Effect of Online Brand Community on Customer Behavior Exploration: Reconciling Mixed Findings via Regulatory Focus Theory

Ji Wu, Liqiang Huang, J. Leon Zhao, Zhongsheng Hua
2014 International Conference on Information Systems  
This study seeks to address the mixed findings of prior studies regarding the effect of online brand community on customer value. Based on the regulatory focus theory, we hypothesize that participation in a brand community tend to increase both visit and purchase frequencies of customers with promotion-focus; on the contrary, the same would typically decrease visit and purchase frequencies of customers with preventionfocus. By analyzing data from an online brand community using a
more » ... re matching" technique, we found a partial validation that attendance of the community led to increases in customer visit frequency for customers with both promotion-focus and prevention-focus. Further, our results show that customers with promotion-focus tend to purchase more; while customers with prevention-focus slightly decreased their purchase volume. Both theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed in the paper.
dblp:conf/icis/WUHZH14 fatcat:g5yjrjf52vhy5lcasswybjxctq