Advocacy participation and brand loyalty in virtual brand communtity

Abstract

Brand owners use virtual communities to strengthen brand loyalty by engaging consumers in active content creation activities. Personal and reciprocal communication and consumers’ participation in virtual brand communities are the main sources through which communities contribute to brand loyalty formation. This research examines the antecedents and consequences of advocacy participation in virtual brand communities. The results show that the VBC members’ advocacy participation is strongly contributed by the community’s ability to promote reciprocal and personal use experience, which also directly affects the members’ brand satisfaction. The results further show that advocacy participation and participation frequency positively contribute to especially attitudinal loyalty formation. Participation is found to be negatively related with brand satisfaction.