Customer Engagement in Online Brand Communities, Value Co-creation and Co-destruction Directly and Indirectly Effects: An Abstract

Abstract

At present, customer engagement in brand communities and value co-creation have increasingly grown into two focal areas in marketing research (Merrilees 2016). This study aims to examines, in online brand communities, the direct and indirect relationship between customer engagement and value co-creation and value co-destruction. The purpose of this study is twofold: firstly, to examine the direct effects from customer engagement in online brand communities to value co-creation and co-destruction; and second, to explore the indirect mediating effects from brand resonance and attitudinal brand loyalty as well as the moderating effect from brand satisfaction in the online brand communities. The quantitative method will be used to test the proposed model. An online questionnaire survey will be applied for gather data in online brand communities. Structure equation modelling with partial least squares (PLS-SEM) will be performed to examine both the measurement model and the structural model. Expected results are that the positive relationship between customer engagement in online brand communities and brand resonance, attitudinal brand loyalty, value co-creation and co-destruction (Hollebeek et al. 2019; Pansari and Kumar 2017; Ranjan and Read 2014). Brand resonance has a positive relationship with value co-creation and a negative relationship with value co-destruction. Attitudinal brand loyalty has positive relationship with value co-creation and a negative relationship with value co-destruction. In the proposed model, both brand resonance and attitudinal brand loyalty take the mediating roles, and brand satisfaction plays a moderating role. This study provides a theoretical significance for further investigation of customer engagement in online brand communities, adds to the literature on brand satisfaction, brand resonance and attitudinal brand loyalty, and will likely drive further research into value co-creation and co-destruction in the context of online brand communities. In particular, brand satisfaction, as a moderating variable, is introduced into the discussion of customer brand engagement in online community. It expands the theoretical research on customer brand engagement marketing and clarifies the important role of value co-creation and co-destruction (Quach and Thaichon 2017). The expected results would suggest brand marketers should focus more on customers’ affective, cognitive, behaviour reflections, subtly using customer experience resource that leads to brand resonance and increases attitudinal brand loyalty, thereby inspiring value co-creation and avoiding value co-destruction (Thaichon et al. 2019).