Understanding how firm attributes affect voice in brand community
Industrial Management & Data Systems
ISSN: 0263-5577
Article publication date: 17 March 2021
Issue publication date: 30 April 2021
Abstract
Purpose
Customers' continuous value creation (e.g. voice) is an important research issue for the success of brand virtual community (BVC) and new product development, while it is rarely studied from a firm perspective. The purpose of the present study is to investigate how firm attributes exert influences on continuous voice intention in brand virtual communities.
Design/methodology/approach
The data were collected through a survey in mobile brand virtual communities in China, and 291 valid responses for data analysis were included to test the research model by using partial least squares (PLSs).
Findings
The results show that intrinsic motivation to voice is positively associated with continuous voice intention. Furthermore, the impact of brand identification on intrinsic motivation is found to be fully mediated by community identification. Customer orientation has a positive effect on perceived openness, and both customer orientation and perceived openness positively affect customers' brand identification and community identification.
Originality/value
Although prior studies have examined some variables relevant to voice behavior, few studies have recognized the influence of firm attributes toward the BVC on sustained voice intention. To fill this research gap, the authors propose a research model to shed light on the role of firm attributes by classifying them into brand- vs community-based firm attributes, which affect intrinsic motivation through two types of social identification, namely brand identification and community identification.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The work described in this paper was partially supported by the grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No. 71974148, 71921002, 71832010), the Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of the Ministry of Education, China (Project No. 16YJC870011), the Soft Science Research Project of Hubei Provincial Department of Science and Technology (Project No. 2019ADC035), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Project No. 2020AI012).
Citation
Sun, Y., Zhao, C. and Shen, X.-L. (2021), "Understanding how firm attributes affect voice in brand community", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 121 No. 5, pp. 1045-1062. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-07-2020-0418
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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