Research On The Influence Of Users' Participation In Virtual Brand Community On Purchase Intention

With the development of Internet,companies have encountered new challenges in making innovative advancement and marketing strategies.Accordingly,in order to increase the popularity of the brand,more and more companies begin to develop virtual brand community and regard it as an essential part of the marketing strategy.The question is how such a virtual brand community can boost the marketing of the company and how the participation of users in this community can influence their intention to buy the product.Out of this,the motivation of users to participate in the virtual brand community is studied in this thesis.Based on the grounded theory,the NVIVO 11.0 software is applied to conduct qualitative research of the original data collected in this paper,and the revolution process of user's participation in the virtual brand community is concluded.In addition,the author of this thesis has read broadly related literature in domestic and overseas.And he put forward three user's participation behavior variables,then carried out empirical study and established the model of impacts of user's participation in virtual brand community on intention to buy product.By means of questionnaire survey,the author collected necessary data and employed the SPSS 21.0 to conduct reliability test and validity test of the 335 questionnaires he has collected.After the date was approved reliable and valid,he then used AMOS 21.0 to carry out initial structural equation simulation analysis,the result of which has revealed that there are five assumptions fail to pass the tests.Consequently,the author eliminated the non-significant path,and then again conducted structural equation simulation analysis,and then finally got the research model in this thesis.The research has indicated:(1)the motivation of initial users to participate in the virtual brand community is mainly the problem-solving motivation.As the time and frequency of users' participation increases,the motivation gradually evolve toward hedonic motivation and altruistic motivation.(2)impact of participation motivation on the participation behaviors: the problem-solving motivation has impact on all kinds of behaviors;the hedonic motivation can only influence the browsing behavior;the altruistic motivation and the enterprise protection motivation can impact the product interaction behaviors and personal interaction behaviors.(3)the impact of users' participation in the virtual brand community on purchase intention: product interaction behaviors and personal interaction behaviors have influence on users' purchase intention.In the end,the author in this thesis offered three suggestions on marketing concerning the virtual brand community established by enterprises,and he hoped these suggestions could give some guidance to enterprises.