| With the rapid development of network marketing,the trend of using Virtual Brand Communities(VBCs)for marketing by enterprises is more and more obvious.VBCs can not only help enterprises spread product information,strengthen bonds with customers,but also provide powerful support for them to use the wisdom and resources of customers,which enhances the attractiveness of the products.Although VBCs possess lots of benefits,their practice is not smooth.Due to deficient contents,many VBCs gradually lose their vitality.Strengthening bonds between members within VBCs,members being activated to create contents and contribute knowledge become the key points of academic and business attention.However,few scholars have explored the mechanism of sense of virtual community(SOVC),commitment and knowledge contribution under the background of VBCs.This paper reviewed the related research in relevant fields at home and abroad,and found the main shortage of the existing research:There is a lack of research on the SO VC,commitment and knowledge contribution,the same as the theoretical and empirical research based on the background of VBCs.Based on this,this paper puts forward the perspective and question:Research is conducted on the direct effects of SOVC,commitment,knowledge contribution and mediating role of commitment,which may exists between the SOVC and knowledge contribution under the background of VBCs.On the basis of the existing research,the SOVC is divided into membership,influence and immersion.Commitment is divided into two dimensions:affective commitment and calculative commitment.Then the influence mechanism model between the three variables is constructed,the main concepts in the model are defined,and the corresponding research hypothesis and proposition are given.By issuing and collecting questionnaires in MI community,which is the research object in this paper,the preliminary statistics are analyzed.SPSS 21.0 and Smart PLS 2.0 software are used to analyze the data of the effective questionnaire,including the reliability and validity analysis of data,the confirmatory factor analysis of data and the verification of all proposed direct/mediation hypotheses.The main conclusions of this study are as follows:Firstly,the three dimensions of SOVC have significant positive effect on commitment in varying degrees.However,immersion has greater effect on commitment than membership and influence.Secondly,SOVC has a significant impact on the knowledge contribution.Thirdly,only affective commitment drives knowledge contribution significantly.Finally,the mediating effect of affective commitment and calculative commitment between SOVC and knowledge contribution is significant,and the mediating effect of affective commitment is stronger than that of calculative commitment.Moreover,in the last part of this study the results of empirical analysis through software are evaluated and discussed,also the limitations and shortcomings of this research are put forward,as well as the future prospect and some concrete suggestions for the future research direction.The main enlightenment is mainly reflected in two aspects:(1)Theoretical side.The VBCs management is a hot topic.With the rapid development of social networking sites and other new medias,enterprises need new theories to guide practice.This research puts the research model into the theoretical background to explore the impact mechanism of SOVC,commitment and knowledge contribution,enrich the relevant research results in these fields.The use of objective data to measure the knowledge contribution of members,and from the perspective of commitment to explore the impact of SOVC on knowledge contribution is a innovation of this paper.(2)Practice side.Based on the virtual brand community context and take MI community as example.The conclusion of this paper also provide useful guidance and reference for Xiaomi as well as other enterprises on how to effectively manage VBCs and activation of community content. |
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