在线品牌社区顾客间互动对顾客愉悦体验的影响

Impact of Customer-to-customer Interaction in Online Brand Communities on Customer Enjoyable Experience

随着互联网和社交媒体的日益普及,企业构建在线品牌社区、鼓励顾客参与品牌社区活动已经成为企业创造价值的一种新的营销策略。实践表明,顾客的愉悦体验是顾客参与在线品牌社区活动的直接结果之一,它有助于提升企业绩效。已有研究虽然关注在线品牌社区顾客的认知因素对顾客愉悦体验的影响,但却忽视了顾客间互动这种在线品牌社区内的主体活动,因而对在线品牌社区顾客间互动是否带来顾客愉悦体验以及如何带来顾客愉悦体验的讨论并不多见。梳理品牌社区、顾客互动和顾客体验等相关研究,基于价值共创理论和自我决定理论,构建在线品牌社区顾客间互动对顾客愉悦体验的影响机制,提出在线品牌社区顾客间互动对顾客愉悦体验具有正向影响、控制感和融聚感对在线品牌社区顾客间互动与顾客愉悦体验之间具有中介作用、主题匹配对这种中介机制具有调节作用等假设。采用问卷调查在魅族社区获取283个顾客样本数据,测量量表的信度和效度,并利用回归分析检验相应的假设。研究结果表明,(1)在线品牌社区顾客间互动正向影响顾客的愉悦体验。(2)控制感和融聚感对顾客间互动与愉悦体验之间的正向关系起并列中介作用。(3)顾客间互动的主题匹配调节控制感的中介效应,即当主题匹配程度较高时,在线品牌社区顾客间互动通过控制感正向影响愉悦体验;当主题匹配程度较低时,控制感的中介作用不显著。(4)主题匹配也调节融聚感的中介效应,即与主题匹配程度较低时相比,当主题匹配程度较高时,融聚感对顾客间互动与愉悦体验之间正向关系的中介效应更大。研究结果厘清了在线品牌社区顾客间互动对顾客愉悦体验的作用机制,加深了对顾客间互动的理解,丰富了顾客体验和品牌社区方面的研究,并对企业通过在线品牌社区提升顾客关系管理、顾客体验管理和顾客互动管理具有一定的指导意义。

With the increasing prevalence of the Internet and social media, it has become a new marketing and value-creation strategy for firms to build online brand communities and motivate customer participation in online brand community activities. Marketing practice indicates that customer enjoyable experience is a direct outcome of customer participation in online brand com- munity activities, and it can help enhance firm performance. Although extant academic research has explored the influence of customers＇ cognitive factors on customer enjoyable experience in online brand communities, it neglects customer-to-customer in- teraction which is the primary activity in online brand communities. Therefore, little is known about whether and how customer- to-customer interaction in online brand communities leads to customer enjoyable experience. This paper firstly reviews relevant literature on brand communities, customer interaction, and customer experience. Based on value co-creation theory and self-determination theory, it proposes the mechanism about how customer-to-customer interaction in online brand communities affects customer enjoyable experience. Specifically, it is hypothesized that customer-to-customer in- teraction in online brand communities has a positive impact on customer enjoyable experience; control and communitas play par- allel mediating roles between customer-to-customer interaction in online brand communities and customer enjoyable experience; and theme fit moderates these mediating effects. This study adopts questionnaire survey and obtains data of 283 customers in Mei- zu Community. After analyzing reliability and validity of the measures, it uses regressional analysis to test all the hypotheses. This paper demonstrates that： First, customer-to-customer interaction in online brand communities has a positive impact on customer enjoyable experience. Second, control and communitas parallelly mediate the positive impact of customer-to-customer interaction in online brand communities on customer enjoyable experience. Third, theme fit of customer-to-customer interaction in online brand communities moderates the mediating effect of control. Specifically, control plays a mediating role in the impact of customer-to-customer interaction in online brand communities on customer enjoyable experience when the level of theme fit is high, while the mediating effect becomes insignificant when the level of theme fit is low. Forth, theme fit also moderates the me- diating effect of communitas. Specifically, compared with when the level of theme fit is low, when the level of theme fit is high, communitas plays a much bigger mediating role in the impact of customer-to-customer interaction on customer enjoyable experi- ence. Results of this paper clarify the relationship between customer-to-eustomer interaction in online brand communities and cus- tomer enjoyable experience, its mediating mechanisms, and the boundary condition of the mediating effects. They increase our understanding of customer-to-customer interaction, and enrich the literature on customer experience and brand Communities. This study also provides some implications for firms to improve customer relationship management, customer experience management, and customer interaction management by the means of online brand communities.