What contributes to online communities' prosperity? Understanding value co-creation in product-experience-shared communities (PESCs) from the view of resource integration

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors influencing content generation and community initiative in PESCs. Taking advantage of an emerging PESC – Xiaohongshu APP, the study identifies three antecedent resources, including customer-owned knowledge, harmonious passion to shopping and perceived information usefulness, that affect content generating and further community initiative.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on the service-dominant (S-D) logic model and resource integration related work, the authors proposed a conceptual framework empirically tested using data of a survey and the real content-generating behavior from 347 respondents.

Findings

This paper identifies three resource antecedents of content generating behavior with significant influence. Furthermore, there is a moderating effect of perceived information usefulness among these three resources, which echoes the concept of resource integration. Content generating has a significant and positive influence on community initiative.

Originality/value

First, the paper identified customer and platform resources promoting the prosperity of PESCs, enhancing the research on antecedents of community prosperity. Second, the paper empirically quantifies the process and outcome of resource integration conceptual model. Third, it enriches the understanding of C2C interaction by investigating the value creation process on PESCs. Moreover, findings in the study provide insights for community managers to improve the operation of PESCs.

Citation

Wang, Y., Zhang, M. and Ming, Y. (2022), "What contributes to online communities' prosperity? Understanding value co-creation in product-experience-shared communities (PESCs) from the view of resource integration", Information Technology & People, Vol. 35 No. 7, pp. 2241-2262. https://doi.org/10.1108/ITP-12-2020-0869