Research On The Influence Of Network Embeddedness On Customer Engagement In Virtual Brand Community

The development and application of Internet technology has promoted the transformation from product-led logic to customer-led logic in the modern commercial economy.In the era of social media,the virtual brand community relying on the network platform with the brand as the core has become an important field for enterprises to strengthen the relationship between enterprises and carry out brand marketing.Virtual brand community has the advantages of super time and space,low cost and high efficiency.Customers in the community can obtain relevant information of brand and product and emotional support from other customers through interaction,occupy a certain position in the community network and establish social relations;enterprises can obtain customers’ creativity and opinion feedback,guide customers to participate in product design,testing and other links,and enhance their competitiveness.However,in the enterprise practice,there are a large number of "diving" customers in the virtual brand community,who fail to really participate in the community interaction,and the lack of customer engagement,resulting in the depression and even failure of the community atmosphere.Customer engagement goes beyond the customer purchase and transaction process,and can establish and maintain a positive customer-brand relationship,bringing great value to the enterprise.In the virtual brand community,customer engagement is the result of continuous multiple interaction with other customers in the community network.The network embeddedness describes the characteristics of customers’ environment as the key factor affecting customer engagement.Existing research pays less attention to the influence of network embeddedness on customer engagement,and the formation path of customer engagement is unclear;enterprises lack theoretical guidance to stimulate customer engagement and improve community operation performance.Based on the above analysis,this paper studies the influence of virtual brand community network embeddedness on customer engagement,and introduces community identity as an intermediary variable.This paper first sort out and summarize the relevant literature,clarify the concepts and dimensions of related variables,discuss the influence relationship between variables from the dimension level,build a conceptual model and put forward research hypotheses.Secondly,the initial questionnaire was formed on the basis of the mature scale and the expert interview,and the pre-survey was conducted and the formal questionnaire was determined.Finally,506 valid questionnaires were obtained to conduct the quality assessment and empirical analysis of the data.The empirical results show that:(1)structure embeddedness,relationship embeddedness and culture embeddedness positively affect customer affect engagement and customer behavior engagement,among which the influence strength of structure embeddedness is the greatest;(2)structure embeddedness and relationship embeddedness positively influence self identity and social identity,cultural embeddedness only has a positive impact on social identity without being verified on self identity;(3)self identity and social identity positively affect customer affect engagement and customer behavior engagement;(4)Both structure embeddedness and relationship embeddedness can influence the two kinds of customer engagement through self identity and social identity.Culture embeddedness can only influence customer engagement through social identity,and self identity can play no role in the influence of cultural embeddedness on customer engagement.In this paper,virtual brand community network embeddedness,as the entry point,explores the direct impact of three forms of network embeddedness on customer affect engagement and customer behavior engagement,and also discusses the mediating role of hierarchical community identity.The research results clarify the influence path between variables,enrich the research on customer engagement from a new perspective,and provide theoretical reference and practical suggestions for enterprises to promote customer engagement,consolidate customer-brand relationship,and give full play to the value of virtual brand community.