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.

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.

I am feeling so good! Motivations for interacting in online brand communities

PurposeThis paper focuses on customer engagement in online brand communities (OBCs). Drawing upon self-determination theory (SDT), the research proposes a conceptual model portraying the effect of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations on hedonic and utilitarian rewards, which the authors posit will affect subjective well-being (SWB) and brand advocacy.Design/methodology/approachData collected through a questionnaire completed by 367 members of OBC were employed to test the structural theory using partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).FindingsThe empirical results reveal that intrinsic motivations significantly and positively affect hedonic and utilitarian rewards, but the same does not apply to extrinsic motivations. The results also confirm that hedonic and utilitarian rewards are significantly related to brand advocacy and SWB, although with different strengths.Originality/valueThis study provides new insights to the emerging research on customer engagement in OBC, including its motivations and rewards for contributing to these communities, from an SDT perspective. In addition, this paper offers a novel approach, by introducing brand advocacy and SWB as consequences of customer engagement in OBCs.