دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی وفاداری به برند در تجارت اجتماعی: موردی از برند میکروبلاگ - الزویر 2018

Abstract

Social commerce enables companies to promote their brands and products on online social platforms. Companies can, for instance, create brand pages on social networking sites to develop consumer-brand relationships. In such circumstances, how to build consumers’ brand loyalty becomes a critical concern. To address this, we draw upon the relationship quality perspective to suggest that brand loyalty is primarily determined by relationship quality, which is further influenced by self-congruence (i.e., the self factor), social norms (i.e., the social factor), information quality and interactivity (i.e., characteristics of brand pages). To test our model, we conduct an empirical survey on companies’ brand microblogs. We find that all proposed hypotheses are supported. Interestingly, the self factor rather than other factors was found to have the strongest impact in the model. In addition to its noteworthy implications for practitioners, we believe that this study provides important theoretical insights into understanding how to build brand loyalty in social commerce.

6. Discussion and conclusion

The purpose of this study is to investigate what drives consumers to build brand loyalty as they follow companies’ brand pages on social networking sites. Drawing upon the relationship quality perspective, we propose and empirically test our research model through a survey on a microblogging site. Our findings show that brand loyalty is primarily determined by relationship quality. Consumers’ relationship quality with brands can be further strengthened by three important categories of factors: the self factor (i.e., self-congruence), the social factor (i.e., social norms), and characteristics of companies’ brand pages (i.e., information quality and interactivity). These findings indicate that consumers are more likely to develop trust, commitment, and satisfaction toward a brand in social commerce if they (1) identify an excellent match between their self-concepts and the brand image; (2) want to comply with social expectations from others; (3) receive high-quality information by following the brand page; and (4) find that the company actively interacts with its followers. Further, the enhanced trust, commitment, and satisfaction toward the brand will influence consumers to repurchase its products and recommend the brand to their friends. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed below.