| In the era of mobile social media, constructing a steady and continual relationship with consumers becomes the motive force of enterprises' brand marketing communication. With the development of cloud computing and semantic web technology, cross-platform information interaction gets through the gap between users, communities and websites. More and more enterprises build a multi-platform brand community system to achieve a seamless connection with users and endeavor users to share the brand's value and interests. To a certain extent, brand community operational excellence determines whether enterprises can build an excellent brand relationship, achieve the brand value and ultimately enhance the core competitiveness. Therefore, interaction, mutual trust and recognition in online brand community has become an important issue to both practical and theoretical world.In recent years, scholars have discussed the mechanism of online brand community. They focused on individuals and less investigated from the perspective of communities and exogenous variables such as participation motivation,brand experience, perceived values which attracted more attention can apply to non social scenarios. Online brand community is also a kind of social relationship network, so scholars has pointed out that social capital existed in online brand community.They insist that the study of individual behavior should put emphasis on the situational factors such as trust, norms, mutual benefits which formed in the specific social relations network and analyze whether these factors can explain the formation process of the members'attitudes and behaviors better. From that the social capital theory has become a new perspective to study online brand community since it's characteristics is particularly suited to the current social marketing environment.Based on social capital theory, this dissertation studies the social capital of online brand community how to influence individual behavior at the collective research level and explores whether there are media variables that connect the initial variables and the outcome variables in this process. On the basis of literature, this paper divides the basic issues "the mechanism of OBC social capital"into the following sub topics:1) formation process of online brand community social capital; 2) the division of the variable of social capital and the pre influencing factors; 3) the mechanism of online brand community social capital; 4) how should enterprises cultivate the social capital and convert it into the competitive advantage of the brand.Combining with social capital theory with brand relationship theory, this dissertation takes the members of online brand community as the subjects. Conclusions from exploratory case study and questionnaire survey are as following.1. OBC (Online brand community) social capital comes into being mainly through two paths. One is community member's individual social capital which comes from the interaction between members-members or members- brands gradually become a part of OBC social capital through the diffusion effect. As well as the individual social capital formed in other social networks can convert into social capital through a certain system of incentives if it's beneficial to the brand community. The other part is community social capital formed in the construction of system and culture which cause the cumulative effects. The social capital of online brand community is based on social relationship of members, it reflects the psychological process of the members and constructs the social relationship environment of members'behavior. So community members' perception and evaluation can reflect the status of social capital within the community. Meanwhile, OBC social capital which pertains to the organization level factor can be reflected in the individual level. The conclusion enriches the theory of online brand community, and lays a theoretical foundation for the measurement of social capital and its micro efficiency.2. The social capital of online brand community is composed of structural factor (network density), relationship factor (trust, reciprocity) and cognitive factor (common language, shared cognition), which is similar to the elements of traditional social capital. Community platform conditions, members'information production and dissemination capabilities and social atmosphere are three pre influencing factors in the process of social capital formation. Differing from the previous studies, the dissertation divides the OBC social capital into three sub variables based on exploratory case study, which reflects the essence of social capital deeply and entirely.3. The social capital of online brand community affects brand loyalty through community identification and brand identification. Empirical results show that:except the structural factor (network density) that can directly affect oppositional brand loyalty, the other factors'direct impact path is not significant. However, the influence of online brand community social capital on community identification is significant. Relationship factor and cognitive factor have a significant positive effect on brand identification besides structural factor. That community identification has great influence on oppositional loyalty and brand identification partially verified the mediating role of community identification and brand identification in social capital and brand loyalty. This demonstrates that brand loyalty is not only affected by the formal incentive system of enterprises, but also by the online brand community social capital system factors. Especially in the era of social media, sense of identification is an important determinant for brand loyalty, social capital can improve brand loyalty indirectly by promoting community identification and brand identification of members.4. Different elements of online brand community social capital affect indicators of the brand loyalty diversely. The empirical study reveals the following conclusions:network density increases for each 1 unit, general loyalty increases by 0.1 units and oppositional loyalty unit increases by 0.292 units; trust and reciprocity increases for each 1 unit, general loyalty increases by 0.213 units and oppositional loyalty unit increases by 0.092 units; common cognitive increases for each 1 unit, general loyalty increases by 0.419 units and oppositional loyalty unit increases by 0.176 units. Overall, the order of general loyal influenced by different elements of online brand community social capital is common cognitive> trust and reciprocity> network density. The order of oppositional loyal influenced by different elements of online brand community social capital is network density> common cognitive> trust and reciprocity. This shows that the impact of social capital on brand loyalty is not balanced, their roles in the process of influencing brand loyalty may interact because of different intermediary factors. The conclusion confirms it's rational to discuss the mechanism of online brand community social capital from the collective level and garners the influence parameters of OBC social capital on brand loyalty.5. Member involvement mediates the impact of relationship factor on community identification and perceived community-brand fit mediates the impact of community identification on brand identification. The dissertation takes further steps to discuss the impact of individual difference in the process of social capital affecting brand loyalty and explores the moderating effects of levels of involvement and perceived fit. The empirical study reveals that community identification is more affected by relational factor (trust and reciprocity) when the members have deeper involvement in brand community. Further, once members perceived community culture, atmosphere, goals and norms is more consistent with brand goals, positioning and personality, community identification will influence brand identification positively.6. This dissertation concludes there is a certain difference in the mechanism ofsocial capital on brand loyalty due to different initiating type. In the official online brand community which is initiated by enterprises, community identification has a significant direct impact on oppositional loyalty, but the effect isn't distinct in the unofficial community which is initiated by consumers or the third parties. In comparison to the unofficial community, higher identification of community can induce more intensive brand identification in the official brand community.There is also a certain difference in the mechanism of social capital on brand loyalty due to different platform characters. Compared to social community, network density and trust and reciprocity have significantly higher impact on community identification in traditional community. But in social online brand community, common cognition has higher impact on community identification. In traditional online brand community, the stimulating active force of brand identification to oppositional loyalty is 0.287 (P< 0.05) and in social online brand community brand identification hasn't significant impact on oppositional loyalty. Empirical results confirm that we should pay more attention to the impact of community characteristics on brand loyalty during the exploration of the mechanism of OBC social capital.Based on the above conclusions, the study puts forward that OBC social capital has become one of the key advantages of brand relationsip building. So enterprises should convert OBC social capital to the unique competitive advantage and follow the path of "building a multi-platform brand community system--integrating the fragmented communities--cultivating social capital--onverting social capital--controlling the overall balance of different social capital elements" if they want to construct a sustainable brand-consumer relationship.Due to some limitations of the subjective and objective conditions, insufficiencies and inevitable limits exist in this dissertation and related issues can be further studied in the future. |
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