Abstract:

With the development of Social Network Service and We Media, virtual brand community has become a typical platform of value co-creation and customer has become a core subject of value co-creation. In this respect, more and more enterprises have begun to take the initiative to build virtual brand community for strengthening the contact between them and the customers and to create brand loyalty. but the question that how customer influences virtual brand community still lacks of clear cognitive until now. For customer, obtaining experience value is their purpose and final appeal of value co-creation，and customer loyalty is a key factor to promote their sustainable development for enterprise/platform. Then, what experience values do customer acquire by interacting with enterprise/platform and other customers? Virtual brand community is a common carrier of community and brand，and what dimensions is customer loyalty made up of ? How do customer experience values drive customer loyalty? In this paper, these problems are studied by adopting the method of empirical research. In order to testify our model ,we recruit survey online via virtual brand community of a famous cell-phone company ，one of a famous computer company and other ones in China. In the process,429 valid samples are obtainer to test our hypotheses. Based on the survey data, we firstly check the reliability and validity of measurement and employ the structural equation to examine the proposed model. The results show that, under the situation of virtual brand community, customer mainly gains three dimensions’ experience values, namely: practical value, entertainment value and social value; secondly, customer loyalty of virtual brand community mainly includes community loyalty and brand loyalty; thirdly, practical value and social value not only promote customer to be loyal to community, but also drive customer to be loyal to brand, and their influence on community loyalty is greater than on brand loyalty, but entertainment value does not significantly effect on community loyalty and brand loyalty; lastly, the effect of practical value and social value on community loyalty are fully mediated by the effect of brand loyalty, and the effect of practical value and social value on brand loyalty are fully mediated by the effect of community loyalty. The research conclusions provide scientific base for enterprise/platform to promote its sustainable development and brand construction.

Key words: Virtual brand community, Customer experience value, Value Co-creation, Brand loyalty, Community loyalty