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As fertile soil for product promotion, online interest communities have gradually come into brands' view. However, existing research does not clarify whether brand engagement in consumer interaction is beneficial to the development of online interest communities. This study attempts to investigate the effects of brand engagement on the online interest community operation.

The authors propose a model that delineated the influence of brand engagement on consumers' citizenship behavior in the online interest community from the commitment-trust perspective. Scenario-based experiments were conducted and 536 data were collected by simple random sampling.

Results shows that a stronger perception of brand engagement has a positive influence on the relationship (trust and commitment) between the community and its users, which further influences online community citizenship behavior (feedback, advocacy and tolerance) of both posters and lurkers, especially for the posters. Although relationships are more complex, brand engagement activates the development of online interest communities to some extent.

This original study contributes to the commitment-trust theory by examining the impact of brand engagement on citizenship behavior via community commitment and trust in the online interest community context. In addition, this study compares the moderating effect of posters vs lurkers on the relationship between brand engagement and citizenship behavior in the online interest community.

The purpose of this study is to investigate coproduction behavior in networking alumni communities via the progress from platform belongingness, knowledge sharing and citizenship behavior. Alumni networking communities have emerged as valuable assets for conserving institutional resources, supporting members and contributing new resources for alumni-institutional professional development. However, the previous literature has not yet captured the explicit processes by which these contributions are made.

Data from 711 respondents selected from an alumni collaboration network were subjected to structural equation modeling analysis.

The study explored resource conservation (belongingness) as the primary relational mechanism for alumni to share their instrumental resources (knowledge sharing), supporting resources (citizenship behavior) and competent resources (coproduction behavior). Knowledge sharing and citizenship behavior act as intermediate agents to trigger coproduction behavior. The authors show how subjective norm, group norm and trust is regarded as a tool to reduce bonding intrusiveness (i.e. the intrusive side-effects of a bond) and moderate the indirect effect of belongingness on coproduction and the direct effect of citizenship on coproduction.

By applying attachment theory, conservation of resources theory and digital platform networking perspectives, this study describes major implications for designing inspiring and compatible community platforms.

Guidance is provided for improving sustainable alumni communities through citizenship-sharing and coproduction behavior.

Online alumni communities are regarded as resource conservators, which can result in valuable coproduction, via the sharing of knowledge, expertise and skillsets to create profit for a range of institutions and industries.

Alumni networking platforms encourage alumni cohesiveness, stimulate knowledge exchange and improve professionalism.

Drawing on social identity theory and prosocial behaviour research, this study explores how people's integration of their offline and online social activities through Facebook cultivates their Facebook citizenship behaviour (FCB). It also offers further insight into the underlying mechanism of offline and online social activity integration - FCB relation by investigating people's social identification with their offline and online social groups as possible mediators.

Based on social identity theory (SIT) literature, community citizenship behaviour and offline-online social activity integration through Facebook, we developed a conceptual model, which was empirically tested using data from 308 Facebook users

The results confirm that the participants' offline-online social activity integration via Facebook is positively linked to their FCB. Further, the integration of offline and online social activity through Facebook positively affects how a person identifies with their offline and online social groups, which in turn causes them to display FCB. In addition, offline/online social identification mediates the integration – FCB relation.

In practice, it is interesting to see people's tendency towards altruistic behaviours within groups they like to associate themselves with. Those who share their Facebook network with their offline friends can use such network to seek help and support.

From a theoretical perspective, unlike past research, this study examines how individuals' offline-online social activity integration via Facebook helps them associate with groups. In addition, this study investigates social identification from an offline and online perspective.

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.

An online investigation of 515 OBC users was conducted to gather data, and structural equation modeling was applied to test the hypotheses.

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.

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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the complex relationships between common bond attachment, common identity attachment, self-esteem and virtual community citizenship behavior (VCCB). This study identifies two broad categories of VCCB: citizenship behaviors directed toward benefitting other individuals (VCCBI) and citizenship behaviors directed toward benefitting the virtual community (VCCBC).

The authors apply partial least squares structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses, using a sample of 388 valid responses.

The results indicate that common bond attachment and common identity attachment have a significant effect on self-esteem, which, in turn, has a significant effect on VCCBI and VCCBC. The results also indicate that common bond attachment has a significant effect on VCCBI, and that common identity attachment has a significant effect on VCCBC.

This study contributes to a better understanding of VCCBs through common identity and common-bond theory, social identity theory and the stimulus-organism-response framework.

This study explores the creation of online brand relationships from the personal, social and brand perspectives of social media and its influence on the community citizenship behavior to establish an integrative model. With social identity theory (SIT) and the theory of socially shared cognition (TSSC) as the theoretical basis for model integration, this study identifies the key factors that maintain the relationship between online community members and brands and prompt brand members to establish a close emotional connection with the brand and generate community citizenship behavior for the brand.

This study examines community members who own products from luxury fashion brands (e.g. Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Hermès) and have followed the official Instagram account of the luxury fashion brand for at least 1 year, with a total of 582 valid samples. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to test the model.

All except for one of the hypotheses are supported, and the theoretical model exhibits acceptable goodness-of-fit. The strongest effect is that of brand community identification on affective brand commitment, followed by that of online co-creation on community citizenship behavior and that of brand commitment on community citizenship behavior.

SIT was used as the basis and extended to the TSSC to integrate the theoretical perspectives. This study identifies the online brand relationship between service providers and consumers, explores possible causes and consequences from multiple perspectives and proposes conclusions and practical management implications as references for marketing personnel.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the antecedents and consequences of two distinct types of virtual co-creation behaviours that require different degree of effort from the customer, i.e. customer participation (CPB), and customer citizenship (CCB) behaviour, in a cross-cultural study.

A survey was conducted among members of online panels in the UK and Spain, reaching a sample of 800 online individuals who participate in online co-creation processes with fashion retailers. This design allows us to test the cross-cultural effects. Multi-group structural equations modelling was used to analyse the data.

Virtual co-creation behaviours are driven by perceived ease-of-use of the co-creation platform, electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) quality and fashion involvement; however, the effects are different on CPB, affected by perceived ease-of-use more strongly, and on CCB, driven by e-WOM quality and fashion involvement more strongly. Higher level of co-creation increases satisfaction with co-creation, which mediates the effect on engagement and intention of future co-creation. The cross-cultural design reveals that most relationships hold in both countries, with the exception of the influence of fashion involvement on CPB, while some differences in the size of the effects appear between countries.

This study contributes to increasing our knowledge on online co-creation in several ways. First, the authors investigate, in the online environment, two co-creation behaviours, CPB and CCB, and compare their antecedents. This paper provides a cross-cultural validation of the relationships between CPB and CCB’s antecedents and consequences, identifying the different effects due to culture.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of physical and social retail store environment, referred to as “storescape”, retail store attachment and employee citizenship behaviour towards customers on customer citizenship behaviour.

The research employed a descriptive quantitative, cross-sectional design with a self-administered survey. Data were collected through an online research panel provider from 415 customers of department and discount department stores in Australia.

The findings show social storescape predicts customer citizenship behaviour directly, and that store attachment mediates the effect of both physical and social storescape on this behaviour. Employee citizenship behaviour towards customers was found to moderate the effect of storescape on customer citizenship behaviour. In addition, the effect of both positive physical and social storescape was found to be greater in discount department stores than department stores.

In addition to highlighting the factors that drive customer citizenship behaviour, the study shows that storescape factors and their effect vary for department stores versus discount department stores.

This study shows the effect of storescape on customer citizenship behaviour. Drawing on resource exchange theory, this study is the first-known to identify storescape as both physical and social resources which can influence retail store attachment and customer citizenship behaviour. The study provides new insights into the differential effect of storescape in department versus discount department stores in motivating customers to engage in citizenship behaviour. Further, the study makes an important contribution by demonstrating the moderating role of employee citizenship behaviour towards customers.

The goal of this study is twofold: first, it seeks to investigate how enterprise social media (ESM) usage contributes to firm performance, especially through operational performance metrics; second, to identify the ESM users’ behaviors that help to improve firm performance.

An interpretive case study of a medium-sized manufacturing company in the food industry. After developing a theoretical framework, an exploratory research was undertaken about the use of an ESM. Qualitative methods were adopted for data collection and analytic induction for data analysis, using structural and descriptive coding. A series of semi-structured interviews with senior managers and middle-managers were conducted. Operations performance metrics were also assessed through documentary analysis before and after the implementation of the ESM.

The study integrates concepts and theories from across three main fields of research, namely organizational behaviors, management and information systems. It complements the extant research on ESM by providing a new theoretical framework that connects ESM use with firm performance. Empirical findings suggest that ESM contributes to firm performance through social capital development fostered by organizational citizenship behaviors. The emergence of leadership development has been also observed.

The exploratory nature of the study combined with the fact that it has been conducted within a single organization greatly limits the generalization of the findings.

Managers can use the findings of this study as a support of a successful ESM implementation. Besides, it provides references for practitioners aiming to use and evaluate ESM and their corresponding citizenship behaviors within a manufacturing milieu.

The paper is the first to bring a multi-disciplinary perspective of the contribution of ESM usage on firm performance-based in a social capital enacted by organizational citizenship behaviors. These understandings add new insights to the literature and establish new theoretical connections between organizational citizenship behaviors, ESM use and social capital that also allowed to emerge leadership development.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a research model to identify the key determinants and examine their impact towards online pro-brand and anti-brand community citizenship behaviours (CCBs).

A survey based on the research model is used to collect empirical data from 260 and 200 members of online pro-brand communities (OBCs) and online anti-brand communities (OABCs), respectively. A two-stage approach employing fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis and artificial neural network (ANN) is first applied to uncover new observations.

Moral identity and positive brand emotion (BE) are the two most influential factors driving both online pro-brand and anti-brand CCBs. A higher level of internalisation might be required to exhibit online anti-brand CCB as opposed to online pro-brand CCB. This contradicts the current understanding that anti-brand behaviours are less morally restricted given the virtuality and anonymity of online communities. OABC members may need to better justify themselves internally to overcome positive BE when exercising anti-brand action. Also, brand identification, brand dis-identification and BE would be used to identify two types of OABC members.

The effect of motives other than pro-social remains unclear on online pro-brand and anti-brand CCBs.

This is the first paper to develop two new dimensions which provide a more complete definition of CCB. Also, some new observations are uncovered by comparing the effect of different key determinants on online pro-brand CCB against that of online anti-brand CCB. The research model can be used to define and improve member (or brand) engagement which would enhance the management of OBCs and OABCs.