The Research Of Consumers’ Brand Loyalty In Enterprise Microblog

Social media have received much attention in recent years. Microblogging sites provide a platform of information sharing, disseminating, and acquiring based on users’relationships. They have become a popular communication tool in a short period of time. Along with companies’ increasing engagement on microblogging sites, how to leverage the marketing potential of this kind of social platform remains an important concern for many marketers. We carried out two researches to study the brand loyalty of consumers. From the perspective of relationship marketing, the first study was conducted. The result should that the self-congruence of consumers has a significant impact on their loyalty to the brand. Inspired by the result, we further proposed the second model to study consumers’brand loyalty in the sight of brand personality.This first research aims to explore how social-and self-factors may affect consumers’brand loyalty while they follow companies’ microblogs. Drawing upon the commitment-trust theory, social influence theory, and self-congruence theory, we propose that network externalities, social norms, and self-congruence are the key determinants in the research model. The impacts of these factors on brand loyalty will be mediated by brand trust and brand commitment. We empirically test the model through an online survey on an existing microblogging site. The findings illustrate that network externalities and self-congruence can positively affect brand trust, which subsequently leads to brand commitment and brand loyalty. Meanwhile, social norms, together with self-congruence, directly posit influence on brand commitment. Brand commitment is then positively associated with brand loyalty. The purpose of the second research is to address this gap by exploring the effect of brand personality on brand loyalty in companies’ microblogs. Building upon prior research on brand personality, consumer satisfaction, and brand loyalty, we propose and empirically test our research model with an online survey study on an existing microblogging site in China. Our findings show that the four dimensions of brand personality, including sincerity, competence, excitement, and sophistication, have positive impacts on consumer satisfaction, which further increases consumers’ loyalty toward brands. Consumer satisfaction is found to be a key mediator that connects brand personality and brand loyalty in the context of companies’microblogs.We believe that the findings of our research can bring noteworthy implications to both theory and practice. The first research provides new insight on how consumers’ brand loyalty develops from the non-technical factors. It is the first time that two social-factors and consumers’ self-congruence with the brand are brought to the study of brand loyalty in microblogging site. The result showed that the non-technical factors can positively impact consumers’brand loyalty, especially the consumers’ self-congruence. Based on the first research, the second research was carried out to explain how consumers’brand loyalty develops from the perspective of brand personality. The managers of enterprises can also utilize our findings to strengthen their relationship marketing with consumers on microblogging sites.