The impact of consumer personality and social network position on brand community engagement

This research establishes a significant interaction between network position and affective personality traits as they influence affective brand community engagement, which in turn alters branding outcomes in various dimensions. Utilizing content analysis of data from a brand community on Facebook, and an experimental study analyzed with SEM, this research shows that consumers' network positions (central vs. non-central) influence their affective brand community engagement (ABCE) that leads to brand identification, which in turn influences consumers' branding outcomes in attitudinal, behavioral, relational, and network and community dimensions. The findings contribute to the brand management literature by demonstrating that consumers' affective personality traits moderate the positive effect of centrality over non-centrality on ABCE, and that the positive effect of centrality on ABCE disappears when a consumer's (1) emotional-intelligence is low, (2) malicious envy is high, and (3) neuroticism is high. From a broader perspective, this research contributes to the branding literature by showing that communal effects (like network position) on ABCE can be altered by individual-level characteristics. This understanding is fundamental for branding practitioners to create and advance their brand communities for increased brand engagement.