Research On The Effects Of Customer Participation On Brand Equity In The Virtual Brand Community

Introduced into marketing since the 1980 s,Brand equity has been received the attention of foreign scholars,and been studied in-depth by scholars and enterprises as a new marketing theory.Scholars researched on brand equity,respectively from the aspects of the difference of concept and dimension and models,for studying the different levels of.So we also had more remarkable achievements in these aspects,and get the extensive attention and application at home and abroad.How to build a powerful and widespread brand is still an important topic of the academic researchers and business managers.The virtual community of brand plays a more and more important influence on brand in contemporary environment.The emergence of virtual community make the customer and brand stakeholders easier and simpler to find interest in common and stakeholders,and customer participation is the important basis of the formation of brand equity.First of all,customer participation behavior is different in the virtual brand community,and it make different degrees of influence on brand equity,at the same time this influence conveyed by brand experience and brand relationship quality.In this paper,on the basis of summarizing the related literature at home and abroad,we found the research on virtual brand at home and abroad more than focus on driving factor customers of participate.At the same time in the virtual brand community,more study customer behavior influenced on brand loyalty and brand experience and brand experience and brand relationship quality as the intermediary variables to the brand assets are also slightly insufficient.This paper aimed at the deficiency of the research.Secondly,based on the theory of related research we has established model of brand assets of the customer participation-brand experience/brand relationship quality-brand equity as the main line.We divided customer participation behavior in the virtual community environment roughly into six,and summarized into two categories: general participation behavior and positive contribution behavior.Brand experience is divided into five factors,and brand relationship quality is divided into three,and brand asset is divided into three.Summarized the relevant research results,we preliminary established model of brand assets in the virtual brand community,and laid a theoretical basis for empirical research.Finally,we build model of brand equity by the empirical test,the results show that the customer participation behavior have a significant impact on brand assets,including general customer behavior make more affect on brand equity through brand experience,and actively contribute customer participation behavior make affect on brand equity through brand relationship quality.The study enriched research on brand equity in the virtual brand community.