DETERMINANTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT IN VIRTUAL BRAND COMMUNITIES

Abstract

Objective: This study aimed to empirically validate a conceptual model that analyzes how Engagement with brands and online communities promote consumer relational bonds and the role of the hedonic or utilitarian nature of the offering in this process. Methodology: Netnography, a qualitative approach to study human behavior in the virtual environment, was adopted to reveal social media users' motivations and obtain evidence for the theoretical model. Subsequently, a quantitative study was applied through a survey that obtained 583 responses and allowed hypothesis testing through structural equation modeling with a multigroup approach. Results: Hypothesis testing confirmed that consumer "social identity" and "self-expressiveness" are determinants of "engagement with the brand community." "Brand identification" influenced "brand community engagement" for the group using hedonic brands. The study confirmed all proposed consequences of "brand engagement." Relevance/Originality: The innovation of the present study consisted of 1) verification of the impact of individual constructs related to the self (self-expressiveness, Social Identity, Brand Identification) on consumer engagement, hypotheses with little evidence in the literature; 2) verification and confirmation of the effect of new moderator variables (utilitarian versus hedonic value) in the structural model. Theoretical and methodological contributions: the central theoretical contribution of the paper is to present support for the plausibility of the proposed model, the scope of the measurement scales of the proposed constructs, and the application of Netnography.