دانلود رایگان مقاله ترویج مشارکت مستمر شرکت در جوامع برند آنلاین شرکت میزبانی شده

abstract

In the age of social media, an increasing number of firms have begun to host online brand communities (OBCs) to strengthen their relationship with their consumers. Despite the popularity of firm-hosted OBCs, building a successful online brand community is still a challenge for every firm because of the nature of voluntary participation. This paper introduces an organizational socialization approach to promote sustained member participation, a deciding factor for the success of online communities. Based on theory of organizational socialization, this study identifies three typical socialization tactics employed by sponsors of OBCs (i.e., member education, interaction support, and participation feedback). Further, we present an empirical study to examine their effects on members' membership continuance intention using the data collected from several firm-hosted OBCs. The mediator role of community identification and the moderator role of membership duration are investigated, and theoretical and managerial implications for community management are discussed.

4. Conclusions and discussion

Firm-hosted OBCs are one of the most important social media tools through which consumers collaborate with firms in value co-creation. Previous studies on OBCs predominantly focused on the motivational drivers and outcomes of consumer participation in OBCs while largely neglecting the role of management of OBCs by firms (Homburg et al., 2015). In this paper, we introduced organizational socialization theory to the literature on OBCs and explored the effects of firms' efforts to socialize members in communities. To do so, we first identified three typical socialization tactics employed by firms in OBCs. We found three typical socialization tactics: member education, interaction support, and participation feedback. Then, we conducted an empirical study by collecting data from several firm-hosted OBCs to investigate the effect of firms' socialization tactics on membership continuance intention. The results suggest that all three socialization tactics could promote membership continuance intention with community identification as a mediator. We also investigated whether the effects of socialization tactics vary or not with the different levels of membership duration. The results show that member education may be more effective in influencing membership continuance intention for members with short-term membership than for those with long-term membership. Conversely, the results show that interaction support exerts a stronger positive effect on membership continuance intention for members with long-term membership than for those with short-term membership.