在线品牌社群成员关系如何促进品牌忠诚——基于强弱连带整合的视角

How Do Relationships between Members in Brand Communities Promote Brand Loyalty——Based on an Integrated Perspective of Strong Ties and Weak Ties

文章从强弱连带整合的视角,探讨在线品牌社群成员强关系和弱关系数量对品牌忠诚的促进机制。借鉴社会资源理论的研究框架,基于品牌社群相关理论,本文提出了研究假设,并采用偏最小二乘法进行实证检验。结果显示:弱关系数量不会增强品牌社群信息价值和社群社交价值;强关系数量则对两种社群价值都有促进作用;品牌社群信息价值只能促进持续性社群承诺,而品牌社群社交价值会促进持续性社群承诺、情感性社群承诺和规范性社群承诺;情感性社群承诺和持续性社群承诺都会促进品牌忠诚,规范性社群承诺则不能。研究结论从连带强度的视角丰富了品牌社群理论,同时对在线品牌社群建设具有指导意义。

From the integrated perspective of strong ties and weak ties,this research explores the intermediate mechanism on how strong ties and weak ties between members in online brand communities promote brand loyalty.Based on social resources theory and brand community theory,some hypotheses are built and tested by the empirical study using partial least square（PLS）.The results show that： the number of weak ties does not foster brand community informational value and community social value;the number of strong ties promotes both values directly;community informational value and community social value increase affective community commitment,continuance community commitment and normative community commitment;only the first two types of community commitment can foster brand loyalty.The findings contribute to the brand community literature from the perspective of tie strength,and provide implications for brand community management.