A Research On Brand Community And Customer Loyalty

The research on customer loyalty has been the focus of attention of marketing scholars and entrepreneurs.The scholars on customer loyalty research mainly concentrated in the concept of the customer loyalty, and the influencing factors of the customer loyalty .This paper make a study on customer loyalty from the perspective of the Brand Community.Combining with the traditional model of brand community, Muniaz and O'Guinn's brand community triad,the customer-centric model of brand community, the generalization model of brand community, this paper adjust the model of brand community,and accept the concept of the brand community that brand is social network,in which a brand as the theme.The brand community should include the brand, customers, enterprise, products, and other stakeholders.It includes two types of relations:the relainship between customers,the relationship between customer and brand, and the brand represent enterprise, products, other stakeholders. This paper divided the value of brand community into three types: material value (the value of the financial and services), spiritual values (social value, the value of image) and interactive value.The three-tier structure of brand community can affect the quality of service,customer value,customer satisfaction,customer switching costs,and the quality of service, customer value, customer satisfaction ,switching costs have an impact on the the customer loyalty,so brand community can have an impact on the customer loyalty through the quality of services, customer value, Customer satisfaction and switching costs.According to the adjustment model of brand community, it includes two types of relations:the relationship between customers and the customers, the relationship between customer and brand.These two types of relations form three mechanisms, namely, the mechanism between customers and customers ,the machanism bewteen customers and brand, the mechanism between the relationship between the customers and the relationship bewteen customers and brand. These relationships have an impact on the customers'trust and switching costs, so brand community can have an impact on the customer loyalty.Therefore, the brand community as the social network can improve the material value,spiritual value and interactive value,and the twe types of relationship have an impact on the customer loyalty. Enterprises can build their brand community in order to improve the quality of service, customer value, customer satisfaction, and the trust, improve switching costs, thereby have an impact on the customer loyalty.This paper defines the concept of customer loyalty, influncing factors of customer loyalty and the significance of customer loyalty. On the large numbers of brand community,this paper established the concept of brand community, which is a social network, and adjust the model of brand community.Under this adjustment model,this paper analysis the value of the three-tier brands community(material value, spiritual value and interactive value) and the two types of relationships(the relationship between the customers, the relationship between customer and brand), analysis the three mechanisms. Then it analise the impact of the brand community and customer loyalty, that is, the three value and the two types of relationship can have an impact on the quality service, customer value, customer satisfaction, trust,and improve switching cost,and have an impact on customer loyalty. This paper also propose the marketing methods which can improve customer loyalty by building brand community.