虚拟社群意识的强化及其对消费者自我-品牌联结的影响

虚拟社群实现了人与人、人与物、人与品牌的连接,为企业发展赋予了新的驱动力。然而,虚拟社群对其内部成员是否具有参照作用,学者们的观点还存在分歧。本文从虚拟社群成员群体意识强化视角,探讨了虚拟社群作为参照群体何时会对成员品牌偏好产生显著影响及其作用机制。本文采用实验法,考察了在群体间导入任务竞争和话题争论两种情境所引致的成员虚拟社群意识强化如何影响成员的自我-品牌联结。结果表明:两种不同的社群活动会在不同程度上提高成员的虚拟社群意识,增强成员与品牌间的联结程度,使虚拟社群具备影响成员决策的基本能力。最后,本文提出塑造健康可持续的内容生产生态、提升社群成员参与感、树立社群独特价值观引导成员认知等策略。

Virtual community realizes the connection between people and people, people and things, people and brands, providing a new impetus to the development of enterprises. However, it is controversial whether the virtual community can act as a reference group to its internal members. The paper investigates when the virtual community will have a significant impact on consumers＂ brand preference as a reference group from the perspective of enhancement of the sense of virtual community. The research uses the experimental method to examine how the enhanced sense of virtual community caused by the introduction of task competition and topic controversy among groups can affect members＂ self-brand connection. The results show that the two different kinds of community activities will improve members＂ virtual community awareness to some extent, and enhance the connection between members and brands. The paper puts forward some strategies, such as shaping a healthy and sustainable content production ecosystem, promoting community members＂ sense of participation and setting up community unique values to guide members＂ cognition.