虚拟品牌社区成员社会化策略及其影响

Investigating the Strategies of Members Socialization in Virtual Brand Communities and Its Impacts

社会化媒体时代,越来越多的企业开始采用虚拟品牌社区营销。以往关于虚拟品牌社区的研究大多聚焦在消费者参与社区的动机和结果方面,却没有回答一个基本问题:企业作为虚拟品牌社区的组织方应如何管理虚拟品牌社区?本文从组织社会化的视角,探讨了企业社区中基于成员社会化的管理策略及其影响。具体而言,根据组织社会化理论,研究了品牌社区这一特殊组织形式下,三种典型的社会化策略:信息反馈、互动支持和用户教育对成员社会化乃至社区成员未来行为意向的影响。研究发现,企业的三种社会化策略(信息反馈、互动支持和用户教育)对于形成社区认同都具有积极的影响,而社区认同则会积极影响消费者持续参与意愿和品牌忠诚。同时,社区认同在不同社会化策略中起着不同的中介作用。其中,社区认同部分中介了信息反馈对于成员社区持续参与意愿和品牌忠诚的影响,完全中介了互动支持对于成员社区持续参与意愿和品牌忠诚的影响;在用户教育与品牌忠诚之间起着部分中介的作用,但是在用户教育与社区持续参与意愿之间起着完全中介作用。文章对于企业管理虚拟品牌社区具有较好的指导意义。

In the present social media era, virtual brand community marketing is increasingly widely adopted by enterprises. Previous literature on virtual brand communities mostly focus on the motives and effects of consumers＇ participation in communities, but let a basic problem unanswered： how should firms as the organizers of communities manage their virtual brand communities. Drawing from the perspective of organizational socialization, this paper explores the unique socialization tactics in virtual brand communities and their effects. Specifically, according to the organizational socialization theory, this paper first identifies three typical socialization tactics （feedback information, user education and support for interaction） in virtual brand communities, and then examines the effects of on socialization results and future behavior intention in the context of virtual brand communities empirically. The authors use survey and collect 417 valid questionnaires to test their hypotheses. The results show that： three socialization tactics （feedback information, user education and support for interaction） positively affect community identification and community identity in turn will positively affect consumers＇ willingness to participate in the communities and brand loyalty as well. Meanwhile, community identification plays a different mediate role in the effects of socialization tactics on outcomes. Specifically, community identification partially mediates the effect of information feedback on members＇ willingness to participate in the communities and brand loyalty, and fully mediates the effect of support for interaction community members on members＇ willingness to participate in the communities and brand loyalty; it plays a full mediate role between user education and members＇ willingness to participate in the communities, but plays a partial intermediary role between the user education and brand loyalty. The article implies that firms are nonignorable actors in the virtual brand communities and thus firms can play an active role in managing virtual brand communities to achieve successful virtual brand community marketing. Overall, this paper contributes a new perspective of virtual brand communities and offers good implications for managing virtual brand communities.