The value of participation in virtual consumer communities on brand loyalty

The value of participation invirtual consumer communities on

brand loyaltyRong-An Shang, Yu-Chen Chen and Hsueh-Jung LiaoDepartment of Business Administration, Soochow University,

Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China

Abstract

Purpose – To examine the effects of consumers’ lurking and posting behaviors in virtual consumercommunities on specific brand loyalty.

Design/methodology/approach – An online survey of a virtual community of Apple computerusers was conducted to test a model of involvement, participation, loyalty, trust, and attitudes towardthe brand exist in messages within the community.

Findings – The causes and effects of lurking and posting differed. Lurking contributed to brandloyalty more than posting did, and the primary purpose of lurking was to look for informationregarding product function/performance, instead of satisfying consumers’ affective needs.

Research limitations/implications – As a result of the limitations in a computer mediatedcommunication environment, virtual consumer communities should be perceived as an arena forweak-tied strangers to communicate for word-of-mouth (WOM) behavior, rather than as a brandcommunity.

Practical implications – Although negative messages in a community can hurt brand image,companies should encourage the establishment of communities about their products and encourageconsumers to participate in them.

Originality/value – Although the importance of virtual communities has been recognized, fewstudies have been done to examine the business value of consumer communities. Based onperspectives of brand community and WOM behavior, this paper contributes to virtual communityand marketing research by clarifying the effects of consumers’ lurking and posting behaviors in aconsumer community on brand loyalty.

Keywords Internet, Brand loyalty, Buying behaviour

Paper type Research paper

IntroductionThe Internet has become a forum for people to interact and communicate with eachother. The increasing number of people chatting in cyberspace may have potentialsocial influences and create characteristics similar to traditional communities. Thesecommunicating groups in cyberspace have been called virtual communities. Rheingold(1993) defined a virtual community as “a social aggregation of people carrying outpublic discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs ofpersonal relationships in cyberspace.” As a result, the word “community” no longerrefers only to social groups bound together by geography.

Virtual communities can be divided into commercial and non-commercial communities(Leimeister et al., 2004). Non-commercial communities, or consumer communities(Thorbjørnsen et al., 2002), are operated or founded by consumers or a third-party forinformation exchange or relationship establishment. These could be special forms of

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Internet ResearchVol. 16 No. 4, 2006pp. 398-418q Emerald Group Publishing Limited1066-2243DOI 10.1108/10662240610690025

brand communities focused on a specific brand, where interactions among membersmainly take place in cyberspace (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001). The value of brandcommunities has been recognized recently (McAlexander et al., 2002; Muniz and O’Guinn,2001; Muniz and Schau, 2005). The high consumer cost of participation in brandcommunities, however, constrains their popularity. Virtual consumer communities mayprovide a feasible solution for overcoming this restraint, due to the relative ease ofinteraction with others in cyberspace. The effects of participation in a real activity,however, differ from the effects of participation in a cyberspace community. Consumercommunities are believed to have a greater influence on consumers and are more crediblethan commercial ones (Bickart and Schindler, 2001) but consumer communities may alsobe disadvantageous to a company because negative messages from unsatisfied consumerscould threaten brand image (Maclaran and Catterall, 2002). The value of consumerparticipation in virtual consumer communities still needs to be investigated.

This study examines the business value of consumer participation in virtualconsumer communities by taking consumer loyalty as a surrogate. The effects ofparticipation in the field of marketing have not been as well understood and emphasizedas in the field of organizational behaviors or information systems. Previous studies haveshown that participation can greatly affect people’s attitudes, but different kinds ofparticipation lead to different results (Barki and Hartwick, 1989, 1994; Ives and Olson,1984; Vroom and Jago, 1988). Consumers who participate in a consumer communityfocusing on a specific brand, whether posting or lurking, may change their attitudetowards the brand. Researchers have suggested that consumers join communities inorder to learn from others’ experiences or acquire information (Romm et al., 1997), andinvolvement has been considered as the reason why consumers look for productinformation (Beatty and Smith, 1987). Therefore, we conducted a survey to test a modelof involvement, participation, and loyalty. First, we wanted to explore the effects ofconsumers’ posting and lurking behaviors in the virtual consumer community on brandloyalty. Second, we wanted to see whether affective or cognitive involvement couldcause people to participate in the virtual consumer community. Finally, we wanted toexamine whether trust and attitudes perceived in messages in the community couldinfluence the effects of consumers’ participation.

The remainder of this paper is divided into six sections. The next sectionoverviews the literature on virtual community, consumer involvement, and brandloyalty as the theoretical background of this study. Section 2 derives a researchframework and discusses the hypotheses tested in this study. Section 3 introduces theresearch method, and Section 4 reports the results. Implications of the findings areexplained in Section 5 and Section 6 concludes the paper.

Theoretical backgroundVirtual communityVirtual communities have received widespread attention during the past decade.Studies have focused on two facets of virtual communities. The first concerns themotivations for participation. In organization or IS research, participation usuallymeans “taking part in” or “contributing to” some specific activities or events, and isusually measured by specific behaviors, activities, and assignments (Barki andHartwick, 1994; Vroom and Jago, 1988). Therefore, participation in a virtualcommunity may only refer to the members’ posting behaviors (Mathwick, 2002). On the

The value ofparticipation

399

other hand, Ives and Olson (1984) also included activities of a passive nature in theirconceptualization of participation. Although not directly contributing to thecommunity, lurking in the virtual community can also be seen as a form of passiveparticipation (Blanchard and Markus, 2003; Nonnecke and Preece, 2000). Nonnecke andPreece (2004) found that the main purpose for both lurkers and posters is to gain ageneral understanding of a topic. Common interests, values, or desire amongparticipants to discuss specific issues are also motives for participation mentioned inprevious studies (Armstrong and Hagel, 1996; Rheingold, 1993).

The second issue is the effects of participation in virtual communities. Empiricalstudies of how virtual communities influence business are relatively rare, especially fornon-commercial communities. Opinions communicated between members of aconsumer community may represent a type of written word-of-mouth (WOM) (Bickartand Schindler, 2001; Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004). WOM is an important factor affectingcustomers’ attitudes and buying decisions (Buttle, 1998; Murray, 1991). Maclaran andCatterall (2002) argued that consumer communities might become threats to companiesbecause companies have no control over negative messages from unsatisfied customerson the Internet. Muniz and O’Guinn (2001) also asserted that brand communitiesoperating within cyberspace could pose enormous rumor control problems.

Consumer virtual communities can also be seen as a special form of brandcommunities. Muniz and O’Guinn (2001) defined a brand community as a specialized,non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relationshipsamong admirers of a brand. It is marked by a shared consciousness, a set of rituals andtraditions, and a sense of moral responsibility. Brand communities carry out importantfunctions on behalf of the brand, such as sharing information, perpetuating the historyand culture of the brand, and providing assistance. The experiences in the communitymay constitute a major part of the consumer experiences of the brand. Previous studieshave shown that events or activities are important for the emergence of a brandcommunity (McAlexander et al., 2002). There is a high consumer cost, however, forparticipation in the events or activities. On the other hand, due to the low cost ofinteraction with others in cyberspace, consumers can easily and more frequently sharetheir brand feelings or experiences with others, and the feelings of belonging, trust, andobligation, as well as group symbols, culture, and rules, can be developed in the virtualcommunity (Herring, 1996; Rheingold, 1993). Virtual consumer communities mayprovide a feasible alternative to brand communities for admirers of a brand.

InvolvementInformation searching has been proposed as the main purpose for communitymembers’ participation. Consumers are motivated to search for information by theirinvolvement in an object (Bloch et al., 1986). Therefore, involvement can be seen as theultimate motivation for consumers to participate in a virtual community. Involvementis defined as one’s perception of the degree of personal relevance towards an object(Krugman, 1967; Mitchell, 1979). Product involvement concerns the characteristics ofthe object and the object’s value to an individual (Zaichkowsky, 1986). Productinvolvement leads to information searching, because certain products or brands arerelated to an individual’s ego or self-image (Bloch and Richins, 1983; Beatty and Smith,1987). An individual may participate in a consumer community and search forinformation when he/she is involved in a particular brand or product.

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Involvement can be cognitive or affective. Cognitive involvement is caused by autilitarian motive, referring to an individual’s concern with the cost and benefits of theproduct or service and interest in the functional performance of the product. Affectiveinvolvement is caused by a value-expressive motive, referring to an individual’sinterest in enhancing self-esteem or self-conception, and in projecting his/her desiredself-image to the outside world through the use of the product or service (Park andYoung, 1983). While high cognitive involvement leads to intense processing ofproduct-feature information, affective involvement is more focused on symbolicqualities and image dimensions (Mittal, 1987).

2.3 Brand loyaltyBrand loyalty originally referred to consumers’ repeated purchasing. Repeatpurchasing, however, may only indicate consumers’ temporary acceptance of abrand. Therefore, the concept of brand loyalty was extended to encompass bothattitudinal and behavioral loyalty (Jacoby and Kyner, 1973). Behavioral loyalty meansthat consumers will repeatedly purchase the same brand. Attitudinal loyalty isassumed to be more stable than behavioral loyalty and represents consumers’commitment or preferences when considering unique values associated with a brand(Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001). Oliver (1999) defined brand loyalty as a strongcommitment to re-buy a preferred product or re-patronize a service consistently in thefuture, thereby causing repetitive purchasing of same-brand or same brand-setproducts, despite situational influences. Gounaris and Stathakopoulos (2004) alsoargued that attitudinal loyalty should lead to an increase in behavioral loyalty.

Researchers have suggested that involvement will result in customer commitmentor loyalty. Howard and Sheth (1969) stated that highly involved consumers mightperceive greater product importance and commit to their choice. Tyebjee (1977)demonstrated that consumers with low involvement were characterized by low brandloyalty and searched for alternatives. He argued that the higher the involvement, thegreater the commitment, and hence, loyalty to the brand. Iwasaki and Havitz (1998)suggested a three-stage model to present the relationship between involvement andbehavioral loyalty. The sequential psychological progress includes the formation of ahigh level of involvement in an activity, then the development of a psychologicalcommitment to a brand, and finally, the maintenance of strong attitudes towardsresisting changes in brand preference. They further argued that involvement wouldbring with it the sunk costs that would further enhance the level of commitment.

Research frameworkParticipating in a virtual community could be seen as an involving activity, motivatedby consumer involvement and presenting a commitment to the brand or product,leading to increased brand loyalty. The motivations and effects of participating in thevirtual community can be moderated by the trustworthiness of the community and theperceived attitude toward the brand contained in the messages within the community.We proposed a framework to illustrate the relationships between involvement, brandloyalty, virtual community participation, trust, and the perceived attitudes of themessages to clarify the value of consumer communities to companies. The researchframework is shown in Figure 1.


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People participate in virtual communities because they have common interests,values, or concerns in discussing specific issues with others (Armstrong and Hagel,1996; Rheingold, 1993). Previous studies have suggested that participation in a virtualcommunity is motivated by a need for information (Romm et al., 1997; Chan et al.,2004). People may join a certain consumer community because they feel the issuesregarding the specific brand are relevant to them. A sense of cognitive involvementwill lead a consumer to search for product-feature information (Bloch and Richins,1983; Beatty and Smith, 1987; Mittal, 1987). A brand community is very likely animportant information resource for consumers (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001). Therefore,we proposed a hypothesis that states:

H1a. The degree of cognitive involvement in a brand will have a positive effect onthe lurking behavior in the virtual consumer community about the brand.

Affective involvement is caused by an individual’s value-expression motives that focuson emotional or aesthetic appeals to express one’s self-image (Park and Young, 1983).An affectively involved person is very likely emotionally bonded with an object thatstands for his/her actual or ideal self-image. Affective involvement may stress aperson’s desire to achieve certain emotional states evoked by that object (McGuire,1974). Highly affectively involved consumers will focus more on symbolic and imagedimensions of a brand and tend to process information related to his/her self-image,and may care more about issues regarding that brand or product. Therefore, weproposed the following hypothesis:

H1b. The degree of affective involvement in a brand will have a positive effect onthe lurking behavior in the virtual consumer community about the brand.

Posting in the virtual consumer community may represent a type of written WOM(Bickart and Schindler, 2001; Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004). Researchers have suggestedthat WOM behavior is motivated by involvement (Engel et al., 1993). Mathwick (2002)also proposed that consumers take part in the community for exchange or communalreasons. Exchange-oriented consumers are willing to contribute to the communitybecause of their obligations to repay others or their expectations of receiving benefitsfrom others in the future. People looking for more information are thus more likely topost in order to sustain the exchange relationship with others and gain moreinformation in the future. Therefore, we proposed that:

H1c. The degree of cognitive involvement in a brand will have a positive effect onthe posting behavior in the virtual consumer community about the brand.

Figure 1.Research framework

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Posting in a virtual community provides affectively involved members a way topresent themselves, build self-image, and promote their beliefs (Cheung et al., 2004Schau and Gilly, 2003). Those who are affectively attached to a brand may enjoymeeting others with the same beliefs and sharing their experiences with them. Peopleare more likely to help others and contribute to the virtual community for communalreasons when they feel that they belong to the same group. Therefore, we proposedthat:

H1d. The degree of affective involvement in a brand will have a positive effect onthe posting behavior in the virtual consumer community about the brand.

The interpersonal communications within a consumer community may influencemembers’ attitudes and preferences toward brand or purchase decisions (Bickart andSchindler, 2001). A customer’s understanding of the product/brand will increase duringthis process. His/her expectations for the product/brand will more likely match actualperformance; this will increase his/her satisfaction and reinforce his/her loyalty to thatbrand or product. Therefore, we hypothesized that:

H2a. The degree of lurking behavior in a virtual consumer community about abrand will have a positive effect on the loyalty to that brand.

The time and effort invested into participating in a community is a sunk cost that willturn into consumer commitment to the brand, and end with loyalty (Iwasaki andHavitz, 1998). Posting requires more effort than lurking. When a consumer has spentmore time in a brand community, he/she will be more likely to have a positive attitudetoward the brand, avoiding the problem of cognitive dissonance. Therefore, weproposed the following hypothesis:

H2b. The degree of posting behavior in a virtual consumer community about abrand will have a positive effect on the loyalty to that brand.

Whether or not a consumer trusts the members in the community may affect his/herwillingness to interact with them (Yoon, 2002). Although consumers’ involvement in abrand can bring them to the community, people will not take part if they do not trustthe community. Therefore, trust in a community might strengthen the relationshipbetween involvement and participation. This leads to:

H3. A consumer’s trust in a community will moderate the effect of theinvolvement on the participation in the virtual consumer community.

Furthermore, messages circulating within a consumer community may be perceivedby participants as having positive or negative attitudes towards the brand that is thefocus of the community. A participant’s perception of the attitude of the messages in acommunity will also affect his/her attitude. Positive endorsements from users wouldhelp promote a company by circulating WOM advertising (Cheung et al., 2004).Similarly, negative messages from unsatisfied consumers could affect the attitudes ofthe other members, thus becoming a threat to companies (Maclaran and Catterall,2002). Negative messages create lower loyalty in the active participants than theinactive ones. Therefore, we hypothesized that the attitude perceived in messagestowards the brand would moderate the effects of participation on brand loyalty.This leads to:


403

H4. The perceived attitude of the messages in the virtual consumer communitywill moderate the effect of participation in the virtual community on brandloyalty.

Studies have suggested that involvement causes psychological commitment to a brand,leading to stronger brand loyalty (Howard and Sheth, 1969; Tyebjee, 1977). Cognitiveinvolvement promotes consumers’ loyalty by increasing the knowledge/informationrelated to the brand’s performance or functions. On the other hand, affectiveinvolvement stresses a person’s achievement of certain emotional states evoked by anobject. Consumers’ loyalty can also be increased when one’s self-image is improved bythe brand. Therefore, we proposed the following two hypotheses:

H5a. The consumer’s cognitive involvement in a brand will have a positive effecton his/her loyalty to that brand.

H5b. The consumer’s affective involvement in a brand will have a positive effect onhis/her loyalty to that brand.

Iwasaki and Havitz (1998) suggested that consumers’ commitment and loyalty couldbe developed while engaged in involving activities. While virtual communityparticipation can be seen as an involving activity on the Internet, a consumer’sinvolvement can increase participation in the community and lead to increased loyaltyto the brand. In order to examine whether consumer participation in virtualcommunities truly benefits companies, we test whether participation could contributeto an explanation of loyalty that goes beyond the explanation of involvement.Therefore, we proposed the following hypothesis:

H6. Participation in the virtual community will have additional explanatorypower in predicting consumer loyalty that beyond consumer involvementalone.

MethodWe conducted an online survey of the members of Frostyplace (www.frostyplace.com)to test the hypotheses we proposed. Frostyplace is a well-known virtual communityof Apple computer users in Taiwan. Founded in 1999, it now draws more than7,000 amateur Apple computer users. Apple is famous for its devoted customers and isoften used to illustrate the value of brand communities (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001;Muniz and Schau, 2005). Inspection of the messages in Frostyplace did not show thatphysical interactions in the real world among members were popular. Scales tomeasure the constructs are shown in the Appendix.

Involvement refers to product involvement in this study and is operationallydefined as one’s perceived personal relevance to Apple computers. The measurementsof both cognitive and affective involvement were adopted from the PersonalInvolvement Inventory (PII) (Zaichkowsky, 1994); ten items of a 7-point semanticdifferential scale were used. Researchers have suggested that attitudinal loyalty is abetter indicator of brand loyalty than behavioral. Therefore, loyalty refers only toattitude in this study. The attitudinal loyalty was measured using scales developed byQuester and Lim (2003); two items were deleted due to semantic problems duringtranslation, resulting in 13, 7-point Likert-type items.

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Participation is defined as an individual’s lurking time per week and posting timeper month. Questions were designed for the most active time period and the presenttime period for both posting and lurking. The perceived attitude of the messagesmeans the subject’s perception of the positive or negative attitudes toward the brand inthe messages in the community. Three items were used to measure the perceivedattitude of the messages within Frostyplace. The first item concerns members’impressions about the attitude of the messages towards Apple computers. The nexttwo items use a 5-point Likert-type scale to measure the perceived frequency of positiveand negative messages in the community.

Trust refers to the members’ trust in other members of Frostyplace and wasmeasured by the items developed by Wong and Sohal (2002). Some items were deleteddue to a translation problem, resulting in eight 7-point Likert-type scale items. Onemore item that asks about members’ willingness to provide personal information toothers in the community was added to include the specific feature of trust in the onlinecommunity (Schoenbachler and Gordon, 2002).

Finally, a dummy variable for product possession, meaning whether the membercurrently owned an Apple product, was used as the control variable because productpossession might affect the other variables in the model. Two stages of pretests wereperformed to develop instruments. First, ten subjects were asked to examine themeaning and correct the wording of items. Then we invited 33 Frostyplace members tofill out an online questionnaire and discussed with them via MSN (MicrosoftMessenger) in order to test the system and procedures.

Members who had posted e-mail addresses or MSN accounts on the Frostyplacemember list were invited to participate in this study. It should be noted that thesubjects were not randomly selected. The sample of members willing to providepersonal contact information could be more active or more trusting of others in thecommunity than the community at large. The survey was conducted via an onlinequestionnaire lasting about five weeks. 430 MSN accounts were obtained and 157 MSNusers were contacted. In the meantime, 1,718 e-mails were sent and 233 invalid e-mailswere returned. Two pairs of questions on participation (P1/P2, P3/P4) served as thecriteria for a valid response. Answers regarding the frequency of lurking and postingin the most active period should not be lower than those in the present period. Finally,350 responses were obtained and 316 of them were valid. The demographics of therespondents and their experiences with Apple computers and Frostyplace are shown inTable I.

ResultsA principal components analysis with orthogonal rotation by varimax method wasconducted to examine the measurement model. Nine factors with eigenvalues largerthan one were extracted and the factor structure is shown in Table II. The itemsregarding trust were separated into two factors. All the positive questions of trust wereloaded in factor 3 and the reversed questions were loaded in factor 5. This resultsuggests that the subjects’ responses to the questions of trust and distrust differed. Wedefined factor 3 as trust and the reversed score of factor 5 as reversed distrust; bothserved as variables that measure trust. Items I1, I5, I8, and A3 were dropped becausethose items were not loaded in predicted constructs. Item I10 was deleted because thedifference between the largest score of factor loading and the second largest was lower


405

than 0.1. Item T3 was deleted to increase the reliability. The Cronbach’s a of variablesare also shown in Table II. All the Cronbach’s a were larger than 0.7, except for thereliability of the perceived attitude of the messages.

Hierarchical regressions were applied to test the research model. Tables III and IVshows the impacts of involvement and trust on lurking and posting, respectively.Model 1 shows that cognitive involvement is positively related to lurking, but theimpact of affective involvement is not significant. The results of Model 5 show that theimpacts of cognitive and affective involvement are not significant. Therefore, H1a issupported but H1b, H1c and H1d are not. Among the four hypotheses regarding theimpacts of involvement on participation, only cognitive involvement was found torelate to lurking. Cognitive and affective involvement do not cause posting. All the R 2

of the four models in Table IV are small, indicating that the independent variablescannot explain posting well. Besides, the fact that there is no relationship betweenaffective involvement and lurking indicates that the value of virtual community mayprimarily be providing information related to functions or performance of the productsto members, instead of facilitating emotional interaction among members. This resultis consistent with previous arguments that state participation in a virtual communityis primarily motivated by the need for information (Romm et al., 1997; Chan et al.,2004).

The direct effects of trust and reversed distrust were added in Models 2 and 6. Themoderate effects of trust and reversed distrust were separately tested using themoderated multiple regression (MMR) procedure in Models 3 and 4 for lurking, and in

Sample Percent

GenderMale 262 82.9Female 54 17.1Age0-20 10 3.221-30 166 52.531-40 123 38.941-50 16 5.1Over 50 1 0.3Product possessionYes 261 82.6No 55 17.4Community experience (years)0-0.5 40 12.70.5-1 67 21.21-2 90 28.52-3 56 17.7Over 3 63 19.9Product experience (years)No 13 4.10-0.5 19 6.00.5-1 43 13.61-3 72 22.8Over 3 169 53.5

Table I.Demographics ofrespondents andrespondents’ experiences

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ComponentItems 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Predicted constructsCognitive involvementI1a 0.62 0.50I2 0.72 c

I3 0.45 0.75I6 0.75I8a 0.65 0.48Affective involvementI4 0.61I5a 0.67I7 0.72I9 0.50 0.62I10a 0.50 0.53Loyalty

L1 0.78L2 0.74L3 0.84L4 0.81L5 0.86L6 0.69 0.41L7 0.86L8 0.89L9 0.62

L10 0.73L11 0.77L12 0.80L13 0.84Perceived attitude of the messagesA1 0.78A2 0.75A3a 0.68TrustT1 0.71T2 0.71T3b 0.61T4 0.75T5 0.41 0.63T6 0.73T7 0.74T8 0.70T9 0.70LurkingP1 0.79P2 0.85PostingP3 0.88P4 0.89Reliabilityd 0.76 0.82 0.82 0.96 0.74 0.77 0.65 0.73

Notes: Suppress absolute values , 0.4; aitem was deleted; bitem was deleted in succeeding analysis toincrease the reliability; citems selected for the construct are shown in italic; dthe Cronbach’s a of themeasures composed of the selected items for the corresponding constructs

Table II.Factor structure of

principal components ofvariables


407

Mod

el1

Mod

el2

Mod

el3

Mod

el4

Var

iab

leb

Tb

tb

tb

t

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183.

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162.

60*

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172.

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t(A

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242

0.03

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452

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512

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(T)

0.15

2.47

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152.

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310.

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0.32

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140

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Notes:

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316;

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2

Table III.The impact ofinvolvement and trust onlurking

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Mod

el5

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el6

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el7

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el8

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440.

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(CI)

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0.18

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0.16

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t(A

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0.04

20.

662

0.05

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842

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3.02

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0.20

3.03

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(TR

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060.

860.

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880.

060.

93C

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T0

0.06

0.95

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0.77

CI0

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R0

0.10

1.68

**

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R0

20.

092

1.49

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23.6

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Notes:

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316;

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6

Table IV.The impact of

involvement and trust onposting


409

Models 7 and 8 for posting to avoid multicollinearity. The problem of multicollinearityis virtually guaranteed in MMR and so the centering mean that subtracted the meanfrom each score prior to transforming into the multiplicative term was used (Aguinis,1995; Cronbach, 1987; Morris et al., 1986). Table III shows that trust affects lurkingdirectly, but both the F-tests for the difference between the R 2 of Models 3 and 2, and ofModels 4 and 2, are not significant. Trust is the only variable related to posting inTable IV. Although the impact of CI00 £ TR0 on posting shows a t-value with p , 0.1,the F-tests for the DR 2 in both models are not significant. The results of Models 3, 4, 7,and 8 indicate that H3 is not supported. As shown in previous studies (Ba and Pavlou,2002), the results also suggest that the impacts of trust and distrust differ. Trust wasfound to directly affect lurking and posting but the moderating effect of trust is notsignificant. This means the impacts of trust and cognitive involvement on lurkingshould be independent. Therefore, increasing consumers’ trust in virtual communitiescould be an effective way to increase participation.

Table V presents the impacts of participation, the perceived attitude of themessages, and involvement on brand loyalty. First, the direct effects of participationwere tested in Model 9. Next, the direct effects of participation, the perceived attitude,and the moderating effects of the perceived attitude were tested in Models 10 and 11.Results from Model 9 indicate that lurking will affect brand loyalty, but the impact ofposting is not significant. Therefore, H2a is supported and H2b is not. This findingagain shows the difference between lurking and posting. Since, the F-tests for the DR 2

in Model 11 are not significant, H4 is not supported. The direct effect of the perceivedattitude of messages on brand loyalty is significant, but smaller than the impact oflurking. Anyway, this result supports the suggestion that negative messages inconsumer communities could threaten a brand’s image (Maclaran and Catterall, 2002).

Since, the impact of posting on loyalty is not significant, we only examined theexplanatory power of lurking for H6. Both cognitive and affective involvements weretested in Model 12 to explain brand loyalty. Lurking was then added in Model 13 toexamine its additional explanatory power. Results from Model 12 show that both H5aand H5b are supported. That the F-test for the DR 2 in Model 13 is significant indicatesthat lurking does contribute to an explanation of brand loyalty that goes beyond theexplanation of involvement, showing that H6 is supported. On the other hand,consumers’ posting behaviors do not increase their loyalty towards the brand.

DiscussionsSome hypotheses were not support in the study. H1b argues that highly affectivelyinvolved consumers will focus more on symbolic and image dimensions of a brand andmay care more about issues regarding that brand or product. However, researchersmay view CMC as an information channel with limited capacity that primarilyfacilitates task-oriented work as opposed to socio-emotional interaction (Daft andLengel, 1984, 1986). Messages in the virtual community may not be able to evoke theemotional states and satisfy the needs of affectively involved consumers. Therefore,affective involvement was found not to relate to lurking behavior.

Both cognitive and affective involvement do not cause posting. Previous studiesshowed that anonymity in the virtual community can decrease the social presence andsocial cues conveyed in interactions (Kiesler et al., 1984; Short et al., 1976; Rutter, 1984),leading to de-individuation and decreasing self-awareness (Rice and Love, 1987).

INTR16,4

410

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Table V.The impact of

participation, trust, andattitude on brand loyalty


411

Impact of the social norm of reciprocity in the CMC environment may decrease.Therefore, although highly cognitively involved consumers may look for moreinformation in the virtual community, they may not be more likely to feel theobligations and willing to repay others in the community. Besides, anonymity in avirtual community may also cause posting not an effective way for affectively involvedconsumers to present themselves and build self-image.

Result of the test of H2b shows a consumer’s posting in the virtual communitycannot increase the loyalty toward the brand. Although posting requires consumers toexpend more effort than lurking, more effort may not lead to a more positive attitudetowards the brand. This finding suggests that members of a community maydiscriminate between loyalty towards the community and loyalty towards the brand(Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001; Muniz and Schau, 2005), and posting probably only relatesto the loyalty towards the community.

The moderating effect of the attitude of messages was found to be insignificant andthe direct effect was small. This finding may also relate to the lack of emotional andsocial bonds in the virtual community. Studies on WOM suggest that WOM messagescan influence consumers’ attitudes because personal sources, that usually are familiarfriends, are viewed as more trustworthy than the information provided by thecompanies (Buttle, 1998; Murray, 1991). However, the sources of messages in thecommunity may not be so trustworthy. Relationships built in the CMC environmenthave often been shown as weak-tie relationships (Cummings et al., 2002; Constant et al.,1996; Pickering and King, 1995). Information that traverses a weak tie has theopportunity to reach more people, and people can encounter more diverse informationsources in the community. However, the impact of this information is weaker than theimpact of information that traverses a strong tie.

ConclusionThis study explored the impact of consumers’ participation in virtual consumercommunities on brand loyalty. Since, posting and lurking behaviors were used as theindicators of active and passive participation, respectively, the results of this studyshow that the causes and effects of active and passive participation differ. Results ofthis study show the model we proposed can’t explain the causes and effects of activeparticipation in a virtual community well. Posting might be motivated by socialfactors, such as pro-social reasons, rather than by personal considerations (Constantet al., 1994; Dholakiaa et al., 2004; Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004). Anyway, this issue isworth being studied in the future.

On the other hand, affected by the special characteristics in the CMC environment,virtual communities may provide information to satisfy the cognitive needs ofmembers, but information in the virtual community cannot satisfy their emotionalbonds with the brand. Findings from this study may suggest that online consumercommunities should be better understood as a forum for strangers to meet andexchange weak-tie WOM messages, rather than as a form of brand communities.McAlexander et al. (2002) emphasized the importance of physical brandfest indeveloping a brand community. Face-to-face contact and nonverbal cues may benecessary for building intimate interpersonal relationships (Bugoon et al., 1984; Knappand Vangelisti, 1992). Accordingly, firms can try to integrate some physical activitiesor artifacts into the community to increase social interactions among members and the

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412

value of the community to the company. The identification of members within thecommunity should also be increased so the community can further satisfy theemotional needs of affectively involved consumers, resulting in higher loyalty.

This study found that lurking behavior in the virtual consumer community doescontribute to an explanation of brand loyalty that goes beyond the explanation ofinvolvement. Although the causal connection between lurking and loyalty is arguable,this result implies that promoting consumers’ participation in consumer communitiesmay increase brand loyalty. Since the impact of lurking and the impact of the perceivedattitude of the messages on loyalty are independent, companies should encourage theestablishment of communities about their products and try to attract consumers toparticipate in virtual communities, even if someone else operates it. Although negativemessages in the community could hurt brand image, it is good for a company whenmore people are interested in, talking about, and taking notice of their products.Furthermore, the impact of lurking on brand loyalty was found to be larger than theimpact of the perceived attitude of the messages. Because increasing consumers’ trustin virtual communities is one way to increase participation, a trustworthy communitythat can encourage people to participate may be better for a company than acommunity that is full of positive messages toward the company.

Finally, limitations of this study should be noted. First, the sampling procedure wasnot random. The subjects included only members who left personal contactinformation. Those people are more active or more trusting than the community atlarge. Although we separated lurkers and posters in this study, people who simplybrowse and hide in the community will not provide any personal information, and arenot included in this study. Second, this study examined only a community of Applecomputer users. According to the FCB involvement grid, products can be classified bywhether their involvement is high or low and whether the motive is utilitarian oremotional (Vaughn, 1986; Ratchford, 1987). Computers belong to the quadrant withhigh involvement and utilitarian motives. Therefore, satisfying information needs maybe the major function of a community for computers. The motivations for and impactof participating in a virtual community may differ for products in other categories.The impact of product type is an issue that should be further investigated.

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Appendix. Measures for the variables

Figure AI.


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Corresponding authorRong-An Shang can be contacted at: [email protected]

Figure AI.

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The value of participation in virtual consumer communities on brand loyalty