The Impact Of Consumer Participation On Perceived Product Innovativeness In Virtual Brand Community Hosted By The Firm

Nowadays more and more companies have realized the benefits of customer participation, along with continuous development of network and communication technology, on-line brand communities are constantly emerging, which attracted more and more customers. Virtual brand communities allow companies to organize customers participating in product development. Based on consumer perspective, this thesis studied the impact of consumer participation on the virtual brand communities.This research used questionnaire investigation and scenario simulation for data collection. Analyzed via SPSS with regression method to verify the main effect and mediating effect. Additionally, this thesis tested and verified the moderating effect by hierarchical regression. Then finally used independent sample T-test to validate the manipulated variable interaction.Firstly, this thesis constructed Customer participation- Personal Identity-Product Perception model, assumed that consumer participation in virtual brand community would influence the identity of customers then affected product innovation. Ultimately, these assumptions have been verified in the empirical research.Secondly, this thesis studied the moderating effect of incentive mechanism and customer knowledge in the personal identify influence mechanism by customs, meanwhile also considered the moderating impact when incentive mechanism and customer existing at the same time. Results demonstrated that rewarding collective has more incentive effect than rewarding individual;Customers who has extensive knowledge about products had more identity than those with less knowledge. When customer participating more and possessing more knowledge, rewarding individual would create more identity. Oppositely, when customer participating less and possessed the less knowledge, rewarding collective has more incentive effect than rewarding individual. All of moderating effect had been verified in the empirical study.According to precisely study, this thesis proposed the corresponding management recommendations: enterprises should develop build their own brand communities and motivate more customer participating when developing new products, especially innovative products;Enterprises should rewarding collective more than rewarding individual;Companies should provide training to customers to improve related knowledge when facing a complicated products; What’s more, enterprises should take different motivation mechanism: for customers who participating more and possessing more knowledge, enterprises should rewarding individual;For customers who participating less and possessing less knowledge, enterprises should rewarding collective in response. For customers who participating less and possessing more knowledge, for customers who participating more and possessing less knowledge, according to other factors, enterprises select the appropriate incentives.