A Study On The Evolutionary Mechanism Of Motivations In The Formation Of Online Brand Community Members' Sustained Participation Behavior

Successful online brand communities can create tremendous value for businesses and consumers. The key to decide the success of online brand communities is whether the participation behavior of community members can be sustained.However, there has been no clear distinction between the initial participation behavior and the sustained participation behavior in most existing researches.Furthermore, most existing researches adopted static research methods based on a certain time point, which can not capture the changes of community members' participation behavior and participation motivations. Therefore, these research results can not effectively guide the managers to develop and encourage the sustained participation behavior of online brand community members.In view of this, this study uses the grounded theory focused on the dynamic process to explore the evolutionary mechanism of motivations in the formation of online brand community members' sustained participation behavior. Firstly, this study introduces related concepts and summarizes existing research findings about online brand community members' participation behavior and sustained participation behavior so as to define the research perspective and research questions more clearly.Secondly, under the guidance of grounded theory research, this study selected Xiaomi mobile community members as the research sample and collected data by the depth interview.This study used grounded theory for data processing and constructed the model of evolutionary mechanism of motivations in the formation of online brand community members' sustained participation behavior.Finally,this study uses the self-determination theory to explain the formation mechanism of online brand community members' sustained participation behavior, namely explain why and how the online brand community members' sustained participation behavior change.The results show that the formation of members' sustained participation behavior are outcomes of community members' motivation continuously being internalized and self-determined under the effect of external situational factors and the satisfaction of individual psychological needs. Specifically, the motivations of initial participation are mainly external regulated, including informational motivation and instrumental motivation. Subsequently, reference groups, face perception and key events facilitate the introjection of motivations. The driving effect of initial motivations weakens, but motivation for activity awards, social motivation, socialenhancement and altruistic motivation become the main driving force for members to participate in and contribute to online brand communities. Finally, the satisfaction of members' competence and relatedness facilitate members' attachment for brands,individuals and communities, which leads to the formation and maintenance of members' sustained participation behavior.