The Impacts of Website Characteristics and Customer Participation on Citizenship Behaviors: The Mediating Role of Co-Creation Experience in Virtual Brand Communities

Abstract

More and more enterprises organize co-creation activities in virtual brand community to allow customers to participate in new products or new service development process. Involved in those activities, customers obtain experience value, which can make them have sense of achievement. Does this co-creation experience promote the formation of loyalty, such as customer citizenship behaviors? Dowebsite characteristics influence the co-creation expe-rience? The study examines the relationship between co-creation experience to citizenship behaviors and the impact of website characteristics as well as customer participation to co-creation experience. Based previous research, the study builds structural equation model and conducts empirical analysis. The results show that the affection-relevant clues of the site characteristics and customer participation have a positive impact on three dimensions of the experience , and the task-relevant clues have a positive influence on the hedonic experience and social experience. The two dimensions of co-creation experience have a significant positive impact on citizenship behaviors and have a mediating effect.