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1 – 10 of 546The development of online brand communities employed by marketers to maintain consumer relationships and brand building is increasing. This study aims to explore how value…
Abstract
Purpose
The development of online brand communities employed by marketers to maintain consumer relationships and brand building is increasing. This study aims to explore how value co-creation practices can cultivate consumers' brand loyalty.
Design/methodology/approach
Using partial least squares modeling, the hypotheses testing involves the utilization of and data collection from 599 Chinese consumers who actively engage in brand communities in China.
Findings
Value co-creation practices in brand communities cultivate consumers' affective commitment and psychological brand ownership, which in turn can further contribute to consumers' brand loyalty.
Originality/value
By offering a more comprehensive insight into how affective commitment and psychological brand ownership act as intermediaries between value co-creation practices and consumers' brand loyalty, this research enhances the existing knowledge on value co-creation and brand management.
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Min Prasad Bhandari, Charan Bhattarai and Gary Mulholland
This study aims to investigate the critical role of online brand community (OBC) engagement and brand evangelism: the role of age, gender and membership number.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the critical role of online brand community (OBC) engagement and brand evangelism: the role of age, gender and membership number.
Design/methodology/approach
To achieve the study’s objective, 303 active Facebook OBC users were surveyed. The AMOS structural equation modelling (SEM) is used to test the hypothesised model.
Findings
The results indicate that OBC engagement improves brand evangelism. Specifically, the results show that age, gender, and OBC membership number moderate the relationship between OBC engagement and brand evangelism. Interestingly, this study found that female, younger and low-OBC follower consumers more significantly contribute to nourishing brand evangelism than male, older and high-OBC follower counterparts.
Originality/value
OBC engagement is validated as a key brand evangelism driver, further substantiating its role as a crucial strategic metric. Moreover, age, gender and OBC membership number as moderating factors in the association between OBC engagement and brand evangelism (word of mouth referral, brand defence and future purchases) have been verified. Although the findings suggest that improved OBC engagement contributes to evangelism, this effect transpires more significantly among female, younger and low-OBC followers than male, older and high-OBC followers.
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Xuejie Yang, Dongxiao Gu, Honglei Li, Changyong Liang, Hemant K. Jain and Peipei Li
This study aims to investigate the process of developing loyalty in the Chinese mobile health community from the information seeking perspective.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the process of developing loyalty in the Chinese mobile health community from the information seeking perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
A covariance-based structural equation model was developed to explore the mobile health community loyalty development process from information seeking perspective and tested with LISREL 9.30 for the 191 mobile health platform user samples.
Findings
The empirical results demonstrate that the information seeking perspective offers an interesting explanation for the mobile health community loyalty development process. All hypotheses in the proposed research model are supported except the relationship between privacy and trust. The two types of mobile health community loyalty—attitudal loyalty and behavioral loyalty are explained with 58 and 37% variance.
Originality/value
This paper has brought out the information seeking perspective in the loyalty formation process in mobile health community and identified several important constructs for this perspective for the loyalty formation process including information quality, communication with doctors and communication with patients.
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Social media marketing has become a powerful strategic tool for many brands, but scholarly research in this domain is still in its infancy. This study aims to examine the effects…
Abstract
Purpose
Social media marketing has become a powerful strategic tool for many brands, but scholarly research in this domain is still in its infancy. This study aims to examine the effects of social media marketing activities on consumer online impulse buying intentions via brand resonance and emotional responses by incorporating the direct and moderating effects of social network proneness toward fashion retail brands.
Design/methodology/approach
By using snowball sampling, this study recruited 441 netizens (who were using fashion retail brands) and obtained their responses through an online survey. Structural equation modeling was applied to 394 responses for analysis.
Findings
The findings discovered that social media marketing activities significantly influenced brand resonance, consumer emotional responses and online impulse buying intentions. Likewise, brand resonance and emotional responses were positively associated with online impulse buying intentions and acted as decisive mediators. Social network proneness’s direct and moderating effects significantly increased consumer online impulse-buying intentions toward fashion retail brands.
Practical implications
This study provides recommendations to retail managers for creating and executing brand positioning, segmenting and targeting strategies to enhance consumers’ intentions for engaging in online impulsive purchases for fashion brands.
Originality/value
This original research contributes to the branding literature and stimulus–organism–response theory by focusing on social media marketing activities, brand resonance, emotional responses, social network proneness and consumer online impulse buying intentions toward fashion retail brands.
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Yabin Yang, Xitong Guo, Tianshi Wu and Doug Vogel
Social media facilitates the communication and the relationship between healthcare professionals and patients. However, limited research has examined the role of social media in a…
Abstract
Purpose
Social media facilitates the communication and the relationship between healthcare professionals and patients. However, limited research has examined the role of social media in a physicians' online return. This study, therefore, investigates physicians' online economic and social capital return in relation to physicians' use of social media and consumer engagement.
Design/methodology/approach
Using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with fixed effects (FE) and panel data collected from Sina Weibo and Sina Health, this study analyzes the impact of physicians' social media use and consumer engagement on physicians' online return and the moderation effect of professional seniority.
Findings
The results reveal that physicians' use of social media and consumer sharing behavior positively affect physicians' online economic return. In contrast, consumer engagement positively impacts physicians' online social capital return. While professional seniority enhances the effect of physicians' social media use on online economic return, professional seniority only enhances the relationship between consumers' sharing behavior to the posts and physicians' online social capital return when professional seniority comes to consumer engagement.
Originality/value
This study reveals the different roles of social media use and consumer engagement in physicians' online return. The results also extend and examine the social media affordances theory in online healthcare communities and social media platforms.
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This study aims to explore the conversion of metaverse marketing (MVM) into strategic agility among SMEs based on dynamic capabilities (DC) and dynamic management capabilities…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the conversion of metaverse marketing (MVM) into strategic agility among SMEs based on dynamic capabilities (DC) and dynamic management capabilities (DMC) theories. This paper discusses how constructs such as immersive marketing technologies (IMT), customer immersion (CI) and managerial capabilities (MC) play critical role in the transformation of MVM into strategic agility (SA).
Design/methodology/approach
A theoretical framework based on DC and DMC theories, and a comprehensive review of the literature on MVM, IMT, CI, MC and SA, was developed in order to theoretically investigate the relationships between MVM and SA. In this theoretical framework, MVM is the independent variable, while the dependent variable is SA. Also, IMT and CI both mediate the association between MVM and SA, while MC moderate the association between MVM and SA in one stream; and CI and SA in another stream.
Findings
This research study develops a theoretical framework that recommends nine set of important research propositions in MVM. An extensive literature review was conducted to examine the theoretical framework on the effect of MVM on SA. The proposed theoretical framework suggests that brand community development and communication, experiential marketing and personalisation in MVM, once accessed through IMT (i.e. VR, AR, MR) and CI (i.e. customer engagement, customer absorption-customer acquisition and assimilation of knowledge, presence) can produce significant SA through customer experience management, value co-creation and process innovation.
Originality/value
This current study develops a theoretical framework that theorise the relationship between MVM and SA rooted in literature on MVM and SA, and also based on DC and DMC perspective. The moderating effect of MC on the relationship between IMT and SA on one hand, and CI and SA on the other, provides support to IMT and CI as mediators in the transformation of MVM into SA. This study also provides insight into SME adoption of MVM and how it generates SA. Lastly, the current study contributes to the body of knowledge on MVM, IMT, CI, MC and SA.
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Rui Guo, Jingxian Wang, Min Zhou, Zixia Cao, Lan Tao, Yang Luo, Wei Zhang and Jiajia Chen
The study aims to examine how different types of green brand ritual (GBR) influence customer engagement behavior and the mediation mechanisms and boundary conditions of the…
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to examine how different types of green brand ritual (GBR) influence customer engagement behavior and the mediation mechanisms and boundary conditions of the positive and negative pathways.
Design/methodology/approach
The study conducts two online experiments to collect data from a total of 940 consumers in China. Hypotheses are tested by independent samples t-test, two-way ANOVA and Hayes' PROCESS model.
Findings
Different kinds of GBR have different effects on customer engagement behavior. Internal GBR is more likely to play a positive role by inciting connectedness to nature. External GBR is more likely to play a negative role by inciting psychological resistance. This dual effect is especially pronounced for warm brands rather than competent brands.
Originality/value
The study pioneers the brand ritual into the field of interactive marketing and enriches its dual effect research. Additionally, the study figures out whether the category of brand ritual can trigger negative effect.
Practical implications
Inappropriate brand rituals are worse than no rituals at all. The results provide guidance for green companies to design effective brand rituals to strengthen the connection with consumers. Green brands should describe brand rituals in vivid detail and consciously lead consumers to immerse themselves in them.
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Yang Cai, Xiujun Li and Wendian Shi
This study employed self-determination theory (SDT) and the “Motivational affordance–Psychological outcomes–Behavioral outcomes” framework to investigate the relationship between…
Abstract
Purpose
This study employed self-determination theory (SDT) and the “Motivational affordance–Psychological outcomes–Behavioral outcomes” framework to investigate the relationship between gamification features and knowledge-sharing behavior in online communities.
Design/methodology/approach
A theoretical model was tested with 281 Chinese users from an online social question and answer (Q&A) community. Partial least square structural equation modeling was applied to analyze the data.
Findings
The empirical results revealed that competence mediated the effects of immersion and achievement-related gamification features on knowledge sharing. Moreover, relatedness mediated the effects of immersion, achievement and social-related gamification features on knowledge sharing.
Research limitations/implications
This study was conducted on a Chinese Q&A platform, and the results may not be generalizable to other cultures or service providers with different goals.
Practical implications
The study's findings indicate that gamification could serve as an effective toolkit for incentivizing and promoting knowledge sharing in online communities. The findings thus provide strategic insights for administrators of online communities seeking to leverage gamification designs to encourage user participation in knowledge-sharing activities.
Originality/value
Research on the role of gamification in promoting knowledge sharing has been limited in scope and has focused on tourism comment communities. Little evidence exists on the effect of gamification within social Q&A communities. Further, the finding of gamification's positive role in motivating knowledge sharing indicates the need for the knowledge-sharing field to focus on contextual factors.
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Siyu Gao and Bilin Shao
The purpose of this study is to investigate how consumer brand engagement (CBE) promotes brand love and eWOM within the influence of brand interactivity and consumer involvement…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate how consumer brand engagement (CBE) promotes brand love and eWOM within the influence of brand interactivity and consumer involvement, especially in the context of the smartphone industry and Chinese social media marketing. This study also examines the important role of brand love and gender in this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
Data from 403 participants who are followers of the smartphone brand’s social media page was collected via an online survey. PLS-SEM was also used for examining the research model.
Findings
The findings of this research reveal that the (perceived) brand interactivity, and consumer involvement, are key factors influence CBE. As expected, brand love and consumers’ eWOM intention are significant outcomes of CBE. In particular, the relationship between CBE and consumers’ eWOM intention is mediated by brand love. However, gender did not moderate the proposed relationships.
Originality/value
By integrating social exchange theory and attribution theory, this study deepens the understanding of CBE and brand love by examining the relationship between brand interactivity, consumer involvement, CBE, brand love and eWOM in the context of smartphone and Chinese social media marketing.
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Kyriakos Riskos, Paraskevi Dekoulou, Leonidas Hatzithomas and Ioanna Papasolomou
Fierce competition among over-the-top (OTT) platforms has rendered branding a precondition for consumer appeal. This study proposes a new structural equation model for OTT brands…
Abstract
Purpose
Fierce competition among over-the-top (OTT) platforms has rendered branding a precondition for consumer appeal. This study proposes a new structural equation model for OTT brands, especially Netflix, where hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment motives function as facilitators of consumer brand engagement.
Design/methodology/approach
An online survey was conducted. Structural Equation Modeling was used to build the model and test for various direct, mediation, and moderation effects.
Findings
The results suggest a multiple mediation model in which the relationship between the two types of entertainment and intention to use Netflix is sequentially mediated by consumer attention and consumer brand engagement. Moreover, this study confirms that female consumers, compared to male consumers, exhibit higher levels of consumer brand engagement when motivated by hedonic entertainment.
Originality/value
This is the first study to present a novel structural model for the content consumption of OTT brands and test the role of the two types of entertainment in the intention to use Netflix.
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