The levers of engagement: an exploration of governance in an online brand community

Abstract

Titl eTh e Lev e r s of E n g a g e m e n t: An Ex plo r a tio n of Gov e r n a n c e in a n O nlin e B r a n d Co m m u ni ty Typ e Articl e U RL h t t p s:// u al r e s e a r c h o nli n e. a r t s . a c. u k/id/ e p ri n t/ 1 4 6 3 4/ D a t e 2 0 1 9Cit a tio n Coo p er, Tony a n d S t a v r o s, Co n s t a n ti n o a n d Do b el e, Ang el a (2 0 1 9) T h e Lev e r s of E n g a g e m e n t: An Ex plo r a tio n of Gov e r n a n c e in a n O nli n e Br a n d Co m m u ni ty. Jou r n al of B r a n d M a n a g e m e n t , 2 6 (3). p p . 2 4 0-2 5 4. IS S N 1 3 5 0-2 3 1XC r e a t o r s Coo p er, Tony a n d S t a v r o s, Co n s t a n ti n o a n d Do b el e, Ang el a U s a g e G u i d e l i n e s Pl e a s e r ef e r t o u s a g e g ui d eli n e s a t h t t p:// u al r e s e a r c h o nlin e. a r t s. a c. u k/ p olici e s. h t ml o r al t e r n a tiv ely c o n t a c t u al r e s e a r c h o nli n e@ a r t s. a c. u k . Lic e n s e: C r e a tiv e Co m m o n s Att ri b u tio n N o n-c o m m e r ci al N o D e riv a tiv e s U nl e s s o t h e r wi s e s t a t e d, c o py ri g h t o w n e d by t h e a u t h o r Abstract Online brand communities represent an increasingly important touch-point for establishing effective consumer-brand relationships. Growing consumer empowerment and an absence of empirical research on the subject, however, have left many firms struggling to balance the often-contradictory goals of community propagation for corporate gain with the autonomy demanded by such groups. This exploratory study investigates the management of this tension between control and engagement in a single Facebook brand community tounderstand how a firm can balance community goals with corporate needs. Our analysis of more than 13,000 Facebook comments and 2988 company posts reveals that online brand community governance can be conceptualised as a continuum. We identify three critical levers that the case study firm manipulated to establish equilibrium between commercial and community imperatives. The levers represent appealing, consulting and affiliating actions and are manifest in a range of social media marketing tactics exhibited by the company which we examine in the context of engagement theory.

Brands as relationship builders in the virtual world: A bibliometric analysis

“…Online brand-enabled relationships can flourish in many platforms, including social media, primarily Facebook -where most online brand-enabled relationship research is conducted, but also on Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+ (Habibi et al, 2014), travel sites as TripAdvisor (Nguyen et al, 2015;Azer and Alexander, 2018;Bigné et al, 2019), trading platforms, such as eBay (Dholakia et al, 2009;Nguyen et al, 2013), general company web pages (Thorbjørnsen et al, 2002), dedicated brandcommunity websites (Casaló et al, 2007) and online forums (Cova and White, 2010;Cooper et al, 2019).…”

How Does Online Brand Community Climate Influence Community Identification? The Mediation of Social Capital

“…Inspired by management research, we distinguish two types of community climate: controlling and supportive [11]. Although research has revealed that organizations with a supportive climate encourage members to participate, exchange their information, and practice constructive conflict resolutions openly and freely [12], participants may perceive the community to be unsafe without proper control [13]. However, little research has examined the effect of a controlling climate in an OBC context.…”

Engaging Customers on Facebook Coffee Shops' Brand-Fan Pages

“…To calculate customer engagement, we have adapted Rakhmawati et al (2018) Engagement Index (Rakhmawati et al, 2018) according to findings of Bitiktas et al, 2020;Cho et al, 2014;Cooper et al, 2019;Swani et al, 2014, that sharing, in terms of the extent of involvement is the highest form of engagement followed by commenting and liking. Also, we have decided to distinguish simple Likes from Love, Haha, Wow, Sorry, Anger types of "Likes."…”

“…In this context, we consider sharing, in terms of the extent of involvement, as the highest form of engagement followed by commenting and liking (Bitiktas et al, 2020;Cho et al, 2014;Cooper et al, 2019;Swani et al, 2014). Higher active or passive customer participation (customer engagement) with contents at least leads to better spreading the company messages, create better customer experience (Chiang et al, 2018), by enhancing relationships (De Vries et al, 2014), and increasing customers' value (Ersoy et al, 2018).…”