Abstract
In line with social media development, the online brand community becomes an alternative media that could contribute to overall brand success or vice versa. Among others, the online brand community could significantly affect brand evangelism behaviors. This study attempts to extend the understanding on how members’ brand community commitment influences brand evangelism which is considered as an extra-role behavior from the members. The study among 167 members of the online brand communities revealed that brand evangelism is explained by the unidimensional construct. The result indicates that trust towards the online brand community and brand community commitment significantly affect brand evangelism. Implication and future research direction are also highlighted at the end of this article.
Highlights
Social media has changed todays’ social communication landscape at large
The results suggest that brand trust would affect brand evangelism behavior, positive brand referral
It is observed that brand evangelism could be explained by unidimensional constructs
Summary
Social media has changed todays’ social communication landscape at large. We are confronted with the ‘referral powered’ community. It is true in today’s digital marketing environment, where almost every one of us belongs to specific brand communities. Kozinet (1999) forecasted that over 40 million people will belong to one or more online communities in the millennium. Consumers’ can express both their favorable and unfavorable feelings towards the brand via the online medium limiting the owner of the brand to control the flow of communication among the members. An online brand community plays a crucial role in enhancing or diminishing overall marketing activities. Previous researches had indicated that online brand communities play a crucial role in enhancing an organization’s brand success such as loyalty, increasing market penetration, boosting revenue and creating positive word - of - mouth advertising (Hagel & Armstrong, 1997; Kim, Choi, Qualls & Han, 2008)
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