Research On The Influence Of Flow Experience On Virtual Brand Community Loyalty

In the era of Internet-based digital marketing communications,consumers' initiative is enhanced.Consumers pay attention to experience and form various relationships in interactions,resulting in a shift in marketing communication concepts.Brand community marketing is one of the most important contents of digital marketing communication.With the perspective of flow experience theory,this study takes virtual brand community loyalty as the research object and analyzes the influencing factors and processes of virtual brand community loyalty and also puts forward promotion strategies through online ethnography,interview survey,literature research and case analysis.The factors that influence the flow experience on the loyalty of virtual brand community are mainly three aspects: the personal factors of the members,the brand itself and the virtual brand community factors.Personal factors of members include personality traits,personal needs,role identity and so on;brand factors include product or service quality,brand spokespersons,brand value concept and its communication and so forth;virtual brand community factors include community atmosphere,community relations,community activities and so on.These factors have resulted in four levels of virtual brand community loyalty: passive loyalty,firm loyalty,fanatic loyalty and resistance loyalty.In addition,the influence of flow experience on virtual brand community loyalty includes positive and negative directions,in which the process of promotion and deepening is positive while the process of distortion is negative.Flow experience of focused attention,interactive experience,and sense of goal control can contribute to community loyalty;the joy of the results and process about the flow experience leads to the repetition of behaviors,which positively deepens community loyalty;the excessive pursuit of the pleasure of the flow experience negatively distorts community loyalty and leads to community fanaticism.Based on the flow experience theory,the emergence of flow experience,the improvement of loyalty dimension and the regulation of community loyalty boundary are the three strategies to enhance the loyalty of virtual brand community.Strategies for generating the flow experience includes giving target needs and feedback,deepening the understanding of the community and optimizing the interactiveexperience;to improve the level of community loyalty,it is necessary to realize community investment,strengthen perception and promote identity through event ceremony,community value and community cohesion;the regulation of community loyalty boundary is achieved through regulatory constraints within the community and coordinated intervention outside the community.