Research On The Influence Of Brand Participation On Brand Loyalty In Online Brand Community

With the rapid development of social economy,the choice of consumers for the product is becoming more and more diversified,and their demand is also becoming higher,which leads to the intense competition between enterprises.How to attract and retain customers,and how to improve consumer brand loyalty to maintain and expand market share in the fierce social competition has become an important issue of various fields.Under the background of vigorous development of network technology and social media,it is no longer limited to face-to-face communication between the enterprise and the consumers,instead,interacting through the network gradually becomes a new kind of development trend.Because of online brand community has the advantages of the anonymity and not restricted by geographical location,it becomes an important platform for the enterprises to improve brand loyalty.As the service dominant logic gradually replace products dominant logic,the marketing strategy changes from push strategy to pull strategy,so customer participation in online brand community gradually gets the favor of enterprises.Through the online brand community,customers actively involved in brand activities,which helps to establish a good relationship between enterprises and customers,and thus enhance brand loyalty.However,throughout the researches of brand loyalty in online brand community,there are few researchers focus on the influence of customer participation on brand loyalty,and the specific mechanism remains to be further interpretation.Enterprises try to establish a long-term close contact with customers as the relationship marketing paradigm becomes popular,and this association is a kind of psychological state driven by value and associated with the brand which named customer engagement.When customers participate in the online brand community enterprises build,and reach highly engagement through the communication,they will create brand loyalty.However,it is a pity that there is little literature to clarify the relationship of customer participation,customer engagement and brand loyalty in online brand community at present.Because of the anonymity of online brand community,customers would feel uncertainty about the community and the relationship between members,and this sense of uncertainty will directly affect the customers' behavior,which may affect relationships between enterprises and customers.So,this paper puts customer participation,customer engagement,perception of uncertainty and brand loyalty in the same framework to explore the specific mechanism between customer participation and brand loyalty in online brand community.Using the multiple linear regression of PLS to analyze the collected 537 effective samples,it shows that:in online brand community,customer participation can directly promote brand loyalty(common brand loyalty and oppositional brand loyalty);customer participation can also influence brand loyalty through the mediator variable customer engagement;perception of uncertainty as the moderator variable has some negative effect between customer participationand customer engagement.Finally,according to the research conclusion,this paper gives some feasible suggestions about improving brand loyalty: focus on customer participation in quantity and quality,and improve customer engagement;strengthen the relationship of members,and reduce perceived uncertainty;listen to customers and focus on consumer demands.The conclusion of this paper enriches and perfects the relevant brand theory system,and provide support to the practice.