Abstract:

The popularity of Internet has made virtual brand community an important way of brand and product information transmission, where people communicate the brand and product knowledge in the community, express feelings for brands and products. The more members the virtual brand community has, the more knowledge exchange between members and greater effects on brand and product promotion there will be. Therefore, it is of certain significance to explore ways of promoting the virtual brand community to potential members, as well as expanding the number of community members. In this paper, the virtual brand community is classified into knowledge contribution and knowledge acquiring. By incorporating the social capital theory into virtual brand communities, the present paper builds an influence model of knowledge sharing on the promotion of community from the perspective of social capital, and conducts an empirical analysis through the questionnaire survey method. The results show that, in the virtual brand community, social capital exerts positive influence on knowledge donation and knowledge collection, both of which greatly facilitate the community promotion.

Key words: virtual brand communities, social capital, knowledge donation, knowledge collection, community promotion