The importance of eWOM (electronic word-of-mouth) communication through online communities is increasing on a daily basis. This study analyzed how the relationship between eWOM (electronic Word-Of-Mouth) factor and eWOM communication depends on the cultural orientation of users in the online community. The research model was developed based on four cultural orientations of individual affect Social tie and usefulness. The model consists of variables such as social tie and perceived usefulness as predecessors of eWOM, four dimensions of cultural orientation (Horizontal Individualism, Horizontal Collectivism, Vertical Individualism, Vertical Collectivism), and eWOM. The model was tested empirically using the PLS (partial least squares) structure equation model. Survey was conducted for online community users in South Korea. Data was statistically validated whether fits on research model. The study results reveal that Social Tie have a positive effect on Perceived Usefulness. Social Tie and Perceived Usefulness have a positive effect on eWOM. 3 of cultural orientations (HC, VI, VC) have a positive effect on Social Tie. Only one of cultural orientations (HC) have an negative effect on Perceived Usefulness. Especially, horizontal collectivism (HC) shows strong correlation with perceived usefulness, whereas vertical collectivism (VC) shows weak correlation with perceived usefulness andvertical individualism (VI) shows strongly correlation with social tie, whereas horizontal individualism (HI) shows weak correlation with social tie. Based on the study results, customized service strategy could be formulated according to the different vertical styles and various eWOM factors.

오늘날 오프라인뿐만 아니라 온라인에서도 집단을 형성하고 집단 활동이 활발히 이루어지고 있다. 오프라인 집단의 경우 인지부조화 이론에 따라 초기 가입절차가 집단에 대한 태도에 어떤 영향을 미치는지에 관한 연구들이 진행되어온 반면, 아직 온라인 집단에 관해 가입절차가 집단에 대한 태도에 미치는 영향은 연구된 바가 미비하다. 따라서 본 연구는 온라인 집단으로 대표되는 온라인 커뮤니티를 대상으로 가입절차로 인해 유발되는 인지부조화가 온라인 커뮤니티에 대한 태도에 어떤 차이를 유발하는지 살펴보았다. 더 나아가 기존 회원과의 지각된 유사성이 큰지 작은지 정도에 따라 인지부조화로 인해 유발되는 태도 변화가 어떻게 달라질 수 있는지 알아보았다. 가입절차는 가입절차 없음, 간단한 가입절차, 복잡한 가입절차의 세 수준으로 나뉘었으며, 지각된 유사성은 참가자의 현재 BMI와 목표 BMI간의 차이로 측정하였다. 또한 지각된 정보 원천의 신뢰성, 지각된 정보의 질, 만족도, 정보 유용성, 지속 사용 의향을 종속변 인으로 태도의 차이를 살펴보았다. 연구 결과, 기존 집단에 관한 인지부조화 이론과는 반대로 지각된 정보 원천의 신뢰성, 지각된 정보의 질, 만족도에 관해서는 가입절차 조건에 따른 차이가 없었으며, 정보 유용성과 지속 사용 의향의 경우는 가입절차가 가장 복잡할 때 가장 부정적인 태도를 보였다. 또한 지각된 유사성이 높을수록 더 긍정적인 태도를 보였다. 흥미로운 점은 지각된 유사성에 따라 가입절차로 유발된 인지부조화의 영향이 달랐다는 것인데, 지각된 유사성이 높은 집단에서는 가입절차가 있을 때 더 긍정적인 태도를 보인 반면, 지각된 유사성이 낮은 집단은 가입절차가 아예 없을 때 더 긍정적인 태도를 보이는 경향이 나타났다. 본 연구의 결과를 바탕으로 이후 온라인 커뮤니티의 특성에 따라 보다 알맞은 회원가입 절차를 디자인 할 수 있을 것이다.

This research was conducted with the aim to reveal the influence of online travel communities on tourism destinations choice, with the focus on the Russian tourism market. The preliminary results indicated that social media has significant influence on consumer behaviour and decision-making process of Russian travellers. Still, there is additional activity of Russian tourist market actors is needed to more fully use the opportunities of online travel communities.

The study of online brand communities is inseparable from the concept of customer engagement. The purpose of this study is to conjoin these two emerging research streams in tourism. Past studies relevant to customer engagement in online communities consider it from only brand perspective, whereas this study considers engagement with brand and engagement with community separately. Social identity and user gratification perspective are used to develop framework in building brand relationship quality. The context of the study is to throw light on benefit of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) on tourism industry in Pakistan. The CPEC is a mega-project between Pakistan and China, worth more than 54 billion US dollars. The Framework was verified using the data collected from several Facebook pages (official and unofficial). This study contributes in understanding the way to enhance brand relationship quality of tourism brand via social media based online communities. This study also validates the customer brand engagement scale consisted of seven dimensions within tourism brand proposed by Dessart, Laurence (2016). The results of this study indicated that community identification has a significant role in engaging customer with community as brand community engagement and with brand as customer brand engagement. Customer brand engagement further enhances brand relationship quality whereas brand community engagement has an insignificant effect on brand relationship quality. This study also provides insight to practical and further research implication.

The paper proposes an analytical approach that explores brands in virtual environments by combining indicators of consumer brand alignment with measurements of social engagement. The results illustrated can be useful to devise adjustments to brand communication. The analysis is applied to brands belonging to the fashion industry.

Social media are increasingly becoming a strategic vehicle of modern companies’ way of communicating and interacting with consumers. Actually, social media marketing (SMM) has recently emerged as an effective two-way communication channel able to provide the sharing and exchange of information, ideas, and user-generated content in virtual environments. This is especially true for fashion brands, which are progressively creating interactive platforms such as online brand communities in order to enhance their consumer-based brand equity (CBE), interpreted as the consumers’ assessment of a company brand image, identity, and value. Scholars have widely analyzed the relationship between a company’s SMM and brand equity, thus finding a direct positive impact of the five main constructs depicting perceived SMM activities, namely entertainment, interaction, trendiness, customization, and word of mouth, on CBE. Despite this relevant scholarly interest, the consumer behavioral responses linking a company perceived SMM activities and CBE have been largely neglected. Actually, consumers’ benefits from virtual environments and online brand experience may represent significant elements marketing strategists should focus on in order to enhance a company’s brand equity. Building on the uses and gratifications theory and experiential marketing, we develop a conceptual model that unpacks such linkages, by relating SMM activities, perceived benefits of using social media, online brand experience, and CBE. Specifically, we interpret SMM activities as significant brand-related stimuli able to influence consumers’ cognitive, social interactive, personal interactive, and hedonic benefits, which in turn influence consumers’ sensory, affective, behavioral, and intellectual online experience. Moreover, we investigate the experiential responses of consumers that mostly affect a company’s brand equity, which finally impacts on consumers’ purchase intention of the fashion brand. The model is validated using structural equation modeling (SEM) on a sample of real users of online brand communities operating in the fashion industry. Our sample is composed of Millennials, which currently represent the most influential grown-digital generation of consumers. Overall, our findings shed light on consumers’ online behavioral and experiential responses to a company’s perceived SMM activities, thus proposing strategic implications for the management of brand online communities and suggesting interesting possibilities of future research on social media and fashion consumers.

This study uses ingratiation theory (Jones, 1964) to investigate the specificity of online luxury brand communities, using an observational netnography. We analyse and discuss the diverging strategies held by low and high power community members, and the role played by flattery in maintaining and gaining status in the community.

New communication challenges for companies that use social media are: 1) the knowledge and control of the degree of alignment between communicated and perceived brand personality in order to measure the effectiveness of competitive positioning, and 2) the measurement of engagement among consumers who share comments about brands in online communities. Our research proposes research tools that can help fashion companies meet these challenges. In particular, we present an innovative methodological approach that combines netnography and text-mining to extract and analyze data from online communities of fashion brands.

The purpose of this study is to derive factors affecting online game developers’ knowledge adoption in third-party online game user communities(OGUCs) and suggest a research model for the future empirical study. To accomplish this goal, we conduct an exploratory case study grounded on one of famous OGUCs operated by the third party company. Based on the heuristic systematic model(HSM) and interviews with three experienced online game developers, we identified three poster-related heuristic factors(reputation, experience, and participation level), three posting-related heuristic factors(the number of views, the number of comments, and the number of recommendations), and three posting-related systematic factors(knowledge quality, degree of disconfirmation, and degree of referencing) that influence developers’ knowledge adoption. We further developed measures for these influencing factors and suggested a research model with five propositions for the future empirical study. We conclude with discussing theoretical and practical implications, along with future research of the study.