Determinants Of Brand Loyalty In Online Communities: A Facebook Evidence

Abstract

Social media and especially the social commerce possibility help companies to promoting their brands and products on online social platforms. Today, companies are able to create brand pages on social networking sites and to develop consumer relations using these platforms. The importance given to interactivity and usage of other web activities during past decade has made possible speedy and instant communication among companies, internet users and, therefore, created a network where “online brand communities” took their place. Online brand communities are specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand (Muniz and O’guinn, 2001). Accordingly, building brand loyalty becomes vital for companies to survive in this new platforms and as the brand loyalty is influenced by the self-factor, the social factor, and the primary characteristics of a brand page such as information quality and interactivity. This research investigates the relationship between these four factors and brand loyalty in online environment and fort his purpose the research collected data through an online questionnaire and 976 valid responses were used for analysis. The data was analyzed using structural equation modeling showing a positive relationship between brand loyalty and these four key factors. In addition to its noteworthy implications for practitioners, this study provides important theoretical insights into understanding how to build brand loyalty in social media.