The Study On Measurement, Influencing Factors Of Brand Community Integration And Its Impact On The Brand Loyalty

With the development of social productivity, the product supply increased, market has been transformed from seller market into buyer market. Competition for consumer's monetary vote is becoming fierce. Enterprises have adopted many methods to deal with the competition, including introducing brand to obtain competitive advantage. How to gain the consumer through the building of brand? How to form consumer's brand loyalty? The building of brand community has introduced and been considered to be an effective way to resolve the above problem. But, for domestic companies brand community is a fangle after all, how to enrich the building of brand community, how should brand community play the role in improving company'marketing ability. These are also urgent problems for the car companies to deal with.In the academics, the relationship between brand community and brand loyalty obtained consistency, the research on brand community is becoming hot topic. At present, the researches about brand community focus on three points including what is the brand community, what are the brand community's characteristics and what are the brand community functions. The research stage is static analysis including "what" research mainly. If the research can transfer from "what" to "how", analyze the customers' exhibition and how to influence brand loyalty, distinguish the influencing factors about brand community integration, theses research could guide the enterprises.The manifestations after consumers have integrated into the brand community, the determinants of the brand community integration, and the influencing mechanism of brand community integration on brand loyalty deserve deeper study. And, the influence mechanism of brand community integration varies in different industry, which also need deep research.In view of this, the household passenger vehicles industry was taken as an example, the article built an analysis frame of "determinants of community integration—manifestations of community integration—the result of community integration". The main content includes the following aspects:(1) Based on the literature review of brand community, brand loyalty and customer value, this research defined the brand community integration degree as starting point, the framework was built.First, taking the household vehicle as example, the concept of brand community integration degree was defined. And the measurement scales about brand community integration degree was proposed. Second, taking price and using time as moderator variables, the influencing mechanism of brand community integration was studied.(2) Getting rich empirical materials through interviews and questionnaires.During the first ten days of September, 2008. The author interviewed the community member of Peugeot 307 community in Zhejiang and "longxingtianxia" community in Quzhou. Based on the interview and relative theory analysis, the study got the Pre-test scale. During the last ten days of September, 2008, a pre-investigation was carried on. Subsequently, questionnaire survey of household passenger vehicles community was conducted among 400 community members in three car communities in Zhejiang and Shandong province in Oct. 2008. And 306 valid questionnaires were gotten.(3)The empirical analysis on the above analysis framework is made.Using the data analysis software tools SPSS15.0 and AMOS 6.0, descriptive statistic analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, structural Equation Modeling (SEM), and multiple linear regressions were employed for the data analysis. Based on the concrete analysis, the dissertation found that the manifestations of brand community integration include consciousness of kind, community ritual and moral responsibility. And, the influencing factors of brand community integration are a two-dimension construct including customer value and community relation. In the Chapter five, the influencing mechanism of brand community integration on brand loyalty was validated.Based on previous study and empirical analysis, the dissertation got following main conclusions: First, the measuring dimension of brand community integration degree includes consciousness of kind, community ritual and moral responsibility. Using sociology for reference, the dissertation analyzed the brand community integration degree empirically, and find that the deeper brand community integration the more excellent of moral responsibility, but the response of consciousness of kind wasn't deep.Second, the age, price of product and addition time can influence brand community degree. The longer of addition the deeper of brand community integration degree, the older of customer the shallower of brand community integration degree; the customer who having the vihicle of 150-250 thousand Yuan had the most deep of brand community integration degree.Third, consciousness of kind, community ritual and moral responsibility are influenced by different factors. As proved by SEM, the community ritual weren't influenced by functional value, commective bargaining value and community pressure, and the consciousness of kind wasn't influenced by functional value. On the other hand, community pressure influenced consciousness of kind and community ritual. The influence degree order of different factors was as follows: trust relation, social value, cognitive value and functional value.Forth, behavior loyalty, attitudinal loyalty and reversed loyalty were influenced by different factors. According empirical analysis of the dissertation, consciousness of kind, community ritual and moral responsibility can influence behavior loyalty and attitudinal loyalty positively. But, the oppositional loyalty was influenced by community ritual only. And, the application experience regulatory effect brand loyalty.Because the brand community is a fangle about twenty years, the deep research just started. From the point of view of process, this article established an analytical framework of "determinants-manifestations-result", and analyzed the action process of community integration from the view of dynamic perspective. For the restriction of data, time, and ability of the author, there are still some limitations. Further research may attach the further research of influencing factors, the regulatory effects of demographic characteristic, and content analysis and social network analysis could be introduced in brand community analysis.