The Effect of Brand Community Cohesiveness on Consumers' Purchase Intention: A Multi-level Analysis

Abstract

Recently, the brand community issue seems to be growing in importance in marketing research. As a result of the popularity of the internet, virtual brand community becomes more and more important in theory and practice. The function of brand community is not only can enhance the interaction of firms and customers but also the relationships between customers. Besides, the brand community can provide a platform f or experience and information sharing. This study explores the effect of brand community cohesiveness in group and individual consumer behaviors from a multiple-level perspective. At the individual level, the relationship between the perceived risk and purchase attention of individual consumers are analyzed extensively, and then the moderating effects of product knowledge are examined also. We collected brand community data using questionnaire surveys, collecting 237 forms. At the individual level, the results revealed a negative relationship between perceived risk and purchase intention and a moderating effect of product knowledge on this negative relationship. At the group level, on the other hand, brand community cohesiveness had no significant moderating effect on perceived risk and purchase intention. Nevertheless, brand community cohesiveness had positive and significant direct effects on the purchase intention of consumers, as well as on brand identity and loyalty. Implications of the results, as well as use of HLM in multilevel investigations, are discussed.