| The rapid development and popularity of Internet technology brings tremendous potential for enterprise innovation. An increasing number of enterprises are building a direct interaction with customers by hosting their own virtual brand communities, such as online forums and social sites, to attract customers to actively involve in new product design or development and after-sales service, which create value co-creation between enterprise and customer or customer and customer.This study attempts to focus on virtual brand communities hosted by the firm to explore the mechanism of customer spontaneous participation in value co-creation activities in community by referencing related research results at home and abroad. General objects of this study are customers who spontaneously involved in the community.Firstly, this paper developes the research model based on existing research results. Secondly, we get the sample data by questionnaire for empirical analysis of our research model. Thirdly, we use SPSS20.0for descriptive statistical analysis, reliability analysis and validity analysis, and use AMOS18.0for analysis of structural equation model.Empirical results show that:(1) Interactive features of the community mainly indirectly affect the will of customers to involve in value co-creation.(2) Cognitive need is the major motivation of customer participation behavior, while cognitive need is mainly affected by product knowledge, so product knowledge is the key factor to stimulate customer participation behavior.(3) Individual achievement need is the major motivation of customer citizenship behavior, while individual achievement need is mainly affected by member identity, so member identity is the key factor to stimulate customer citizenship behavior.Finally, according to empirical results, we put forward some management recommendations for the firm to design effective virtual brand community to attract more customers to participate in value co-creation activities. |
