A survey of brand co-creation and online brand community engagement with U.S. consumers
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The focus of the research is on the application of brand co-creation and online brand community (OBC) engagement as increasingly popular concepts in the areas of branding, brand management, and advertising. A theoretical orientation is developed upon reviewing the literature, definitions of key concepts are provided, and hypotheses are formulated to address the context of U.S. consumers who engage with OBCs on social networking sites (SNSs). Specifically, the research extends understanding of brand co-creation and OBC engagement by empirically examining the influence of perceived brand co-creation and OBC engagement on OBC membership, OBC commitment, and brand loyalty. The present study was motivated by disagreements in the literature over definitions, overlap, and lack of delineation between engagement and co-creation. Additionally, the study observes whether race plays a role in the relationships between brand co-creation, OBC engagement, OBC membership, OBC commitment, and brand loyalty. This was motivated by a general lack of advertising research on African American consumers, who offer a unique cultural perspective that, if investigated, will enhance understanding. Using Qualtrics, 420 responses were collected from a panel of African American and White American SNS users. To the researcher's knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate both brand co-creation and OBC engagement within the context of SNSs. The study contributes to branding and advertising research and practice by examining what an OBC is from the perspective of U.S. consumers, how U.S. consumers co-create brand meaning, the relationship between brand cocreation and OBC engagement, and the impact these psychological processes have on consumers' social identities (i.e. OBC membership), OBC commitment, and brand loyalty. The researcher anticipates that results provide theoretical and practical insights about the adoption and usage of OBCs as part of a larger marketing and communication strategy.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. Copyright held by author.