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Despite an increasing interest in online brand advocacy (OBA) and the importance of online brand conversations, OBA’s conceptualization, dimensionality and measurement are unclear, which has created confusion. This paper aims to answer calls from researchers and practitioners for a better understanding and measurement of OBA. The development and validation of a parsimonious and practical OBA scale is outlined in this paper.

A multi-methods, multi-stage approach was followed to develop a parsimonious OBA scale. From an initial pool of 96 items obtained from qualitative research and from items used in prior general brand advocacy scales, a test-retest reliability study is followed. Academic judges were consulted to verify dimensionality, followed by two separate online surveys to further purify the scale and assess criterion-related validity. Programs including SPSS, AMOS and WarpPLS were used.

This research extends the knowledge of OBA by developing and testing a parsimonious and practical 16-item, four-dimensional OBA scale. Unlike previous attempts to measure OBA, this study suggested OBA as a multidimensional construct with four dimensions (i.e. brand defense, brand information sharing, brand positivity and virtual positive expression). Further, this study showed that OBA is conceptually different from consumer–brand engagement and electronic word-of-mouth.

Future research is encouraged to validate the OBA scale in various contexts and locations. Researchers can use the new OBA scale to examine potential brand-related antecedents and consequences of OBA.

This study provides brand and marketing practitioners with a better understanding of brand advocacy occurring online. The OBA scale offers clear markers or trademarks that will be useful in assessing any brand’s health online and to track and better manage online brand communications and performance.

This research provides the first empirical investigation of Wilk et al.’s (2018) exploratory insights into OBA. The resulting parsimonious scale has furthered OBA as a new area for academic enquiry and presented practitioners with a practical way of measuring OBA.

Over the past few years online fashion communities have proliferated becoming an increasingly powerful forum for user-generated content, and consequently, the fashion industry has shown great interest in such communities. The purpose of this paper is to review and analyse brand advocacy behaviour within luxury brand accessory forums: to analyse the role these communities play in influencing purchase intention; assessing their contribution to fashion brand love.

The study adopted a netnographic approach to the phenomenon of online luxury accessory communities. The research reports observational data including blog texts and audience comments for four popular forums: The Purse Forum, The Fashion Spot, The Bag Forum (TBF) and Shoe Forum (SF). Although the forums are open to all and are designed to be internationally relevant; the observations were conducted from a base in the UK.

Findings indicate that informants display some unifying characteristics clustered around engagement, involvement, self-concept and self-connection, brand love and hedonic values. Informants however, display some discernible differences as they “rally” to two distinctive totems: first, active luxury brand advocates and second, passive brand advocates. Although subtle, these differences suggest significant possibilities for fashion brand owners.

Further research could include the measurement of brand advocacy to distinguish more clearly between high and low levels of advocacy and the resulting consumer behaviour intentions. One sub-group that would be interesting to explore is that of brand evangelists and their relationship with fashion brands: what are the reasons for treating brands as religious artefacts and can this extreme level of advocacy be developed by marketing? The study focused on observing online posts by self-selected brand advocates. A worthwhile comparison could be made with fashion communities where brand marketers are active participants and how this influences the discourse and actions of brand advocates.

The findings indicate that all forum members are incredibly attached to their brands, but will still consider purchasing several brands as their “evoked set”. Additionally, even when demonstrating involvement, they can operate as passive observers in the online community.

Social media, especially online forums, play an important role in contemporary luxury fashion branding. This study addresses the role these forums play in supporting brand love and the contribution they make to luxury brand advocacy. Membership and influence dynamics are reported; which have resonance to both practitioners and researchers.

The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of the online brand advocacy (OBA) and brand loyalty relationship through a social identity theory lens.

An online survey was used to obtain the needed data and the relationships of interest were examined using a partial least squares structural equation modelling approach.

Brand loyalty and consumer-brand identification were found to be predictors of OBA, while OBA impacted on purchase intent. In addition, a strong reciprocal relationship was found between OBA and brand loyalty, which has not been reported in prior studies.

This study highlighted OBA's complexity. It suggested OBA is not only an outcome of a consumer-brand relationship but also that OBA plays a key role in the development of such relationships. A consumer's identification with a brand fosters brand loyalty and purchase intent through the giving of OBA.

The more consumers vocalise their brand relationships through OBA, the more they strengthen their relationship with brands. The inclusion of OBA management in brand and marketing strategies should enable organisations to foster opportunities for online consumer-brand interactions that strengthen consumer-brand relationships.

First, unlike previous studies that have used makeshift scales to measure OBA, the authors used a recently developed OBA scale. Second, the important reciprocal relationship between OBA and brand loyalty, which has significant implications, has not been reported in prior research.

This paper aims to offer insights into the ways two computer-aided qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) applications (QSR NVivo and Leximancer) can be used to analyze big, text-based, online data taken from consumer-to-consumer (C2C) social media communication.

This study used QSR NVivo and Leximancer, to explore 200 discussion threads containing 1,796 posts from forums on an online open community and an online brand community that involved online brand advocacy (OBA). The functionality, in particular, the strengths and weaknesses of both programs are discussed. Examples of the types of analyses each program can undertake and the visual output available are also presented.

This research found that, while both programs had strengths and weaknesses when working with big, text-based, online data, they complemented each other. Each contributed a different visual and evidence-based perspective; providing a more comprehensive and insightful view of the characteristics unique to OBA.

Qualitative market researchers are offered insights into the advantages and disadvantages of using two different software packages for research projects involving big social media data. The “visual-first” analysis, obtained from both programs can help researchers make sense of such data, particularly in exploratory research.

The paper provides practical recommendations for analysts considering which programs to use when exploring big, text-based, online data.

This paper answered a call to action for further research and demonstration of analytical programs of big, online data from social media C2C communication and makes strong suggestions about the need to examine such data in a number of ways.

Drawing on service logic, the authors investigate how value cocreation leads to evangelical brand-related behaviors (brand defense and brand advocacy). The authors analyze the interplay between value cocreation and customer brand engagement on social media in driving these outcomes. The authors also consider the role of brand love in eliciting evangelical brand-related behaviors.

Respondents recruited through Amazon MTurk were surveyed on social media use in tourism-related decisions. The total useable sample size was 397. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the research model.

Value cocreation and customer brand engagement are drivers of evangelical brand-related behaviors, emphasizing the importance of these two in marketing and how they drive behavioral outcomes.

Service logic highlights the significance of value cocreation which, through customer brand engagement and love, leads to brand defense and advocacy. This explains the mediation in our model, where marketers must undertake efforts to support customer brand engagement and brand love.

Value is created by the user for the user through their experiences over time. Brands are owned by customers, and their defense and advocacy of them must be earned. Marketers facilitate customer value creation by providing the resources to cocreate value and love the brand.

Most studies investigate value cocreation from an in-role and/or extra-role perspective as to how it benefits firms. Through service logic, the authors illustrate how it leads to evangelical brand-related behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to find out the antecedents of customer brand advocacy (CBA) on the basis of synthesis of the CBA literature. A summarisation of the results of the empirical CBA studies containing CBA as a measured variable is carried out. The antecedents’ strengths of association with CBA are compared.

The literature is synthesised using the technique of meta-analysis (Hedges and Olkin, 1985). A total of 63 empirical research papers containing 66 data sets, published between 1988 and 2019, are analysed. For each antecedent – CBA relationship, the statistics calculated include point estimate of the reliability adjusted correlation coefficient (ρ), 95% confidence interval of the computed effect size, Cochran’s Q statistic and fail safe-N. The effect of study context as a possible moderator is assessed.

The major antecedents of CBA, identified in the study, are categorised into personal factor (opinion leadership), relational factors (brand trust, customer satisfaction, brand identification, customer-based brand equity, affective commitment and normative commitment) and social factor (normative influence). Significant heterogeneity was found across studies for the paired relationships, pointing towards the presence of theoretical and/or methodological moderators.

The nascent CBA literature reports mixed findings. This creates confusion. This synthesis study contributes to the present body of knowledge of the concept of CBA. It is the only study that uses the technique of meta-analysis to the CBA literature.

This paper aims to examine a chain of relationships running from self-congruity with a brand – that can stem from the actual, ideal or social self – to brand attachment and from there to consumer engagement on social networking sites (SNS), specifically liking, sharing and commenting. It further advances self-extension tendency (SET) as a moderator affecting the self-congruity -> brand attachment link.

Two studies were conducted to test four hypotheses. Study 1 (n = 282) engaged a self-administered survey with students at a large Australian university. Study 2 (n = 342) was conducted amongst the members of an Australian online panel and thus, enhances generalizability.

Activated self-congruity orientations are brand-specific. Both studies reveal that two of the three self-congruity orientations affect brand attachment, which, in turn, influences consumers’ proclivity to like, share and comment on Facebook. Moreover, the self-congruity -> brand attachment relationship is moderated by SET. When SET is high, it strengthens the relationship between a self-congruity orientation and brand attachment.

Accepted methodological approaches were used to improve the veracity of the findings. Nevertheless, further research should consider a wider area of focal brands (e.g. store brands, mundane brands, luxury brands) and other SNS.

SNS are widely acknowledged as a key marketing channel affecting both pre- and post-purchasing behaviours. Discussed here are means to trigger pro-brand advocacy behaviours.

These findings extend existing theory in three ways as follows: they show social self-congruity affects brand attachment in online contexts, brand attachment is a mediating variable affecting pro-brand social networking behaviours and SET moderates the self-congruity -> brand attachment relationship. SNS are widely acknowledged as a key marketing channel affecting both pre- and post-purchase behaviours; hence, these insights have theoretical and practical relevance.

This study aims to explore the antecedents and outcomes of brand community engagement (BCE) in the context of social media-based brand communities (SMBCs). Moreover, the mediating role of brand evangelism between BCE and brand defence and between BCE and brand resilience is examined.

The data was collected using a questionnaire-based survey from 201 active members of various SMBCs. Partial least square based structural equation modelling is used to test the proposed conceptual model.

The results suggest that brand identification and brand prominence are the antecedents of BCE. BCE positively influence brand evangelism and brand defence. Furthermore, the finding suggests that brand evangelism mediates the relationship between BCE and brand defence and also between BCE and brand resilience.

The sample for this study involves respondents active on different SMBCs, which may constrain uniformity in respondents’ experiences.

The insights provided by this study are useful in enhancing BCE with the SMBCs. The study highlights the role of brand evangelism in actively endorsing and defending the brands. The brand manager can promote brand evangelistic behaviour through meaningful engagement with SMBCs.

The study contributes to the literature of brand community engagement by focussing on its antecedents and outcomes in SMBCs. Further, this study adds to the branding literature by connecting two crucial streams of brand research: BCE and brand evangelism. The study also explores the mediating role of brand evangelism. It enhances the understanding of consumer-brand relationships in the context of SMBCs.