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Despite Schau et al.’s (2009) pioneering research addressing consumers’ community engagement practices, scholarly understanding of the nature and dynamics characterizing consumers’ engagement practices in virtual (online) brand communities, and their inter-relationships, is limited to date. Building on these authors’ study, this paper aims to develop a refined typology and process model of virtual brand community engagement practices (VBCEPs).

Using the netnographic methodology, the authors analyze 20 luxury handbag community members’ entries posted on the brand’s particular section of The Purse Forum.

The authors develop an eight-component VBCEP typology that refines Schau et al.’s (2009) four-component model of brand community engagement practices. The model comprises “greeting”, “regulating”, “assisting”, “celebrating”, “appreciating”, “empathizing”, “mingling” and “ranking”. These practices contribute to and maintain the community’s vision and identity, and strengthen shared community consciousness.

A key limitation of this research lies in its findings being generated from a single, luxury virtual brand community. Future research may thus wish to validate the VBCEP typology and model across different contexts.

The authors provide strategic managerial recommendations designed to leverage virtual brand community performance, which center predominantly on the social (altruistic) and achievement-based VBCEP sub-processes.

The eight-component VBCEP typology refines Schau et al.’s four-component model of brand community engagement practices with particular applicability to virtual brand communities.

Brand pages are a very popular tool for companies to communicate with consumers in SNSs. Although brand pages could be considered virtual brand communities, they differ in several aspects. Thus, this chapter reviews the literature on brand pages attending to the main differences with other virtual communities, the motivations to join brand pages and its consequences for consumers and brands.

The studies reviewed have allowed us to identify the main characteristics of brand pages as a communication tool, as well as the definition of an important research agenda for this topic.

We have identified the main unique aspects that characterize brand pages as a virtual brand community. The motivations to become members of brand pages are analyzed as well as the positive consequences of these pages on the marketing variables. We also identified the research needs on brand pages.

This chapter can be useful to both, marketers, by showing them how brand pages work and what motivate consumers to join it; and researchers, by showing them the main gaps on brand pages that should be addressed in future studies.

This chapter highlights the role of brand pages as a communication tool. It constitutes an attempt to review the literature and organize knowledge on brand pages. The characteristics of brand pages and virtual brand communities, the motivations to participate, the consequences for the brand and an important research agenda are developed.

Users' knowledge sharing provides valuable resources for brand community participants and is, therefore, critical for the viability of virtual brand communities. Drawing from both self-determination theory (SDT) and psychological ownership theory, the paper aims to investigate the impact of fulfillment of three basic psychological needs on brand users' knowledge-sharing behavior and examines psychological ownership as a mediator.

Survey data consisting of 316 valid responses were collected from users of Huawei Pollen Club Community. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) confirmed the reliability and validity of measures, and hierarchical linear regression and bootstrapping were used to test all hypotheses.

Fulfillment of the need for autonomy, relatedness and competence in a virtual brand community boosts users' psychological ownership and has a positive influence on their knowledge-sharing behavior. Furthermore, psychological ownership partially mediates the relationships between the fulfillment of psychological needs and knowledge-sharing behavior. In addition, the authors found that when users participate in more offline brand activities, the positive impact of the fulfillment of the need for relatedness on psychological ownership is strengthened, while the positive impact of the fulfillment of the need for autonomy on psychological ownership is weakened.

The paper contributes to the existing literature by exploring the relationships between fulfilling users' three basic psychological needs and their knowledge-sharing behavior through the mediating role of psychological ownership. The authors also provide insight into how offline brand activities interact with the fulfillment of psychological needs in virtual brand communities.

Numerous studies have examined individual attitudes and behaviors in both face-to-face (FTF) communication and computer-mediated communication (CMC). However, little research has focused on differences between FTF communication and CMC with respect to idea generation for new product development or on the role of their individual characteristics. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the influences of FTF, CMC and brand knowledge on idea generation.

This study conducted a 4 × 2 quasi-experimental design to examine the effects of four types of interactive groups (low and high level of FTF × low and high level of CMC) and brand knowledge (low and high) on novel and practical idea generation. Data from168 members of the Mondeo Motor Club in Taiwan were assessed.

Participants with more FTF interaction were more likely to generate novelty ideas than practicality ideas. In addition, participants with high brand knowledge produced more novel and practical ideas compared with participants with low brand knowledge. However, the empirical findings did not support the moderating role of brand knowledge in the relationship between interactive behaviors and idea generations.

The results of this study are relevant for facilitating the “novelty” and “practicality” ideas in virtual brand communities. However, this research examined a single community, which may limit the generalizability of its results to other virtual communities.

Few studies have focused on online idea generation from a consumer-to-consumer (C2C) interaction perspective. The results of this study can assist marketers to understand how C2C interactive behaviors differentiate the “novelty” and “practicality” ideas.

Currently, many firms have established brand fan pages on various social network sites. The purpose of this paper is to extend the conventional trust theory, which involves only perspective of trust.

This study targeted community members who have purchased tourist packages from travel agencies and have joined the official brand fan pages of the agencies for at least one year. A total of 646 valid samples were collected.

Structural equation modeling was employed to conduct path analyses, and the results show that the seven hypothetical paths proposed in this study are supported by the theoretical model, which exhibited desirable goodness-of-fit.

Finally, practical suggestions are offered for community managers.

This study was conducted by integrating the models of consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer interactions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore a model of how people are influenced from the perspectives of individuals (cognitive trust and affective trust), group (sense of virtual community), and social influence (normative influence and information influence) factors.

This research adopts structural equation modeling to test the proposed model and the structural model shows a good fit. This research sample consists of 312 members who have used Facebook for at least six months.

The results indicate the following. Both cognitive trust and affective trust have effects on members’ sense of virtual community. Cognitive trust, affective trust, and sense of virtual community have effects on both normative influence and informative influence, respectively. Members in a virtual community could create a sense of virtual community via affective trust. Members’ sense of virtual community partially mediates between cognitive/affective trust and normative/informative influence.

This study investigates the multiple perspectives of the interpersonal interaction between individual, community, and social influence.

With the continuous development of Internet technology, virtual brand communities (VBCs) have increasingly become essential fronts for enterprises and consumers to carry out professional communication and the leading platform for consumers and other consumers to engage in social and brand discussion. Meanwhile, numerous scholars began to pay attention to VBCs as their research topic. However, there is no systematic understanding of the existing literature on the VBCs research. Therefore, this study aims to provide a comprehensive and systematic review of VBCs research over the past twenty years.

Based on HistCite and CiteSpace software, descriptive statistics and bibliometric analysis were conducted in this study. Specifically, by adopting research cooperation network analysis, co-citation analysis of literature, cluster analysis and co-word analysis, the authors analyzed 1,157 articles on VBCs in the Web of Science database from 2000 to 2020.

This study summarizes the research of VBCs from three aspects. First, the general characteristics of VBCs literature are analyzed. Second, knowledge bases, research contents, theoretical foundations and theoretical contributions of VBCs are dug and integrated into a knowledge framework. Third, the evolution and trend of VBCs research topics are visualized and analyzed in two phases (from 2005 to 2012 and from 2013 to 2020).

This study describes the research status, knowledge structure and famous topics of VBCs research over the past twenty years. Further, the research topics for VBCs have maintained continuity in the last twenty years. Furthermore, the research topics have also been evolving with the development of network technology and changes in the external environment. These results also provide valuable clues about this field's future directions and practical implications.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the model of enhancing the electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) effects through the virtual community by discussing the relationship among sense of virtual community, social influence and eWOM effects.

This research adopted structural equation modeling to test the proposed model, and the structural model showed a good fit. This research sample consisted of 492 members who have used Facebook for at least half-a-year.

The results indicated that sense of virtual community had effects on normative influence, informative influence, and perceived eWOM review credibility. Both social influence and perceived eWOM review credibility had effects on eWOM review adoption. Social influence in virtual community partially mediated the relationship between virtual community members’ sense of virtual community and perceived eWOM review credibility. Virtual community members’ perceived eWOM review credibility partially mediated the relationship between normative/informative influence and eWOM review adoption.

This study discussed conclusions and managerial implications of the findings.

This research filled a void that most of the previous studies in this area focussed on a single social interaction perspective. The authors argued that community studies should incorporate and distinguish SOVC and social influence factors.

This study aims to explore the value co-creation for developing cultural and creative virtual brand communities (CCVBCs) by developing a conceptual framework based on the stimulus-organism-response framework, social cognition theory (SCT) and social exchange theory (SET).

The proposed conceptual framework was developed from a comprehensive review of the related literature. This study tested and validated the proposed framework using partial least square structural equation model based on the data collected through a survey.

First, perceived hedonic benefit was positively affected by content personalization, user interaction design and technological innovation. Perceived social benefit and perceived self-achievement benefit were positively affected by user interaction design and technological innovation. Second, user content creation behavior was affected by perceived social benefit and perceived self-achievement benefit; user browsing behavior was significantly affected only by perceived hedonic benefit, and interaction behavior was significantly affected by perceived hedonic benefit, perceived social benefit and perceived self-achievement benefit. Third, perceived social benefit and perceived self-achievement benefit partially mediated the relationship between user interaction design and interaction behavior. As for the influence of technological innovation on interaction behavior, however, and the influence of user interaction design and technological innovation on content creation behavior, both perceived social benefit and perceived self-achievement benefit had complete mediation.

This study found that the characteristics of developing CCVBCs affected perceived benefit in participating in the value co-creation process. The results contributed to the value creation research by enriching the understanding of user value co-creation in developing CCVBCs.

With the prevailing microblogging phenomenon, many marketers have created their microblog accounts to promote products, advertise brands, and attract consumers. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of consumers’ community commitment, information technology (IT) habit, and participation on their brand loyalty in the context of enterprise microblogs.

A total of 364 valid data were collected from fans or followers of enterprise microblogs through a survey on Weibo.com. The data were analyzed with smart partial least squares.

Community commitment and IT habit directly lead to brand loyalty and indirectly affect brand loyalty through the mediating influence of participation. Information quality, perceived expertise, and social interaction are antecedents of community commitment. Satisfaction, importance, and social interaction positively affect IT habit.

To enhance the generalizability of the study, future studies may examine findings in other platforms (e.g. Twitter) with a large sample size.

Practitioners can increase consumers’ brand loyalty through enterprise microblogs. Considerable attention should be directed to facilitating members’ community commitment and IT habit. In addition, the study points out significant antecedents of community commitment and IT habit for researchers, managers, and companies.

To uncover the marketing potential of microblogging technology, the authors highlight the need for investigating how enterprise microblogs generate promising marketing outcomes. The present study examines key determinants of brand loyalty. The model empirically shows the significant effects of community commitment, IT habit, and participation.