Research For The Influence Of Virtual Brand Community's Network Structure On Customer Participation In Innovation:the Mediating Effect Of Psychological Ownership

With the rapid development of the market economy,the competition among companies become fierce.How to satisfy customers' needs for new products and services is the key to the survival and development of enterprises.Therefore,customers as an important source of innovation,customer participation in innovation is becoming more and more popular.And the development of Internet technology,customer participation in innovation is no longer limited by time and space,customers can more easily and freely participate in product innovation and other innovative activities online.So the virtual brand community as a customer participation in innovation platform has become the focus of both academic and practical fields.Customers as individual in social networks,so that his participation behavior may be affected by network structure.In addition,the impact of psychological ownership on customer participation in innovation has been a concern,but whether the social network structure can influence the psychological ownership and through psychological ownership customer participation in innovation is worth studying.Therefore,based on these consideration,this paper takes psychological ownership as mediator variables,studies the influence mechanism of of the virtual brand community's network structure on customer participation in innovation,in order to provide theoretical and practical guidance for enterprises.On the basis of the literature review,this paper divides the virtual brand community's network structure into four dimensions:network size,network density,network structure hole,and network center degree.Psychological ownership is divided into single dimension.Customer participation innovation is divided into two dimensions:information sharing and co-development and exploratory virtual brand community's network structure,psychological ownership and customer participation in innovation.Theoretical model and theoretical hypothesis are built based on those definitions.This article applied the questionnaire survey,in which 229 valid questionnaires were collected,and using statistical analysis software SPSS21and LISREL8.70 to process the sample data,using structural equation model verify the hypothesis,and obtained the influence mechanism among each variables.The results of this study show that:(1)The measurement scales of each variable have good reliability and validity,indicating that the dimensional division of variables is reasonable;(2)Network density,Structural holes and network center degree have a significant positive impact on information sharing and co-development of customer participation in innovation;however,the size does not have a significant impact on customer participation in information sharing and co-development;(3)Psychological ownership has a significant positive impact on information sharing and co-development of customer participation in innovation;(4)Psychological ownership plays an mediating role when size,density,structural holes and center degree affect information sharing and co-development.Based on the empirical results of this paper,this study provides suggestions for enterprises to build a better virtual brand community and how to translate customer resources into an innovation source.