Investigating the brand evangelism effect of community fans on social networking sites. Perspectives on value congruity
| Published date | 09 September 2019 |
| Date | 09 September 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-06-2017-0187 |
| Pages | 842-866 |
| Author | Li-Chun Hsu |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Bibliometrics,Databases,Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet,Records management & preservation,Document management |
Investigating the brand
evangelism effect of community
fans on social networking sites
Perspectives on value congruity
Li-Chun Hsu
Department of Cultural Resources and Leisure Industries,
National Taitung University, Taitung, Taiwan
Abstract
Purpose –Many enterprises recognize that social media is a valuable source of information propagation for
brands. Using the self-congruity and social identity theories as theoretical bases, the purpose of this paper is
to develop an integrated conceptual model and explore the effects of brand-evangelism-related behavioral
decisions of enterprises on virtual community members.
Design/methodology/approach –This study targeted community members who had purchased a specific
cosmetic brand’s products and had been members of an official brand fan page for at least one year. Using a
survey of 488 valid samples and structural equation modeling was used to conduct path analyses.
Findings –The results indicated that seven hypothetical paths were supported and exhibited desirable
goodness of fit. Value congruity can be used to explain effects of dual identification on various relationships.
Relationships among variables of brand evangelism are not independent. Specifically, the effect of brand
purchase intentions on positive brand referrals is higher than that on oppositional brand referrals.
Practical implications –The findings can help brand community managers to adopt innovative and
effective strategies to gain community members’identification and maintain a desirable relationship between
business and community members. In addition, this study should help marketers to increase the opportunity
of maximizing the brand evangelism effect.
Originality/value –This study contributes to the understanding for multiple perspectives of value
congruity and adopts the extension viewpoint to understand community members not only have brand
value and self-congruity problems but also have community membership goals and values related to the
fit problem.
Keywords Social identity theory, Social networking sites, Brand fan page, Value congruity,
Brand evangelism effect, Dual identification
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Studies have indicated the importance of spreading messages through social media
(Kietzmann et al., 2011; Schivinski and Dąbrowski, 2013) and building strong consumer–
brand relationships (Yoshida et al., 2018; Coelho et al., 2018). According to the 2014 Social
Media Marketing Industry Report published on the Social Media Examiner website,
92 percent of marketers asserted that social media is crucial for their business, compared
with 86 percent in 2013. In addition, a HubSpot Report (2017) indicated that the top three
social media marketing benefits are increased exposure (92 percent), increased traffic
(80 percent) and enhanced brand loyalty (at least 70 percent). Evidently, social media is
regarded as a powerful marketing tool that not only affects consumer purchasing decisions
but also yields brand evangelism and ripple effects (Cheema and Kaikati, 2010; Huang et al.,
2011). In addition, social networking fans can effectively spread positive word of mouth and
defend brand behavior (Vries et al., 2012).
Studies investigating business community Facebook pages have indicated that over
50 percent of internet users express opinions about a brand on its fan page (Van Belleghem
et al., 2011; Chih et al., 2013). According to a Syncapse (2013) publication titled “The Value of
a Facebook Fan 2013: Revisiting Consumer Brand Currency in Social Media,”brand users
Online Information Review
Vol. 43 No. 5, 2019
pp. 842-866
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-06-2017-0187
Received 20 June 2017
Revised 2 May 2018
12 August 2018
Accepted 28 October 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
842
OIR
43,5
and group members who are fans are more concerned with post content than are group
members who are not fans. In addition, brand users and group members who are fans had
an 80 percent degree of acceptance, a consumption proportion of over 43 percent, and
willingness to recommend the brand of over 25 percent.
Maintainingstrong relations throughcommunity fan platforms is the most effectivemeans
of managing brand marketing. From a self-branding congruity perspective, consumers’
favorite brands can be defined and self-characteristics can be generated while consumers
emerge as self-overlapping. A brand fan page can establish and maintain the relationship
between its members and the brand (McAlexanderet al., 2002) and expand the relationship to
one between consumers and the brand (Muñiz and O’Guinn, 2001; Bagozzi and Dholakia,
2002; Dholakia et al., 2004). However, few studies have explored this idea from the multiple
perspectives of valuecongruity (e.g. Hedhli et al., 2017; Shamahet al., 2018). Kaur et al. (2018)
have utilized consumption value theory (CVT) as theoretical framework for understanding
social mediauser’s behavior from India.Le (2018) investigatedthe characteristics of user posts
on online engagementbehaviors from discussionforums to Facebook. Therefore,the literature
does not reflect the combination of brand and self-concept (Fetscherin and Heinrich, 2015), it
reflects only brands for consumers that contain capacities for “real self”and“ideal
self”(Mohammadian and Karimpour, 2014; Wang et al., 2015) or “functional-congruity”and
“self-image congruity”(Su and Reynolds, 2017).
This study explored multiple perspectives of value congruity and adopted an extension
viewpoint to understand whether a consumer exists through a brand as a self-expression of
his or her unique taste. In addition, the study focused on levels of the relationship between
self (customer) and brand to understand a brand’s value congruity from the consumer’s
perspective in terms of brand identity, as well as the subsequent effect on brand behavior.
One study explored consumer decisions affected by self-congruity (Aguirre-Rodriguez et al.,
2012). Extended to a community context, prospective community members have not only
brand value and self-congruity problems but also community membership goals and values
related to the fit problem. Furthermore, the objective of a community is to provide fans with
access to a community of enthusiasts with value identity to shape their consciousness. The
present study considered “value congruity of self-community”(VCSC) factors. Although
previous studies have considered interactions between consumers and brands (Casaló et al.,
2013; Coelho et al., 2018; Phua and Kim, 2018; Zhang and Bloemer, 2008), the possible value
consistency of consumer-to-consumer (C2C) relationships has seldom been explored. Hence,
the present study advocated brand community research on this phenomenon to compensate
for this gap in the literature. According to social identity theory, although the majority of
studies have found that brand identification (Ailawadi et al., 2008; Lin et al., 2018; Huang,
2017), fan identification (Gwinner and Swanson, 2003), company identification (Huang et al.,
2017) and loyalty are closely interrelated, few studies have investigated the brand
recognition that divides self-identification and social identification (e.g. Hsu et al., 2012).
Brand fan group members not only strengthen a brand through community interactions and
self-concepts of the value of identity but also strengthen their social identity as contributors
to the promotion of self-value, thereby enabling social identity development among
members to serve as an aspect of the community and providing members with a sense of
belonging (Qu and Lee, 2011). Studies have primarily considered this idea from the
dimension of self-identity (Bauer et al., 2007; Martínez and Rodríguez del Bosque, 2013;
Gannon et al., 2017) or as one aspect of social identity (Chiu et al., 2013; Yoo et al., 2013; Kaye
et al., 2017). Therefore, the present study proposed that social identification could be more
complete and precise, and advocated that self-identification and social identification should
be simultaneously considered in a model.
Regarding the behavioral outcomes of fan members due to brand evangelism,
studies have indicated that consumers’love of brands leads to positive brand referrals
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Brand
evangelism
effect of
community fans
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