Antecedents and Consequences of Online Brand Community Participation: A Conceptual Framework

In recent years, brand communities have generated considerable interest among both researchers and marketers. This article presents a conceptual framework of antecedents and consequences of online brand community participation and proposes five motives as antecedents of participation (information, self-discovery, social integration, social enhancement, and entertainment). Also proposed are two broad, but separate, types of consequences of participation (community consequences [consciousness of kind, moral responsibility, and shared rituals and traditions] and brand consequences [sustainable brand loyalty, oppositional brand loyalty, and brand recommendation intention]). Length of membership is proposed as a moderator between participation and the three community consequences. The proposed conceptual framework can facilitate managers' establishing online brand communities and attracting participation of members, as well as development of a research program to develop scales for the various constructs in order to test the propositions.