use) and the leader (i.e., leader involvement). Based on a sample of 2227 members and 41 leaders in 30 video game communities, the research demonstrated the use of a two-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to examine the relationships of VC leaders and members, appropriately adjusted for a nested structure. The results indicated that leaders who engage in higher levels of involvement in VC are more likely to have members who agree with and respond to the community. Furthermore, member- and leader-level factors were significantly associated with member satisfaction: knowledge sharing, usefulness, and enjoyability explained within-VC variance while leader involvement explained between-VC variance. Finally, member satisfaction demonstrated positive effects on both member loyalty and intention to use. The study further discussed the implications of these findings, offering direction for future research.     

The Effects of Pranks in Social Media on Brands

Practical jokes belong to the category of disparagement humor and they have been extensively investigated by social scientists for decades. Nevertheless, the available empirical results pertain mostly to human-to-human situations and little is known on the effects of pranks in the computer-mediated environment (CME). As CME encourages different patterns of reactions and behaviors than non-CME, the present study provides an experimental evaluation of consumer responses to brands that use practical jokes in their social media communication. The results reveal that high-disparagement pranks may significantly hurt brand perceptions and decrease brand affect. This effect is better predicted by prior brand attitudes than usage (i.e., the more favorable predisposition to a brand, the higher probability that a high-disparagement prank will produce a lower brand affect). No significant impact of low-disparagement pranks was found on subsequent brand responses. The findings will help scholars and practitioners in understanding this new phenomenon and in maximizing returns from humor online.     

Explaining behavior in brand communities: A sequential model of attachment,tribalism, and self-esteem

Given their societal presence, brand communities and tribes must, in some capacity, influence marketing strategy. With a player base exceeding 50 million and annual sales surpassing $12 billion, the massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) community is considered a burgeoning cultural and economic consumer segment. Yet, quantitative examination of MMORPG community members' consumptive processes is sparse. To help fill this research lacuna, the current study tests a sequential choice model of attachment, tribalism, and self-esteem on MMORPG-related behavioral outcomes. Using a sample 970 MMORPG players, support is offered for the posited model, indicating among others, that brand attachment antecedes MMORPG brand tribalism, which in turn, augments player self-esteem. Implications and future research directions are offered.     

Like-minded communities: bringing the familiarity and similarity together

Community detection in social networks is a well-studied problem. A community in social network is commonly defined as a group of people whose interactions within the group are more than outside the group. It is believed that people’s behavior can be linked to the behavior of their social neighborhood. While shared characteristics of communities have been used to validate the communities found, to the best of authors’ knowledge, it is not demonstrated in the literature that communities found using social interaction data are like-minded, i.e., they behave similarly in terms of their interest in items (e.g., movie, products). In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate, on a social networking movie rating dataset, that people who are interested in an item are socially better connected than the overall graph. Motivated by this fact, we propose a method for finding communities wherein like-mindedness is an explicit objective. We find small tight groups with many shared interests using a frequent item set mining approach and use these as building blocks for the core of these like-minded communities. We show that these communities have higher similarity in their interests compared to communities found using only the interaction information. We also compare our method against a baseline where the weight of edges are defined based on similarity in interests between nodes and show that our approach achieves far higher level of like-mindedness amongst the communities compared to this baseline as well.     

Antecedents and consequences of trust in a social media brand: A cross-cultural study of Twitter

This study extends brand relationship theory to the context of the microblogging platform Twitter. The authors investigate the impact of Twitter trust on users’ intentions to continue using the platform and to “follow” brands that are hosted on Twitter (the trust transfer phenomenon). They also explore the role of perceived self-Twitter personality match in strengthening trust towards the Twitter brand. A cross-cultural American–Ukrainian sample allows to identify potential culture-based differences in brand personality and brand trust concepts. The results show that the positive effect of trust in Twitter on its users’ patronage intentions is robust across two cultures with diverse history and ideology. An important novel finding is the influence of trust in Twitter on patronage intentions towards the businesses hosted on Twitter. However, this relationship reaches statistical significance only in the Ukrainian sample, signaling potential differences in the trust transfer processes in different cultures. The study confirms the role of similarity in personality traits between Twitter users and the Twitter brand in engendering trust in Twitter. The salience of different personality traits in the “personality match – Twitter trust” link for different cultures suggests important implications for global marketers.     

Becoming Friends in Online Brand Communities: Evidence From China

With the aid of information technology, consumers have increasingly engaged in social interaction in online brand communities. How can these strangers make friends online? Drawing on embeddedness theory and media richness theory, we examine the antecedents and intermediate mechanisms of online friendship. We theorize that online brand community interactivity aided by instant messaging technology is the main driving force of online friendship, whereas social presence and a sense of yuan (a Chinese concept describing predetermined relations) mediate online friendship development. Online friendship in turn enhances consumer online brand community commitment. We test our conceptual model with a sample of consumers from Chinese online sporting goods forums. The results support our hypotheses and inform online brand community research and practice.     

Key values driving continued interaction on brand pages in social media: An examination across genders

Brand pages in social media provide companies with a competitive marketing tool to create added value for their firms and customers. Past studies suggest that understanding what customers really value in brand pages is the most vital step in promoting their continued interaction, and that the relative impacts of customer values on continued interaction are contingent on individual demographic factors such as gender. However, little research has examined the relationships between customer values and their intention to engage in continued interaction, and how these relationships are moderated by gender, in the context of brand pages. This study identified eight value factors to measure customer values on brand pages, then examined their impacts on customers' continued interaction intention, and studied gender effects on the latter relationship. Our proposed hypotheses are mostly supported by data collected from users of Sina Microblog brand pages and analyzed by partial least squares.     

The effects of interactive brand placements in online games on children’s cognitive,affective, and conative brand responses

This study investigated how persuasive messages integrated in an online game affects children’s cognitive, affective, and conative responses to the brand, as well as their attitude toward the game itself. An experiment conducted among 2453 girls between the ages of 11 and 17 demonstrated that confrontation with interactive brand placement in the game resulted in more positive attitudes toward the game, higher top of mind awareness of the brand, more positive brand images, and more favorable behavioral intentions. In addition, consistent with persuasion literature and theories on child development, this study showed that there was a three-way interaction effect between exposure to the brand placement, age, and prior brand use for behavioral intentions. The youngest girls who had no prior experience with the brand were more strongly influenced by the brand placement than the oldest girls who had no prior brand experience.