Research On Value Co-creation Behavior And Its Influence On Brand Loyalty In Mobile Games Virtual Communities

In recent years,relying on the rapid development of mobile Internet technology and mobile terminal technology,China’s mobile game market has become rapidly popular.With the rise of explosive games such as King of Glory,various mobile games have emerged endlessly.The mobile game market is becoming more mature,and game companies have changed from competing for user traffic to retaining users.The mobile game virtual community has become increasingly prosperous and complete,and has become a beneficial weapon for game companies to maintain users.However,with the increasing demand from players,coupled with the behavioral pattern of fragmented time utilization by mobile players,and the limited nature of mobile terminal screens,the construction of mobile gaming virtual communities is beginning to face huge challenges.How to manage the virtual community to meet user preferences,stimulate user value co-creation behavior,improve user experience,and then improve brand loyalty has become an important issue to be solved.This article reviews relevant literature and reviews the contents of domestic and foreign scholars’ theories about virtual communities,customer value co-creation behavior,perceived value,and brand loyalty.Based on the social cognitive theory and the behavior-value-loyalty framework,combined with the characteristics of mobile games,an integrated research model was constructed.The model seeks to explore how the environmental factors of mobile game virtual communities and the individual factors of mobile game players affect the customer value co-creation behavior,and then affect the brand loyalty by acting on the perceived value of customers.At the same time,it also discusses the differences between brand led and player led virtual communities.This paper applies questionnaire research methods to carry out a quantitative analysis of the model of this study,including reliability and validity tests,common method biases tests,structural equation modeling,mediation effects,and moderation effects tests,which verify the hypothesis of the relationship between variables.The following main conclusions are drawn: mobile game virtual community environmental factors have significant positive effects on both types of customer value co-creation behavior(customer participation behavior,customer citizenship behavior),but individual factors of mobile game players only have customer participation behavior significant positive impact;customer participation behavior and customer citizenship behavior significantly affect perceived value,and positively affect brand loyalty throughperceived value;except that individual factors cannot influence brand loyalty through customer citizenship behavior and perceived value,the rest have passed verification;individual factors have a more positive impact on customer engagement in player-led communities than in brand-led communities;community factors have a more positive impact on customer participation behaviors in brand-led communities than in player-led communities,and there is no difference in customer citizenship behavior.Based on the research results,this article puts forward a series of specific suggestions,such as: strengthening the construction of a mobile game virtual community in an all-round manner,supporting the customer value co-creation behavior throughout the process;mining customer perceived value,and improving brand loyalty;brand-led and player-led communities comprehensive development and other suggestions.At the same time,according to the shortcomings of this study,improvements are pointed out for future research.