Promoting Consumer's Participation in Virtual Brand Communities: A New Paradigm in Branding Strategy

Are Facebook brand community members truly loyal to the brand?

“…This study adds to current knowledge regarding brand loyalty, particularly WOM, by showing that brand community members' community promotion behavior is a strong predictor of three aspects of brand loyalty -namely attitudinal loyalty, repurchase intentions and WOM behavior. This extends the literature on the brand community commitment and brand loyalty relationship by Casaló et al (2008) and Hur et al (2011) and on the brand community commitment and community promotion connection by Muniz and Schau (2005). The findings revealed that although community promotion behavior is closely linked to all types of brand loyalty in terms of total effects, its effects on repurchase intention and WOM are not always direct.…”

“…Therefore, community promotion is considered to be a behavioral outcome of individuals' commitment to a brand community (Chu & Kim 2011;Kang et al 2007). Prior studies support this point by showing that consumers' online brand community commitment is an antecedent of community promotion behavior and signals that they are positively associated with the brand community (Casaló et al 2008). Thus, the degree of commitment an individual feels to a brand community and the level of motivation to participate in the community are related to the likelihood of promoting the brand community outside of the community.…”

“…Prior research has suggested that commitment to an online brand community is positively associated with brand loyalty (Casaló et al 2007;Jang et al 2008;Muniz & O'Guinn 2001). Casaló et al (2008) posited that commitment precedes brand loyalty and leads to positive WOM communication. Hur et al (2011) showed that community commitment positively affects repurchase intentions and WOM communication.…”

Brand community, loyalty and promise in myfootballclub.co.uk

“…Chong (2007) examined the role of internal communication and training in delivering brand promise. Casaló et al (2008) illustrated the importance of trust and honesty in relation to brand promise in a virtual community. Finally, Balmer and Thomson (2009) highlighted the importance of aligning brand promise and delivery.…”

“…Subsequent related research has focused on how to strengthen brand communities (e.g., McWilliam, 2000;McAlexander et al, 2002), religiosity (Mu iz and Schau, 2005), brand narratives (Schau and Muñiz, 2006), building membership (Devasagayam, 2010), value (Schau et al, 2009), counterbrand communities (Cova and White, 2010), person-brand fit (Matzler et al, 2011), and knowledge-sharing (Sloan et al, 2015) among other directions. Research into online brand communities has examined how to utilise them in product development (Kim and Bae, 2008); promote consumer participation (Casaló et al, 2008), and how consumers engage with the community (Lee et al, 2011;, Brodie et al, 2013;Baldus et al, 2015). Within sport, extensive empirical work has been carried out into brand communities, focusing on team and other group identities (Heere and James, 2007;Heere et al, 2011a;Heere et al, 2011b), new sport teams (Grant et al, 2011), brandfests (Woolf et al, 2013) and scale-free networks within a new brand community (Katz andHeere, 2013, 2015).…”