Research On The Effect Mechanism Of Social Media On Brand Fan

As social media is getting popular, there have been major changes in the way to get information, communicate with others, and solve problems, and can easily access to information. Even, they become the creators of some information, which makes their consumption concept change a lot. Social media provides a platform for companies to showcase their brands and publish some related information, namely: the brand page. Organizers and followers of the brand page constitutes a virtual brand community. Companies can not only take advantage of this community by achieving communication with consumers, but also be able to provide a platform for brands users to communicate with each other. Consumers can use social media to participate many different virtual brand community, which can help them to find information about a brand or a company and communicate to the brand users easily. On the other hand, the concept of bran loyalty has been well known to many companies, but the benefits generated by brand loyalty is weak. While brand fans will be able to bring more benefits to enterprises, which is determined by its characteristics.The main question of this study is: How to use brand page in social media to build brand page, and thus be able to influence brand fans. To solve this problem can bring the following benefits: First, after exploring the influence of different motivation and the virtual brand community involvement, companies can enhance the brand page design to fit the different motivation, which can strengthen consumers’ sense to the community. Second, it can help companies understand the effect of different “consumer-brand” relationships, as to design better marketing strategy to transform brand identity to brand fans effectively.The main content of the paper is as follow:(1) This paper constructed the theoretical model between community participation motivation and brand fan. This paper was based on the virtual brand community constructed by brand page. The paper used comsumer community participation motivation as a starting point. Based some basis of relevant theories constructed from different motivation to virtual brand community involment, and to the “consumer-brand” relationships. And, this paper proposed the research hypotheses on the basis of older study. It laid the theoretical foundation for the later study of this paper.(2) This paper designed measurement scale by relating classic scales from home and abroad, and ultimately designed the survey questionnaire. Then, this paper conducted 50-scale tests, and received 43 valid questionnaires. Then it revised some questions of measurment by interviewing with the research objects and reliability testing. In the premise to ensure the reliability of the measurement scale, this paper designed the final questionaire.(3) This paper used empirical analysis to study and used the survey method to collect primary data.It collected a wide range of data for futher analysis, and received 252 valid questionnaires. Then, this study used SPSS and AMOS in the data analysis stage. The analysis process included: the descriptive statistics analysis, the reliability and the validity examination, confirmatory factors analysis, structural equation modeling analysis and mediation effect analysis.The results show that: In the social media environment, information motivation, entertainment motivation, sociability motivation and instrumental motivation have an impact on the virtual brand community involvement, the impact of which sociability motivation, instrumental motivation of the latter is very significant. At the same time, the paper verified the similar awareness in virtual brand community involment has an impact on brand identity. Also, it confirmed that brand attachment plays entire intermediary role in brand identity and brand fan. At last, based on the results of this study, this paper provided some proposal for operating the brand page.The main innovation of this study is as following:(1) This study was under social media environment, focusing on the virtual brand community. And it based on theory both of brand community and brand fan, exploring the influence between social media and brand fans. This represents an unique perspective.(2) This study used motivation of social media as starting point, which can explain the nature of consumer and brand page better.(3) This study explored the effect between brand identity and brand fan was fully mediated by brand attachment, which not just enrich the relevant theoretical research, but also provided more targeted advice for marketing strategy.