Do Product Characteristics Affect Customers’ Participation in Virtual Brand Communities? An Empirical Study

The virtual brand community has become an important marketing tool for companies. A successful brand community marketing strategy should attract a large number of consumers. Although past studies have revealed consumer motivations for participating in virtual brand communities, they fail to answer an important question: Why is it so easy for some virtual brand communities to attract users while others have such difficulty? In this study, product characteristics are hypothesized to be important factors that determine consumer motivation to participate in brand communities. Product characteristics (e.g., product complexity, product symbolism, and product satisfaction) can directly affect how actively consumers participate in brand communities. The results of questionnaires show that product complexity, product symbolism, and product satisfaction have a positive influence on consumers’ willingness to participate in brand communities. Notably, the duration of product use has a regulating effect on the influence of product satisfaction and product symbolism. A long period of product use weakens the influence of product satisfaction on consumers’ willingness to participate in brand communities. On the contrary, a long period of product use strengthens the influence of product symbolism on consumers’ willingness to participate in brand communities. This study enriches the literature on brand community participation and has implications for companies that aim to utilize brand communities for marketing.

Who's Who

Industry and academic circles continue to attempt to label brand community behaviours, borrowing analogies from subcultures such as religion (“evangelists”), slang (“geeks, mavens, haters”), science fiction (“fanboys”), and science (“alpha”). Although sometimes used as generic terms, upon examination, these and other such labels, can define the spectrum of brand attachment in a specific way—through narrative, metaphor, and cross-cultural labelling. Such labelling is happening already. This chapter parses the current meaning of one term from another into a folksonomy, or classification system developed by those steeped in the culture. This segmentation enables further research into specific fan types, along with industry recommendations for approaching each segment based on the behavioural characteristic inherent in both the historic and common usage of the word. It also moves toward the standardisation of these terms in industry and academic circles in order to further enable a lingua franca relating to this phenomenon.

Brands, Fans, and Exchanges

Although fandom has a rich history within pop culture, it is difficult to know what constitutes a fandom, what differentiates fandoms from similar phenomena as well as what different types of fandoms exist and how fandoms are formed and maintained. In this chapter, the authors define fandom and the related member actions that create and maintain fandoms, as well as delineate the concept from the similar fan-brand communities of transactional brand communities, social brand communities and brand publics. A typology for fan-brand communities is presented with two dimensions: 1) motivation for engagement; and 2) social status and relationship type. This typology can help guide researchers, brands, and marketers in effectively managing different subcultures of fans. This chapter may be used as a starting point for further understanding of fan-brand community-based relationships.

Towards an Insight into Customer Behaviors in Virtual Brand Communities

This study aims at exploring the effects of customer’s personal factors and characteristics of brand community on customers’ behaviors in virtual brand community. The data were collected from customers of virtual brand communities in Vietnamese context via a survey. The data show that among the customer’s personal factors, customer ability has the largest impact on customer active behaviors in virtual brand community while customer motivation and opportunity have smaller significant influences on customer behaviors. Regarding the characteristics of virtual brand community, information quality posted in virtual community has the most dramatic effect on customer involvement in active behaviors. System quality is also relevant to customer behaviors, yet virtual interactivity and rewards are unrelated to customer activity involvement. With the findings, research shows useful suggestions for businesses in Vietnam in their efforts to understand the impact of customer behavior in the virtual community.

KUSTOM KULTURE EVENT MARKETING AS A BRAND COMMUNITY CREATIVITY

The purpose of this study is to describe kustom cultural events as a form of branding program from Retro Classic Cycles Jogjakarta and House of Customland Surabaya. During the event, we saw a touch of creative creation of the kustom kulture brand community. This study uses a qualitative method. Data were obtained based on observations and interviews with several people involved in the annual kustom kulture event. In addition, the researcher also developed data collection by looking at the social media managers of Retro Classic Cycles and House of Customland. Research findings show that there are efforts to develop brand communities, initiators routinely carry out annual activities in kustom cultural events. The kustom kulture event presents creative culture from a variety of artistic collaborators, both fine art and motor builder, which inclusively makes event collaborators really enjoy and actively participate in displaying their artworks as a medium for creativity exhibitions. Originality shows that kustom culture events are used as community media for kustom culture activists Retro Classic Cycles and House of Customland, as an effective way to build a certain identity of a community, so as to increase public knowledge about kustom kulture. Therefore, the quality and quantity of kustom cultural events can be increased according to the differences and novelty of the theme of the event being held.

Da'wa Model Based on Brand Community Value: Qaryah Thayibah Implementation for Villages Fostered by 'Aisyiyah Ponorogo

Islamic da'wa's performance is highly influenced by the techniques and tactics used in conjunction with the preaching object. 'Aisyiyah applies a Qoryah Thayyibah group-based da’wa model that is expected to become the Brand Community Value. Each Regional Leader must enforce this program with a minimum of three supported villages. The purpose of Qoryah Thayyibah, in general, is to establish an advanced and dignified Islamic society. This study aimed to identify the implementation of the Qoryah Thayyibah program and the obstacles faced by 'Aisyiyah Ponorogo. The qualitative literary approach was used in this analysis. Accordingly, the data collection was through documentation (identification of documents), observation, and interviews. The inductive reasoning was also used in the analysis to see how the Qoryah Thayyibah program is implemented, and the conclusion was taken from the general statement to a particular statement. The primary sources were the results of interviews with the management of 'Aisyiyah Ponorogo, interviews with Qoryah Thayyibah PW East Java and PDA Ponorogo, the results of Tanwir relevant to Qoryah Thayyibah and supported by other sources, such as articles, documents or writings on the official PDA website of ‘Aisyiyah Ponorogo. 'Aisyiyah Ponorogo has successfully applied the Qoryah Thayyibah in five of the eight intended fields. They faced obstacles in several fields, including spirituality, education, economics, and health.

Motivation for users' knowledge-sharing behavior in virtual brand communities: a psychological ownership perspective

PurposeUsers' 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.Design/methodology/approachSurvey 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.FindingsFulfillment 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.Originality/valueThe 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.