The Effects Of Social Capital In Virtual Brand Community And Knowledge Sharing On Brand Attachment

The emergence of virtual brand community not only provides a communication platform for consumers, but also provides a new way of marketing management for the enterprise. With community members sharing preference for products, the process can increase their satisfaction and loyalty to the enterprise and products and then help the enterprise spread the brand. So how to make use of knowledge sharing in virtual brand community to influence consumers’brand attitude, enhance the customer brand attachment is a new topic that enterprise brand management have to face. But the current domestic research of brand attachment, lack of empirical research, is still in its infancy stage and the theory needs to be added. At the same time, social capital theory considers that social network among people would promote the knowledge sharing. Therefore, through the theory of social capital, this paper discusses the mechanism of how knowledge sharing based on social capital perspective influences brand attachment, so as to provide managers in the management practice of virtual brand community with theoretical basis and practical guidance.First, the study reviews the theory related and defines the virtual brand community, social capital, knowledge sharing and brand attachment. Based on social capital theory, relational capital and structural capital existing in the virtual brand community are digged and quantized. By the variables of trust, reciprocity, community recognition and social interaction, social capital in virtual brand community are interpreted and knowledge sharing would be divided into three dimensions:purpose, entertainment, connection. Meanwhile, brand attachment would be divided into two dimensions:emotional connection, maintaining intention about brand relationship. On this basis, according to the basic logic of the relationship between variables, the study set up the revelant research model to study mechanism between variables, then theoretical assumptions are put forward. In addition, take XiaoMi community for example, combined with maturity scale and expert opinions of scholars both at home and abroad, the questionnaire needed for empirical research is designed. With the help of a consumer survey, we obtain a large amount of research data. Finally, through the use of structural equation and the inspection of the previously presented theoretical model the following research conclusions are obtained.The empirical study shows that the reliability and validity of the scale is good. The findings also illustrates that, trust, community recognition, social interaction of the social capital positively affects the members of the community on knowledge sharing. However, reciprocity has a positive impact on knowledge sharing for purpose and has no significant effect on knowledge sharing for entertainment and connection. Finally, Knowledge sharing of members of the community have a positive impact on brand attachment. In the meantime, entertaining and connecting knowledge sharing have more significant influence than purposing knowledge sharing on brand attachment and purposing knowledge sharing has a positive effect on maintaining intention for brand relationship, but has no significant effect on brand emotional connection. In the end, based on the conclusion which has achieved above,the research gives management suggestions and describes the limitations of the research and the further research direction.