دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی رفتار تعامل برند مشتری در جوامع برند آنلاین - امرالد 2017

Abstract

Purpose – This study aims to investigate the moderating role of cultural value orientations on the relationship between brand ownership and customer brand engagement behavior through brand responsibility and self-enhancement. Design/methodology/approach – Respondents came from firm-managed online smartphone brand communities in South Korea and the USA. Convenience sampling yielded 197 valid responses, with 98 coming from South Korea and 99 coming from the USA. Findings – The study results provide empirical evidence that cultural value orientations influence customer brand engagement behavior. As expected, the findings indicate that individualism-collectivism and power distance significantly moderate the indirect effect of brand responsibility and self-enhancement on the relationship between brand ownership and customer brand engagement behavior. Originality/value – Prior research has focused mainly on customer engagement behaviors that target the firm, employees and other customers, with little research examining customer engagement behavior that targeted the brand (customer brand engagement behavior). This exploration is important because customers could serve as brand missionaries, become less apt to switch brands and provide feedback, leading to a sustainable competitive advantage.

Discussion

This study collects data sets from two countries – South Korea and the USA – and makes primary contributions to the SDL literature by investigating the antecedents of customer brand engagement behavior, as well as by examining the moderating role of cultural differences. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings follow.

Theoretical implications

This study extends the prior research on customer engagement behavior toward the firm, employees and other customers by investigating another important target, brand. The exploration of customer brand engagement behavior in OBCs is especially important in light of advances in the internet, social media and mobile technologies. Brand research to date is rooted primarily in traditional goods-centered-dominant logic (Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001), although Merz et al. (2009) recently argue that brand value is co-created between the firm and its customers, as well as emphasize that customers play the active role in the brand value creation process. Importantly, this article invokes insights from the emerging SDL perspectives (Vargo and Lusch, 2004, 2008) and proposes a conceptual framework for investigating the antecedents of customer brand engagement behavior. SDL emphasizes that customer behavior contributes to value cocreation and that employees invite customers to engage in value co-creation (Chandler and Lusch, 2015). This customer engagement is a behavioral manifestation of customer value cocreation (van Doorn et al., 2010; Yi and Gong, 2013). More specifically, this study empirically tests a brand value co-creation (BVCC) model suggested by Merz et al. (2009). According to a BVCC model, brand value is co-created by constant interactions among brands, firms and customers in OBCs. Surprisingly, however, little research has investigated empirically how the BVCC occurs by investigating the complexity of motivation driving customer brand engagement behavior in the OBCs. The findings show that the brand value co-creation, which is conceptualized as customer brand engagement behavior, is driven by customer brand ownership and bounded by customers’ cultural value orientation.