Participant diversity and expressive freedom in firm-managed and customer-managed brand communities
Document title: Participant diversity and expressive freedom in firm-managed and customer-managed brand communities
Journal: BAR - Brazilian Administration Review
Database:
System number: 000552887
ISSN: 1807-7692
Authors: 1
2
3
4
Institutions: 1Pontifícia Universidade do Rio Grande do Sul, FACE, Porto Alegre, RS. Brasil
2Universidade de São Paulo, FEA, São Paulo, SP. Brasil
3Rice Universtity, Jones Graduate School of Business, Houston. Estados Unidos
4Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, EA, Porto Alegre, RS. Brasil
Year:
Season: Abr-Jun
Volumen: 10
Number: 2
Pages: 195-218
Country: Brasil
Language: Inglés
English abstract We examine differences between firm-managed and customer-managed brand communities with a conceptual model explaining how demographic and psychographic diversity of participants and their degree of expressive freedom engender trust, learning, and identification in the community, and affect firm-relevant outcomes. We test our hypotheses by estimating a structural equation model and conducting multiple sample analysis with survey data obtained from two leading XBOX brand communities in Brazil. Results reveal that greater demographic and psychographic diversity hinder learning and trust in the community's manager, but expressive freedom has a positive impact on identification with the community. The levels of expressive freedom and demographic diversity are lower yet their respective effects are stronger in the firm-managed community, whereas psychographic diversity is much less, but it has stronger negative effects, in the customer-managed community.
Keyword: Brand communities,
Participant diversity,
Expressive freedom,
Consumer behavior
Full text: Texto completo (Ver HTML) Texto completo (Ver PDF)