A Research On The Impact Of Perceived Usefulness Of Online Reviews On Customer Engagement In Virtual Brand Community

With the continuous development of social media,the interaction between customers and brands is more diversified and more convenient.As one of the important online communication platforms,the virtual brand community provides a good channel for customers to obtain brand and product information online.At the same time,customers can also express their views and opinions and interact effectively with other users.Therefore,the virtual brand community can not only meet the functional needs of customers for browsing information to help decision-making,but also form a brandbased emotional relationship among members,to promote the generation of customer engagement.Among them,the content of online reviews is a key part of influencing other consumer’s behavior,but the importance of each review is not the same.So,what kind of online reviews are more important,and what kind of impact the perceived usefulness of reviews has on customer engagement is a question worth discussing.Firstly,this thesis introduces the purpose and significance of the research,combs the relevant literature at home and abroad to analyze and summarize the existing research,and clarifies the main ideas and methods of the research.Secondly,on the basis of information overload theory,information availability and diagnostic theory,social exchange theory and information system continuous use theory,this thesis defines the basic concepts of relevant variables and puts forward research hypotheses,then constructs a research model with the perceived usefulness of online reviews as independent variable,community identity as mediator variable,self-efficacy as moderator variable and customer engagement as dependent variable.Thirdly,based on relevant scholars’ research,from the two perspectives of functional usefulness and emotional usefulness,the critical event method is used to identify the perceived usefulness factors of online reviews that affect consumers’ continuous use of the community.Lastly,taking college students as samples,the first experiment conductes a comparative experiment on perceived usefulness(perceived functional usefulness vs.perceived emotional usefulness);the second experiment conductes the 2(perceived usefulness: perceived functional usefulness vs.perceived emotional usefulness)× 2(self-efficacy: high vs.low)groups of experiments,all of them adopt online experiments.The experimental results show that in the virtual brand community,perceived functional usefulness and perceived emotional usefulness of online reviews both have a positive impact on customer engagement;community identity plays a significant mediating role,in which brand identity plays a mediating role between perceived functional usefulness of online reviews and customer engagement,while group identity plays a mediating role between perceived emotional usefulness of online reviews and customer engagement.At the same time,self-efficacy plays a regulatory role between perceived usefulness and customer engagement,when the perceived functional usefulness of online reviews is stronger,consumers with high self-efficacy can generate higher customer engagement;when the perceived emotional usefulness of online reviews is stronger,consumers with low self-efficacy can generate higher customer engagement.This thesis explores the impact of the perceived usefulness of online reviews on customer engagement,and puts forward some suggestions: managers can use various ways to motivate members to publish reviews containing useful factors,to enhance users’ usefulness perception,and to stimulate community identity and continuous use willingness,which can help form customer engagement.