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Understanding relationship benefits from harmonious brand community on social media

Mingli Zhang (School of Economics and Management, Beihang University, Beijing, China)
Nuan Luo (School of Economics and Management, Beihang University, Beijing, China)

Internet Research

ISSN: 1066-2243

Article publication date: 1 August 2016

5140

Abstract

Purpose

Brand communities have been labeled as a social aggregation of brand fans and businesses. Yet, limited research has examined customers’ perceived relationship benefits in brand community on social media. Drawing from social capital theory and relationship benefits research, the purpose of this paper is to discover how online harmonious brand community influence customers’ perceived relationship benefits (i.e. confidence, special treatment, social and honor).

Design/methodology/approach

Hypotheses are tested by applying a structural equation modeling and the data are collected from a survey of smartphone community members (n=543) based on Sina Weibo.

Findings

The results suggest that harmonious brand communities strengthen customers’ perceived relationship benefits on social media, which are the important factors to form community satisfaction and positive word-of-mouth of community. And community engagement amplifies the influence of harmonious brand communities and has a moderating effect on the role of harmonious community relationships in confidence benefits.

Originality/value

The present study extends prior research on relationship benefits from the perspective of brand community based on social media and reveals the role of harmonious community relationships in developing community satisfaction and positive word-of-mouth.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71272018), and the useful suggestions by the editor and reviewers.

Citation

Zhang, M. and Luo, N. (2016), "Understanding relationship benefits from harmonious brand community on social media", Internet Research, Vol. 26 No. 4, pp. 809-826. https://doi.org/10.1108/IntR-05-2015-0149

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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