企业虚拟品牌社区参与对消费者社区承诺的影响研究

The Relationship between Firms' Virtual Brand Community Engagement Activities and Consumers' Community Commitment

社会化媒体时代,越来越多企业开始主动创建和参与虚拟品牌社区,试图增强与消费者之间的联系。然而,企业本身的商业性质与虚拟品牌社区的社交属性存在一定的潜在冲突,消费者与企业创建的虚拟品牌社区的关系极其脆弱。以往关于虚拟品牌社区的研究多从消费者的视角探究消费者社区参与及其影响,而忽略了企业参与虚拟品牌社区中带来的影响。本文首先识别了企业参与虚拟品牌社区的三种最广泛并且重要的社区参与行为,即(1)内容贡献;(2)社区规制;(3)活动组织,并检验了企业此三种参与行为对于形成消费者社区承诺的影响。结果表明,内容贡献和活动组织对于消费者形成社区承诺具有积极的正向影响,但是企业的社区规制行为与消费者的社区承诺呈倒U型关系。而且发现,不同参与时间长度的消费者对于企业三种不同参与行为具有不同的反应。研究结论对于企业参与虚拟品牌社区具有较好的指导意义。

With the proliferation of social media,an increasingly number of firms begin proactively creating a virtual brand community and engage in it as an effort to strengthen the connection with consumers. However,there is a potential conflict between the business orientation of firms and the social interaction orientation of their brand communities,thus resulting in instability of consumers＇ engagement in communities. Previous researches mainly adopt a consumer perspective to investigate their engagement and its consequences whereas ignoring the effect of firms＇ participation. To fill this gap,this paper first identifies the most common community activities from firms,namely（ i） content contribution,（ ii） community regulation,（ iii） activities organization,and then examines their effect on consumers＇ community commitment. The analysis indicates that ＂content contribution＂and ＂activities organization＂exert a positive impact on the formation of consumers＇ community commitment,but the effect of＂community regulation＂shows an inverted U-shape. Besides,it is also suggested that consumers with different engagement vintage respond to firms＇ activities variously. Our research has important implication for practical businesses.