同侪影响、社区氛围与顾客公民行为——品牌社区类型的调节作用

Peer Influence,Community Climate,and Customer Citizenship Behavior:The Moderating Role of Brand Community Types

顾客公民行为是指顾客自愿实施而非企业的生产或服务成功传递所必需的、整体上有利于企业的行为,如顾客之间的产品推荐、互相帮助以及顾客对企业的反馈行为等。了解如何促进顾客公民行为,对企业而言具有重要意义。在Web 3.0时代,人际交互的便捷性和广泛性使得顾客间互动对顾客公民行为的影响作用更加凸显。特别是在品牌社区中,兴趣相似且关系平等的顾客之间构成了同侪关系,在互动过程中形成的同侪影响能够有效激发顾客公民行为。本文发现在品牌社区中,同侪间的信息影响、情绪传染和比较影响显著促进了社区成员对于支持性和约束性社区氛围的感知,进而激发了顾客公民行为。并且,在以顾客获取为主要目标的拉新型社区中,约束性氛围的中介作用更加突出;在以顾客保留为主要目标的促活型社区中,支持性氛围的中介作用更加突出。本文拓展和深化了品牌社区顾客互动研究,揭示了品牌社区成员间互动对顾客公民行为的促进机制,对于企业进行品牌社区运营和更好地促进顾客公民行为具有启示意义。

Customer citizenship behavior refers to the voluntary and discretionary behavior that are not required for the successful production and/or delivery of the service but that,in the aggregate,help the service organization overall,such as product recommendation and mutual help among customers or reporting problems to employees.Understanding how to promote customer citizenship behavior is important for firms.In the era of Web3.0,the convenience and extensiveness of interpersonal interaction make the influence of customer interaction on customer citizenship behavior more prominent.In particular,in the brand community,customers with similar interests and equal relationships constitute peer relationships,which can lead to changes in their opinions,attitudes,or behaviors during the interaction between customers(i.e.,peer influence),thereby stimulating customer citizenship behavior.Based on the social information processing theory,this paper explores the process by which peer influence among customers in the brand community influences customer citizenship behavior by promoting customers’perceptions of the community climate.At the same time,based on customer relationship management objectives,this paper divides the brand community type into two types:acquisitioning community with customer acquisition as the main goal and activating community with customer retention as the main goal,and analyzes the differences in the formation process of customer citizenship behavior between these two different community types.The research was conducted in the form of a questionnaire,in which the four variables of peer influence,community climate,customer citizenship behavior,and brand community type were measured based on well-established scales that had been validated and tested in studies.Six brand communities were selected as the research objects through the practical observation method,and then two methods of snowball and random sampling were used to conduct the questionnaire survey among users in these six communities.The study finally obtained 492 valid samples,and factor analysis and structural equation model analysis were adopted to generate empirical results.The findings show that:In the brand community,the three dimensions of peer influence—information influence,emotional contagion,and comparative influence—significantly promote customer citizenship behavior,but the role of normative influence is not significant.The above three dimensions of peer influence promote customers’perceptions of the supportive climate and controlling climate in the brand community,thus forming customer citizenship behavior.In the acquisitioning community,the mediating effect of controlling climate between peer influence and customer citizenship behavior is more prominent.In the activating community,the mediating effect of supportive climate between peer influence and customer citizenship behavior is more prominent.The theoretical contributions of this paper are that:First,based on the perspective of customer interaction and the social information processing theory,it explores the formation mechanism of customer citizenship behavior in the context of brand community,expands and deepens the research on customer interaction in the brand community,and opens up new theoretical ideas for the research on customer citizenship behavior.Second,it explores the differences in the formation mechanism of customer citizenship behavior in the two types of brand community,namely,acquisitioning community and activating community,responds to the call for the classification of community types based on customer relationship management objectives,and complements the research on brand community types.Third,it extends the study of peer influence from sociology,education and economics into the field of business research,and promotes the development of peer influence theory in the online context.At the same time,the findings have implications for firms to achieve effective brand community operations and better promote customer citizenship behavior.