The Effect Of Brand Community Integration On Brand Identification And Brand Loyalty

As the economy grows rapidly,the supply of goods and the purchasing power of consumers increase fast.Most commodity markets are transformed from the seller's market to the buyer's market.In this context,brand has become an important competition strategy for companies.There are some studies showing that the brand community is an important platform to create brand image and win brand loyalty.However,the brand communities in China started late and most of the members have low degree of integration,making it difficult to make the consumers identify with and be loyal to the brand.This paper discusses the effect of brand community integration on brand identification and brand loyalty in the sportswear industry.Brand community integration can be measured from three dimensions: consciousness of kind,rituals and traditions and moral responsibility.First,in order to study the effect of each dimension on brand identification and brand loyalty,and the mediating effect of brand identification between brand community integration and brand loyalty,this paper designs the mediating effect model.Second,in order to study if there is a difference between domestic and foreign sportswear brands in brand loyalty,and what are the differences in the effect of brand community integration and brand loyalty,this paper selects four representative brands and builds the comparison model.This paper collects data by questionnaire.The question items are drawn reference from the literature review and modified through interviews.Finally,289 valid samples are collected and data analysis is carried out by SPSS 21.0.The results of the first model are obtained through descriptive statistics,reliability and validity test,correlation analysis,linear regression and mediating effect analysis.In the second model,this paper introduces gender,age,disposable income and exercise frequency as control variables,and the results are obtained through linear regression analysis.The main conclusion of this paper is shown as below.(1)In the sportswear industry,brand community integration has a positive impact on brand loyalty.(2)Consciousness of kind,rituals and traditions and moral responsibility have a positive effect on brand identification and brand loyalty.(3)Brand identification plays a partial mediating role between brand community integration and brand loyalty.(4)The brand loyalty of domestic sportswear brands is lower than that of foreign brands.(5)Moral responsibility has a positive effect on the brand loyalty of domestic brands.Both rituals and traditions and moral responsibility have positive effects on the brand loyalty of foreign brands.