Research On The Influence Of Virtual Brand-Community Interaction On Consumers’ Brand-Purchase Intention

Nowadays, with the rapid development of the Internet and information technologies, Internet applications have been involved in many aspects of people’s social life. There are also tremendous changes in people’s consumption patterns and intension. For example, brand-oriented consumption has gradually been accepted by consumers. Consumers are likely to get together because they have common brand hobbies, resulting in the forming of brand communities. Because of the influence of the Internet, a new kind of brand community appears, which can be called virtual brand community. Virtual brand communities have no interaction limitations in time and space, while compared with traditional brand communities. Consumers can discuss or get information they need through virtual brand communities at any time and any places. Virtual brand communities make consumers have a more comprehensive understanding on the related brands, and elaborate more emotional connections with the brands and other consumers. In this context, it is of practical values for enterprises to study the impact of virtual brand communities on the brand-purchase intention of consumers so as to improve the efficiency in brand management and marketing innovation.This paper aims to study the interaction relationship between virtual brand communities and consumers’ brand-purchase intention. We focus on how virtual brand community interaction (information interaction and human interaction) bring impacts on consumers’ brand-purchase intention. We build a model of community members’ interaction influence on consumers’purchase intention, and explore the intermediary impacts of the sense of community. We perform an investigation on the virtual brand community members and collect a large amount of experimental data. Then, we use the SPSS statistical software to analyze the data and reveal the impact of the proposed model of the interaction relationship between virtual brand communities with consumers’ brand-purchase intention, which is conducted by verifying a few research hypotheses. Through the study of this paper, we show that:(1) virtual brand community interaction can have a direct impact on consumers’ brand-purchase intention. Meanwhile, a sense of community can play an intermediary role between the aforementioned two parts. A sense of community interaction can make difference mediating role between two dimensions of information interaction (information interaction and human interaction) in virtual brand community and consumers’ brand-purchase intention. (2) Further, this paper found that information interactive can have a direct impact on consumers’ brand-purchase intention, and a sense of community can play a part mediating role between them. In addition, human interactive fully mediated by a sense of community significantly influences consumers’ brand-purchase intention.This paper conducted an integrated study on virtual brand community interaction, consumer purchase intention, and other research hotspots. We hope the study of this paper can enrich the theories of brand management and marketing science-related fields. Our study is also expected to offer some referential values for Chinese enterprises to improve the management of virtual brand community and enhance the development of brand management and marketing strategies.