دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی افزایش عملکرد رابطه برند از طریق مشارکت مشتری و ایجاد ارزش در جوامع برند - الزویر 2018

ABSTRACT

Extant research highlights novel opportunities in co-opting customers to co-create value through their participation in the brand experience. However, relatively little is known about how customer participation (CP) affects value creation and brand relationship performance outcomes in social media brand communities in the retailing sector. This study applies Service Dominant Logic and the consumption value theory to examine how retail customers derive value from CP in social media brand communities. Empirical results from 584 consumers confirm the CP influence on functional value, emotional value, relational value and entitativity value, which translate to brand relationship performance outcomes. The theoretical framework provides novel insights to marketing managers in understanding how CP can contribute to a retail brand's value creation efforts, and how these value creating efforts contribute to brand building for retailers.

Discussion

Theoretical implications

This study set out to examine the role of social media brand communities as an online service for retail brands to develop customer relationships through CP. Specifically, the study broadens our understanding of the effect CP has on value creation across multiple forms of utility (i.e., functional, emotional, relational and entitativity values) and brand relationship performance outcomes in social media within this retail context. The study further examined the gender effects on the CP to value creation system of relationships. Overall, our results confirm most of our hypotheses. In doing so, this study provides empirical evidence in support of the premise that value creation is a prerequisite for the success of a retail brand's strategic efforts in social media brand communities to improve brand relationship performance outcomes by encouraging CP. From this attempt to enrich the CP retail literature and provide clarification about the effects of CP in a social media brand community context, several key findings emerge for further discussion. First, the effect of CP on value creation outcomes is more complex than previously stated and is noteworthy. The findings confirm the extant assertion that CP influences extrinsic evaluations of functional value and relational value. We also identify a direct link between CP and intrinsic evaluations of emotional value and entitativity value. Notably, entitativity value was found to be the strongest predictor on brand relationship performance outcomes. Consequently, this study aims to complement extant research in the traditional settings (e.g. Chan et al., 2010) and social media context (e.g. De Vries and Carlson, 2014; Shi et al., 2016; Vock et al., 2013) by better understanding the effectiveness of CP on value creation from the customer perspective. It applies the SD logic and consumption values theorising to underpin the framework so as to guide the development of hypotheses for empirical testing. In doing so, this study contributes to both the CP and value creation retail literature streams, and the social media brand community field in particular.