Effects of online brand community rituals on customer citizenship behavior: exploring the sequential mediation mechanism
Journal of Product & Brand Management
ISSN: 1061-0421
Article publication date: 21 October 2022
Issue publication date: 1 March 2023
Abstract
Purpose
Few extant studies have focused on digital rituals and investigated the relationship between them and customer citizenship behavior in the context of online brand communities (OBCs). This study aims to examine the sequential mediation mechanism of emotional energy and spiritual brand identification under interaction ritual theory and identifies membership prototypicality as the moderator.
Design/methodology/approach
An online investigation of 515 OBC users was conducted to gather data, and structural equation modeling was applied to test the hypotheses.
Findings
The empirical results revealed that OBC rituals were positively related to customer citizenship behavior. Emotional energy and spiritual brand identification could play mediating roles in the relationship between OBC rituals and customer citizenship behavior. Furthermore, there existed a sequential mediation mechanism with emotional energy as the first mediator and spiritual brand identification as the second. The effect of OBC rituals on emotional energy was more significant for peripheral members than prototypical members.
Practical implications
Managers of OBCs should conduct various ritualistic strategies to stimulate users to perform customer citizenship behaviors. Discrete ritualized activities should be intended for members of different prototypicalities.
Originality/value
This study provides a profound insight on how OBC rituals foster customer citizenship behavior and is among the first to explore such a relationship. It also investigates the sequential mediation mechanism, thus broadening the research on the influencing processes of OBC rituals on customer citizenship behavior.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 72102135), MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (No. 21YJA630020), Special Project in Key Areas of Colleges and Universities in Guangdong Province (Science and Technology Serve Rural Revitalization) (No. 2022ZDZX4005), Major Provincial Scientific Research Project in Guangdong Universities (No. 2020WCXTD022), Public Offering Project of Guangdong Foundation of Promoting Science and Technology (No. [2022]33), Scientific Research Fund of Hunan Provincial Education Department(No. 18C0073).
Citation
Yang, S., Tang, J., Cai, J. and Guo, G. (2023), "Effects of online brand community rituals on customer citizenship behavior: exploring the sequential mediation mechanism", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 32 No. 3, pp. 393-405. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-09-2021-3658
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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