The authors develop and estimate a conceptual model of how different aspects of customers’ relationships with the brand community influence their intentions and behaviors. The authors describe how identification with the brand community leads to positive consequences, such as greater community engagement, and negative consequences, such as normative community pressure and (ultimately) reactance. They examine the moderating effects of customers’ brand knowledge and the brand community's size and test their hypotheses by estimating a structural equation model with survey data from a sample of European car club members.

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There is growing evidence of the increasing participation in, and influence of, virtual communities in digital environments. To help explain this irresistible allure, the individual and social determinants of the member's intentions to participate are investigated. Conceptualizing virtual community participation as intentional social action, we explicate the concept of “we-intentions”, and use the Model of Goal-Directed Behavior to explain members’ we-intentions. Virtual community influences pertaining to compliance, internalization, and social identity are also elaborated on. An empirical study of regular virtual community participants ( N = 157) finds that we-intentions to participate are functions of both individual determinants (positive anticipated emotions and desires), and community influences (social identity). Implications for marketing and future research opportunities are discussed.

Within consumer psychology, both product involvement and perceived risk are viewed tobe motivational constructs, influencing subsequent consumer behaviors such as information search and dissemination, as well as extensiveness of the decision‐making process. While these constructs are closely related, extant research reveals considerable ambiguity regarding the psychological mechanisms by which components of these two constructs influence one another. This article presents a conceptual motivational process model, explicating the processes by which involvement and consumer risk perceptions are caused, and influence one another, as well as subsequent behavioral responses of consumers. An empirical study, carried out to test the motivational process model and the hypothesized causal relationships finds overall support. Implications of this research for marketers and consumer psychologists are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided.

We conceptualize participation in Linux user groups (LUGs) in terms of group-referent intentional actions and investigate cognitive (attitudes, perceived behavioral control, identification with the open source movement), affective (positive and negative anticipated emotions), and social (social identity) determinants of participation and its consequences on Linux-related behaviors of users. This survey-based study, conducted with 402 active LUG members representing 191 different LUGs from 23 countries and employing structural equation modeling methodology, supports the proposed model. Furthermore, we find that the Linux user's experience level moderates the extent of the LUG's social influence and its impact on the user's participation. We conclude with a consideration of the managerial and research implications of the study's findings.open source software, Linux, virtual communities, novice versus experienced users, social identity, we-intentions, anticipated emotions, model of goal-directed behavior

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Goals play an essential role in the purposive behavior of consumers, but scholars only recently have begun to examine the motivation for goals, their selection and modification, and their pursuit and attainment. One purpose of this article is to outline a conceptual framework for thinking about how goals emerge, influence decision making, and guide consumer choice and action. Another purpose is to integrate classic ideas proposed by consumer researchers with emerging concepts and models proposed by cognitive psychologists, social psychologists, and other social scientists. Finally, the authors' aim is to present several new ideas on goal setting and goal striving and point out how they can enrich the study and practice of consumer behavior. M uch of consumer behavior is goal-directed. This can be found in the marketing of durables (e.g., buying a computer for the purpose of managing finances), nondurables (e.g., searching for a detergent that will begentie, easy to use, and effective), services (e.g.,joining a health club to keep body weight under control), and ideas or persons (e.g., deciding to vote for a candidate who will promote the voter's personal welfare). Even buyers in organizations pursue specific goals in their activities, such as when hospital pharmacy and therapeutics committees search for, choose, and prescribe drugs that will be safe, efficacious, and inexpensive.AIl these goals share a focus on a specific outcome (or outcomes) that consumption can produce. A desired outcome (e.g., ease of use) enters the mind of the decision maker and can be defined as a specific type of goal, namely, "a mental image or other end point representation associated with affect toward which action may be directed" (Pervin 1989, p. 474, emphasis added; see also Austin and Vancouver 1996*, p. 338). Consumers make purchases to produce or yield one or more end-state goals.Consumption goals are not limited to end states but also encompass experiences, sequences of interconnected happenings, and ongoing processes. For example, a person's vacation goal might not be limited to a particular location and time period per se but rather might reside in anticipated educational, recreational, and interpersonal experiences. A trip down the Amazon, an archeological excursion, or a religious pilgrimage all constitute experiential goals of one sort or another. Note, too, that goals need not be closed-ended (e.g., taking a white-water rafting trip next summer) but can be *Authors were limited in the number of references used in text, therefore, thosereferences marked withan * are available at www.