Study On Influencing Mechanism Of Quality Of User-generated Content On Brand Equity Of Brick And Click Retailers

Online market has become an important area where traditional retailers expand their market share and brick and click retail model begins to lead the trend of retail development. At present, both Gome and Suning, which have launched their own online business, and Taobao and MCOX which have begun to set up their own entity shops, become brick and click retailers. But the vast majority of brick and click retailers are not successful, a large number of traditional retailers are not optimistic about their online sales, and MCOX begins to shut entity shops. Compared to the physical store business, online shopping business of traditional retailers develops slowly, and accounts for a relatively small proportion. In this context, how to improve the performance of brick and click retailers has become a leading issue in the retail sector. In fact, the brick and click retailing is not simply a channels parallel model, but a channel integration model, whose goal is to attract more loyal customers and lead more consumers to the co-brand. Therefore, from the marketing point of view, how to improve consumers’perception of brand equity of brick and click retailers is the key factor to improve their performance. User-generated content (UGC) which arises with the birth of Web2.0provides a new way to enhance brand equity of brick and click retailers. UGC, which changes the traditional information resources organization and delivery, has become an important source of information when consumers choose enterprises, online or offline channel selection. Meanwhile, large groups of consumers are gathered on UGC platform and jointly participate in shopping process. Take advantage of interaction of user-generated content on the UGC platform activates every consumer’s personal social circle to expand the following physical and online shopping district, which helps brick and click retailers attract more consumers and enhance the brand equity of them. However, due to the anonymity, virtuality and weak controllability of online users, the diffusion and fuzzy of responsibility of group activities, and weak ties between online users, user-generated content are in great uncertainty, so the quality of user-generated content becomes the key factor. This paper aims to explore influence mechanism of the quality of user-generated content on brand equity of brick and click retailers. Based on the literature review and previous research results, this paper builds a research model which takes the quality of user-generated content as the leading variable, online retail brand community commitment as the intermediary variable, and brand equity of brick and click retailers as the outcome variable. The results show that information quality of user-generated content has a direct positive effect on brand equity of brick and click retailers, and affects it through offline trust indirectly as well. Information quality of user-generated content has a positive effect on interactive quality, which influences online retail brand community commitment through E-social capital, thereby affecting brand equity of brick and click retailers. And also, social presence and sense of Yuan play an intermediary role between interactive quality of user-generated content and E-social capital. In addition to a direct positive effect, online retail brand community commitment has an indirect positive effect on brand equity of brick and click retailers through offline trust. The mediating effect of online trust is not obvious.Then, according to the verification results, a number of marketing proposals of brand strategies are put forward for brick and click retailers. In the end, limitations of the study and future research directions are put forward.