Examining Consumers’ Motivations to Engage in Firm‐Hosted Virtual Communities

Abstract

Consumer engagement is a complex phenomenon and understanding the underlying dynamics that facilitate its development, particularly in the virtual environment, is an important contemporary research priority due to its ability to influence value creation for customers and organizations, and because it introduces ongoing and multifaceted challenges for marketers. This research empirically tests hypotheses regarding the motivational drivers of consumer engagement with 308 members of two firm‐hosted virtual communities. The results suggest that marketers need a multidimensional lens to identify, understand, and manage consumers’ distinctive cognitive and affective states within this environment. Findings support the need for these firm‐hosted virtual communities to be carefully designed to facilitate knowledge sharing, provide social support, deliver an enjoyable and useful experience, and enable consumers to cocreate value through emotional empathy. This research provides critical managerial input into how best to monitor, understand, support, and ultimately leverage firm‐hosted virtual communities aligned to the emotional valence of the consumers.

Virtually enhancing the real world with holograms: An exploration of expected gratifications of using augmented reality smart glasses

“…To our knowledge, prior research on ARSGs has not identified this aspect, which is somewhat surprising because one of the main ideas behind AR is changing the perception of the real word. Thus, this study extends the literature on U&GT (e.g., Claffey & Brady, ), ARSGs, and AR in general.…”

“…While prior research has focused predominantly on utilitarian gratifications, this research identifies three utilitarian gratifications: sensual, social, and symbolic. These new gratifications also extend prior U&GT research, in that we introduce novel, ARSG-specific gratifications that are conceptually linked to fundamental human needs (Claffey & Brady, 2017;Katz, Haas, & Gurevitch, 1973;Rubin, 2002;Ruggiero, 2000;Sundar & Limperos, 2013).…”

“…U&GT is not without its critics (Ruggiero, 2000), but it remains one of the most widely applied theories in human communication research (Rubin, 2002). For example, studies have applied U&GT to examine reality TV consumption (Patino, Kaltcheva, & Smith, 2012) and other forms of new media formats (Claffey & Brady, 2017;Kim et al, 2008), or online games (Wu, Wang, & Tsai, 2010). In addition, research has integrated U&GT with other theories to investigate the adoption and use of technologies and services (Nysveen, Pedersen, & Thorbjørnsen, 2005), including ARSGs (Rauschnabel et al, 2016a).…”

Technological Impacts on Market Attitudes and Behaviors

“…In this study, Mousavi, Roper, and Keeling (), who also use structural equation modeling but based on data derived from a sample of 752 US residents who self‐identified as current members of online brand communities, investigate the intermediate mechanisms mediating and moderating members’ social identity effects on brand commitment, and how this leads to positive word‐of‐mouth and resistance to negative word‐of‐mouth, for both posters (i.e., those writing review comments) and lurkers (those not writing any comments). Similar to Claffey and Brady () who also highlight the importance of social bonds and affective states, their study reveals that the affective component of social identity is an important driver of members’ commitment to the brand, to talking about the brand positively and to resisting negative comments from others. They suggest that companies can gain a competitive advantage when customers’ self‐concepts are linked to the community as competitors will find it difficult to replicate such bonds.…”

“…In the first of nine articles, Claffey and Brady (), using structural equation modeling and hierarchical moderated linear regression on a sample of 308 survey respondents, study motivational drivers of consumer engagement with firm‐hosted virtual communities, to identify antecedents, influences, and outcomes, contributing to our understanding of how virtual communities engage consumers (e.g., to cocreate new products). Their study highlights that firms should design their virtual communities to facilitate knowledge sharing, provide social support, deliver an enjoyable and useful experience, and to enable consumers to cocreate, paying special attention to the need to enhance social bonds between members, particularly as their study shows that, in firm‐hosted communities, consumers’ affective states act as a moderating influence in the relationship between their cognitive appraisal and participation in, and value cocreation from, the community.…”