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Impact of Online Brand Community Characteristics on Brand Loyalty of Consumers of Pakistan
Journal of Social Sciences and Media Studies Vol. 02 Issue No. 01 55
IMPACT OF ONLINE BRAND COMMUNITY CHARACTERISTICS ON BRAND
LOYALTY OF CONSUMERS OF PAKISTAN
Asif Hussain Samo
1
, Rumessa Rani2 , Preet Fatima3
Abstract
Online brand communities are fading the barriers between the producers and consumers. They
are creating change in purchasing behavior of consumers. Online brand community
characteristics are studied internationally. Companies in Pakistan are also making brand
communities from past few years to create the customer bond with brand. The aim of this study is
to identify the impact of online brand community characteristics, information, rewards for
activities and interaction, on brand loyalty. This study is based on quantitative approach and the
data was collected from the sample of 326 internet users of Pakistan with survey method through
adopted questionnaire. The linear Regression method is used for the measurement and to test the
hypothesis. The results suggest that online brand community characteristic, information, has
positive moderate impact on the brand loyalty. Other two characteristics, interaction, and reward,
shows week impact on brand loyalty. This has implication for marketers in Pakistan to focus on
information characteristic in online brand community programs, it also provides background for
further studies in this regard.
Keywords: Online brand community characteristics; interaction; Information; Reward for
activities; brand loyalty.
Introduction
A community is made up of group of peoples who have some common norms, values,
religion, and identity (Muniz, Jr. & O’Guinn, 2001). A community can be identified with the help
of three factors which are locality, social interaction, and bond. Community locality differentiates
one community from another community. Social interaction is one of the important factors.
Through social interaction, relationship among community members is build. Bond defines the
sense of relatedness and it gives comfort to community members when they are in community
(Jang, Olfman, Ko, Koh, & Kim, 2008). The word which community theorists used is sense of
community (SOC). Without SOC satisfaction, commitment and loyalty cannot be created among
the community members. SOC is considered, sometimes, as a definition of community or outcome
of the living in the community. They are also made on the base of interest. “Highly particular and
1
Lecturer in Department of Business Administration at Sindh Madressatul Islam University,
Karachi
asif.samo@smiu.edu.pk
2 Student in Department of Business Administration at Sindh Madressatul Islam University,
Karachi, Pakistan
Rumessarani2015@gmail.com
3Student in Department of Business Administration at Sindh Madressatul Islam University,
Karachi, Pakistan
Preetfatima296@gmail.com
Impact of Online Brand Community Characteristics on Brand Loyalty of Consumers of Pakistan
Journal of Social Sciences and Media Studies Vol. 02 Issue No. 01 56
localized” (McMillan, 1996). For community description, McMillan and Chavis SOC descriptive
framework has worldwide acceptance because of qualitative empirical support and theoretical
based. The framework has four dimensions.
1. Feeling of belonging.
2. Feeling of effect.
3. Fulfillment of need.
4. Emotional connection among members.
On the base of these dimensions, community are made(Blanchard & Markus, 2004).
Online communities are made for interaction, knowledge and to earn money. Online
communities are made by audience, who have different demographic and phytogeographic
characteristics. The main factor which leads to create online community is internet experience.
Characteristics are major factors for sustained online interaction through their present social
network (One, 2012). This study strives to find out the impact of information, rewards for activities
and interaction on brand loyalty.
There are some common points which make the online community successful which are,
selecting content for specific audience, encouraging their early and continued participation. For
encouraging online audience for participation, it is important to give them true information, online
user privacy, and security rights which can developed their interest. (Andrews, 2002). Social
network (SN) is a “web-based service” which gives right to individuals to make their profile semi-
public or public within SN, gives the right to the audience to make the list of people whom they
want to share their connection within system (Boyd & Ellison, 2010). The way of marketing has
recently been changed (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). The part of web 2.0 technology gives the right
to individual to share content online, produce and connect to the world (Steinfield, Ellison, &
Lampe, 2008). Therefore online brand community create the opportunities for the brand owner to
do viral marketing, market analysis- by observing customer behavior through their own content
generate (UGC) and product development with the help of customer involvement in process
(Pletikosa Cvijikj & Michahelles, 2013).
Brand community social networks, that provide platforms for marketing, give opportune
to connect with the large number of the users, groups without geographically limitation, based on
social relationship among community members admired by brand communities (Muniz, Jr. &
O’Guinn, 2001). For increasing sale, brand communities have found successful tools which help
them to improve relationships between the consumers and brand (Sicilia & Palazón, 2008). Brand
community gives facility to community members to do interaction and exchange their thoughts
and share their views about brand or particular product, this is called word of mouth (Bambauer-
Sachse & Mangold, 2011). Communication which engage the online consumers on social media.
Word of mouth is a powerful tool for marketing which is used by the customers to share
information about brand or product, therefore it leads to increases the brand commitment, purchase
decision making and increase the product sale (Godes & Mayzlin, 2004). People to people
communications on social network referred to an exponential growth of the word of mouth which
is also known as viral marketing (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). In this new marketing era, the term
participation and engagement become the prime focus because it defines the nature of
Impact of Online Brand Community Characteristics on Brand Loyalty of Consumers of Pakistan
Journal of Social Sciences and Media Studies Vol. 02 Issue No. 01 57
participation. One of early definitions of interaction within brand online community members is
“consumer initial motivation to cooperate and interact within online community members”
(Algesheimer, Dholakia, & Herrmann, 2005). Interaction among community members create
satisfaction, commitment value, trust, loyalty, and empowerment. It is usually the goal of online
brand community to increases the level of interaction among the members on social media which
is profitable for company leads to increases the equity of brand and make the positive reputation.
Consumers join the brand communities because they feel the connection with the brand.
They consider itself brand and feel loyal to it which is further strengthened by the participation in
the brand communities (Mcalexander, Schouten, & Koenig, 2002). Participation in brand
communities strengthen the relationship and affect the loyalty. Online brand communities are
made by customer initiatives and companies are making strategies to create brand communities.
In 2004, Porter distinguished between organization and member-initiated virtual communities.
Online member-initiated communities can be defined as socially or professionally oriented
communities and organization online communities can be defined as nonprofit commercial and
governmental communities. Different behavior of members can be observed which create separate
categories in brand communities which need to be studied further. Types of behavior, observed in
brand communities, include helping other customers or sharing experiences and the non-
interactive behavior of those who only read others’ comments (Lee, Kim, & Kim, 2011).
To create brand loyalty, it is important that product should at least meet consumer need
and wants (expectation) if it does not delight them. Many studies show that brand which are best
in qualities give more financial benefits to the companies (Mao, 2010). The most common
definition about brand loyalty is that customer’s thorough decision to buying the same brand over
and over again (Tucker, 1964). The term brand loyalty is also defined as the positive attitude of
consumers toward the brand which is visible by the customers’ repeated purchase of the same
brand. Brand loyalty can be understood by operationalize two-factor attitude and behavior (Taylor,
Celuch, & Goodwin, 2004). These attitudes of customer become the competitive components for
the brand (Romaniuk & Nenycz-Thiel, 2013).
Rewards for activities in online brand community create brand awareness among the
consumers and help in brand recognition (Hur, Ahn, & Kim, 2011). Online brand communities
encourage the consumers to get the maximum relationship benefits from the community by giving
rewards to consumer on activities (Schultz, Dayan, & Montague, 1997). If activities are not
rewarded by brand community then community members happen to be less wiggle to interact in
communities. People feel satisfied when they feel the sense of exchange, so is the case with the
brand. Customer feel satisfied when they get rewards from brand (Chan, Lee, & Lee, 2014).
High-quality information is important for online social network users. It helps them to
clearly understand the product and feel comfortable and give confidence to make purchasing
decision (Casaló, Flavián, & Guinalíu, 2010). Those online brand communities which give rich
and clear information have the competitive advantage. In this way, quality of information creates
attraction for online social network users (Barreda, Bilgihan, Nusair, & Okumus, 2015). Quality
of information can be defined by Reliability, updated, credible and rich information. The excessive
information leads to negative impression on consumers. They think it is irrelevant information
which gives negative impact called low-quality information (Royo‐Vela & Casamassima, 2011).
Impact of Online Brand Community Characteristics on Brand Loyalty of Consumers of Pakistan
Journal of Social Sciences and Media Studies Vol. 02 Issue No. 01 58
Highly quality information leads to surge in brand recall and recognition (Laroche, Habibi,
Richard, & Sankaranarayanan, 2012).
Research problem:
Online communities are different from the traditional communities. Online brand
community characteristics are studied internationally. Companies in Pakistan are also making
brand communities from past few years to create the customer bond with brand. The aim of this
study is to understand the impact of online brand communities’ characteristics on brand loyalty.
Objectives of the study:
1) To measure the impact of quality of information, in an online brand community, on
brand loyalty.
2) To find out impact of rewards for activities, in an online brand community, on brand
loyalty.
3) To investigate the impact of role of interaction among online community members on
brand loyalty.
Literature review and Theoretical Framework
Social media:
People spend their one-third of daytime on social media (Ho, 2014). Hallmark social
media, Facebook, alone has more than 800 million users. Social media has changed the way of
marketing and promoting brand (Hanna, Rohm, & Crittenden, 2011). People join the social media
to fulfill their need of being socially contacted. People join the communities to get the feeling of
belongingness. The basic element of the communities is the sense of being socially connected
(Laroche et al., 2012). Rheingold stated, “ people are going to do what people always do with a
new communication technology: use it in ways never intended or foreseen by its investors”
(Laroche et al., 2012).
Community
Community has been deeply researched, its definition and meaning has changed over time.
Community is the construction of social thoughts. Communities contain three elements
consciousness of kind, tradition and rituals and senses of moral responsibilities. These elements
are defined below:
1) Consciousness of kind: It shows the belongings and the similar attitude among the
members. It shows the feelings of one member towards another member. This element
makes the difference and disguise the members from another community.
2) Tradition and rituals: Rituals and tradition are parts of the history of culture, that members
share with each other. Traditions are the common norms, values, and practices, members
perform or celebrate (Casaló, Flavián, & Guinalíu, 2008).
3) Sense of moral responsibility: community is made by the sense of responsibility which is
felt by the whole community. In every community obligations and duties exist which must
Impact of Online Brand Community Characteristics on Brand Loyalty of Consumers of Pakistan
Journal of Social Sciences and Media Studies Vol. 02 Issue No. 01 59
be fulfilled by every individual, if a member refused to fulfill these obligation so he will
be degraded by other members (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001).
Online community
Internet provides the easy infrastructure to make communities and share information within
communities to interact with members. Online communities removed the barriers of
communication which was space and time. It is important to build the strong relationship with the
customers for developing brand loyalty. It is also significant to create emotional connection with
customers. Through online communities, firm can create emotional connection, trust, and
commitment, which ultimately create the brand loyalty (Laroche et al., 2012). Interaction among
community members developed the stronger relationship among the members (Kandampully,
Kandampully, & Zhang, 2015). Communities are usually created by the firms because it paves
the way for creative ideas and value addition to customers satisfaction and it creates differentiation
(T. C. Zhang & Kandampully, 2015).
Online communities are present in different forms, like chat rooms, email and page groups. Online
communities fulfill the four types of needs of consumer 1) sharing thoughts and material 2)
relationship 3) benefit in terms of money and 4) living in fantasy (Brodie, Ilic, Juric, & Hollebeek,
2013).
Online brand community
Online brand community is combination of two terms, social media and brand community.
Brand communities are made to engage customers and to know the perception about the brand.
Brand communities are made to build connection between customers and firm. Companies make
brand communities to trigger connection with their loyal customer and share the information with
them (Biedenbach & Marell, 2010). However, community which is on World Wide Web is known
to be online brand community. Social media is now mostly used by the company’s promotion and
for building brand activities (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Members have right to join the
community if they want. One reason to join community is to feel socially connected with other
people. Need of social connection is motivation to generate content. Reaching, entertainment and
making money are the other reasons for joining communities or for using social media. Brand
community increases the brand loyalty which is called as ‘Holy Grail’ for business (Laroche,
Habibi, & Richard, 2013). Consumer empowerment concept is more highlighted these days.
Customers have become more empowered due to the social media so companies are spending more
budget on brand communities marketing programs. Customers can not only easily reach
information and prices of the product but also can generate the content about the product (Goh,
Heng, & Lin, 2013)
The participation in online brand community is most important because it decides the success rate
of the community. Participation in the community members is evaluated by these four factors 1)
Motivation of consumer to participate in community 2) Useful share of information which helps
other community members 3) Level of interest of consumer to share their experience within
community 4) The efforts to encourage the communities (Casaló et al., 2010)
Impact of Online Brand Community Characteristics on Brand Loyalty of Consumers of Pakistan
Journal of Social Sciences and Media Studies Vol. 02 Issue No. 01 60
There are three characteristic of online brand community that is given below:
Quality of information:
The basic purpose of people for getting enrolled in online communities is to get
information. The process of gaining information varies from person to person. Members gain
information according to their knowledge, experience, and perception. Members engage in online
communities to seek information by reading comments, post and opinions of other customers
before purchases. According to a survey in China during 2006, 70% of people gave importance to
the content validation and consider it most important factor in to make online community attractive
(Nielsen, 2015). Information credibility is measured by the relevance of the information,
comprehensiveness, and time, accuracy of content, expertise sources and trustworthy sources (C
M K Cheung & Lee, 2007). Relevance of the information, comprehensiveness creates more impact
on the information used as compare to the time, accuracy, expertise sources and trustworthy
sources. Accuracy, expert sources and trustworthy sources in information create impact when there
is conflict in the mind of customer or they check for the sources when information varies from
their experience or perception (Christy M.K. Cheung, Lee, & Rabjohn, 2008). Information sharing
in online communities shows the helping behavior of the members. It is observed in communities
that people want to share their experience and opinion with community members even if they do
not know about each other. Diversity, auxiliary resources, inherent size and interaction of both
periphery and core members create the helping behavior in the online community members. The
cooperation among the community member helps to create the interaction among the community
members (Laroche et al., 2012). Cooperative behavior among the members creates positive
influence on the helping behavior which increases the rate of participation of community members
to share information (Chu, 2009).
Reward for activities
There are two types of rewards in online brand community; monetary rewards and explicit
normative rewards. Monetary rewards are like lucky draws, price promotion and lucky points
which are usually offered by the firms. Monetary rewards are effective on the all type of members
in community but it has short-term effect on members (Dessart, Veloutsou, & Morgan-Thomas,
2015). Monetary reward creates negative impact on the intention of the long-term participation in
the community (Garnefeld, Iseke, & Krebs, 2012). So, there is no long-term crowding-out effect
of the monetary rewards just it has positive effect on the passive members’ participation in
community to create short time crowding-out effect.
Explicit normative incentives are like intangible rewards which give feeling to member as
he is doing something valuable. Activities which are related to the norms like helping other, to
achieve a common goal or doing something which create long-term positive effect in society.
Explicit normative incentives effect on the active community members and long-term participation
in the community. It does not work on the passive members though (Wirtz et al., 2013).
Some people like to join the online brand community because they get the free rewards from them.
Some are of the view that they like Facebook pages out of personal interest. Sometimes simply
because they give you free samples (Iglesias, Ind, & Alfaro, 2013). These rewards can be in any
Impact of Online Brand Community Characteristics on Brand Loyalty of Consumers of Pakistan
Journal of Social Sciences and Media Studies Vol. 02 Issue No. 01 61
form, it can be information, interaction or a response from firm members on any complain (Dessart
et al., 2015).
Interaction
Interaction is the characteristic of the online community which can be defined as when
consumers share their experience with the members within community (Zhou, Zhang, Su, & Zhou,
2012). This exchange of information, inquire and response done by members, is called interaction.
Interaction on online platform increases the awareness among the members and this awareness
lead to augment the creation among the members build the trust between the members. This
interaction may be between customer to customer, firm to customer or marketer to customer.
Consumer interaction influences the purchase decision of the other customer through persuasion
and information (Goh et al., 2013).
Interaction has three characteristics in online brand community; product-related sharing
information, interaction in community and community engagement. Products share information
related to the conversation among the members of community about product experience and how
to solve the problem they are facing, it shows the helping behavior of the community members.
Community interaction is related to the rate of consumer participation in activities or how much a
member is interactive with other members in community. Community engagement includes both
online and offline activities (Kuo & Feng, 2013). Interaction is the key factor to develop the trust
between the consumer and the product. When they interact about the brand and share their
experience with each other so they build the strong relationship with the members so they love
more brand (Laroche et al., 2012).
Brand loyalty
Commitment of the consumer toward the brand emerges because they consider the brand
is better than other alternatives and it fully satisfied the needs of consumer and this commitment
reinforcement the repeated purchases is called brand loyalty. Brand loyalty can be encouraged by
this new way of marketing. Internet provides the ready information to consumers which helps them
to easily compare their product with other products (Ehrenberg, 2004). Online brand communities
are fading the barriers between the producers and consumers. Customer can create more influence
on the brand image and its meaning. This many-to-many communication increases the efforts of
the marketers because it creates more complication to manage the word of mouth. Online
communities empowered consumers to share their view. To give response or monitor these
comments make marketers work more difficult (J Holland & Baker, 2001).
Customer engagement in online brand community tends to pave way for brand loyalty
because it increases the level of satisfaction when they get engaged with the product or know about
its value, it increases the level of satisfaction. In online brand community, when someone shares
the experience of the product or recommend product so this recommendation in online brand
community strength the relation with brand. Word of mouth has huge impact on the brand loyalty
which frequently happen in communities (Wirtz et al., 2013).
Impact of Online Brand Community Characteristics on Brand Loyalty of Consumers of Pakistan
Journal of Social Sciences and Media Studies Vol. 02 Issue No. 01 62
Fun activities or engaging activities increase the brand loyalty as a reason, firm should
monitor the customer engagement on social sites (Luarn, Lin, & Chiu, 2015). Social media is now
become the most important tool for marketing. It the medium for advertising and promoting
products and it is the fast way to reached to young customers. This medium has changed the way
of marketing it has positive impact on the consumer repeated purchase decisions (Balakrishnan,
Dahnil, & Yi, 2014). Customer engagement is the psychological key factor for creation of the
loyalty and customer engagement is a dynamic process (Greve, 2014).
The relationship between customer community and brand loyalty is not novel, there is,
however, need to study it from different characteristics of community and from different context,
this is what has been strived in this study.
Research hypothesis and Theoretical Framework
H1-1 = higher quality of information in an online brand community leads to higher brand loyalty.
H1-2 = Higher interaction among online brand community members leads to higher brand loyalty.
H1-3 = Greater rewards for activities in online brand community leads to higher brand loyalty.
Framework
Research methodology
Methodology
Research design:
With roots in positivist philosophy, this study is based on explanatory strategy, with quantitative
approach. The data is gathered through adopted close-ended questionnaire. It is conducted in
Pakistan. The study uses the quantitative tool which is regression line.
Brand
Loyalty
Quality of Information
Rewards on Activities
Interaction
Impact of Online Brand Community Characteristics on Brand Loyalty of Consumers of Pakistan
Journal of Social Sciences and Media Studies Vol. 02 Issue No. 01 63
Sample
This study used convenient sampling strategy. The sample size was 326, as more than 375
questionnaires were distributed but 326 were received in usable condition. The questionnaires were
got filled from customers of Karachi who are active social media users.
Instrument selection
Instrument to gauge brand loyalty is adopted from (Lau & Lee, 1999) and online brand community
characteristics questionnaire adopted from (Baldus, Voorhees, & Calantone, 2015).
Variables
Independent variable:
Online brand community characteristics are
1) Quality of information
2) Rewards on activities
3) Interaction
Dependent variable:
Brand loyalty
Result
Descriptive Table 1 Descriptive statistics
Mean
Std.Deviation
N
Brand Loyalty
25.1484
4.81433
326
Total Interaction
10.9440
2.73583
326
Reward
21.1893
4.18103
326
Information
11.8497
2.54023
326
The above table 1 represents the mean and standard deviation values of brand loyalty, total
interaction, reward and information. The total number of sample collected was 326.
Correlation
From the table 2 named as correlation, the relation among brand loyalty, total interaction, reward
and information was examined utilizing Pearson feature short time connection coefficient.
Preparatory investigation was performed to guarantee no infringement of the suspicious of
typicality, linearity and homoscedasticity. There is positive moderate relationship of brand loyalty
with information. There is positive week relationship of brand loyalty with total interaction and
reward. Values of total interaction is 0.181, reward is 0.307 and information is 0.443. The values
show that there is a significant positive moderate relationship of brand loyalty with information
and week relationship with total interaction and rewards.
Impact of Online Brand Community Characteristics on Brand Loyalty of Consumers of Pakistan
Journal of Social Sciences and Media Studies Vol. 02 Issue No. 01 64
Table 2 Correlations
brand loyalty
total
interaction
reward
Information
Pearson Correlation
Brand Loyalty
1.000
.181
.307
.443
Total Interaction
.181
1.000
.343
.289
Reward
.307
.343
1.000
.516
Information
.443
.289
.516
1.000
Sig. (1-tailed)
Brand loyalty
.
.001
.000
.000
Total Interaction
.001
.
.000
.000
Reward
.000
.000
.
.000
Information
.000
.000
.000
.
N
Brand Loyalty
326
326
326
326
Total Interaction
326
326
326
326
Reward
326
326
326
326
Information
326
326
326
326
Model summary
From the table 3 named as model summary, the value of R square is 0.205 which means that total
interaction, rewards & information are explaining 20.5% of variance in brand loyalty
Table 3 Model summary
Model
R
R
Square
Adjusted R
Square
Std. Error
of the
Estimate
Change Statistics
R Square
Change
F
Change
df1
df2
Sig. F
Change
1
.453a
.205
.198
4.31121
.205
27.761
3
322
.000
a. Predictors: (Constant), information, total into, reward
b. Dependent Variable: brand loyalty
Coefficient
From the table 4 name as coefficient, we can see that the beta value for total interaction is 0.037 and beta
value for reward is 0.094 which means that total interaction and reward make the less unique contribution
to explain the brand loyalty, when the variance explain by all other variable in the model is controlled for.
The beta valve for information is greater (0.382) which means information makes the stronger unique
contribution to explain the brand loyalty.
Impact of Online Brand Community Characteristics on Brand Loyalty of Consumers of Pakistan
Journal of Social Sciences and Media Studies Vol. 02 Issue No. 01 65
Table 4 Coefficients a
Model
Unstandardized
Coefficients
Standardized
Coefficients
t
Sig.
95.0%
Confidence
Interval for B
Correlations
Collinearity
Statistics
B
Std.
Error
Beta
Lower
Bound
Upper
Bound
Zero-
order
Partial
Part
Tolerance
VIF
1
(Constant)
13.491
1.451
9.299
.000
10.636
16.345
Total interaction
.066
.094
.037
.699
.485
-.119
.251
.181
.039
.035
.865
1.156
Reward
.111
.069
.097
1.621
.106
-.024
.247
.307
.090
.081
.693
1.443
Information
.724
.111
.382
6.524
.000
.506
.942
.443
342
.324
.720
1.389
a. Dependent Variable: brand loyalty
Discussion
This study examined relationship between online brand community characteristic
(interaction, reward, and information) and brand loyalty. Only one of the online brand community
characteristic (information) has positive moderate significant effect on the brand loyalty. The result
indicates that information can create impact on brand loyalty. Other two characteristics (interaction
and reward) show week significant effect on brand loyalty. Interaction and reward create less
impact on brand loyalty.
The results of this study are similar when compared with previous research findings that
show that information is the basic interest element for customer to make purchase. In online brand
communities, customers seek detailed information about product to build trust to purchase the
brand and this factor motivate customer to participate in community (Casaló, Flavián, & Guinalíu,
2007). The other study, however, shows deviant finding that some consumers have exploratory
buying behavior. These type of consumers seek information about product then make decision
which cause less repeated purchase (Tucker, 1964).
This study found out that information has moderate impact on brand loyalty while
interaction has week significance effect on brand loyalty. Community members interact with each
other because they need information. Community members interact to learn about product, share
experiences to influence others. Interaction is important only when it give some new knowledge
or entertainment. Community members will remain in community when they get update about
their brand which builds trust. Interaction builds the relationship between brand and customer
when it gives value-in-exchange and value-in-use. If members in community do not get any
valuable information so they will not participate in community. Information is the motive of
community (Brodie et al., 2013). Another study shows different finding that interaction in online
communities create loyalty among customers and it is motive of the community to increase the
participation of consumers for ongoing purchases (Sicilia & Palazón, 2008).
To produce interesting and valuable content, along with social interaction, is reward for
internet users (Jonna Holland & Baker, 2001). Brand loyalty is the complex phenomena that
Impact of Online Brand Community Characteristics on Brand Loyalty of Consumers of Pakistan
Journal of Social Sciences and Media Studies Vol. 02 Issue No. 01 66
warrants a more multifaceted conceptualization than has been attempted previously (Dick & Basu,
1994). Rewards work differently on consumer purchasing behavior. If consumer is light buyer so
rewards will not create impact on brand loyalty. They generally shift from firm to firm to get more
rewards while rewards create positive impact on the moderate and heavy buyer loyalty. So, it
shows that reward work according to customer usage level. To understand the reward impact on
brand loyalty we have to first consider consumer idiosyncrasies (Liu, 2007). In online brand
communities, those members who participate willingly in community after rewards their
motivation to perform in community decreases and they will only participate when they see any
reward. Reward also create short-term impact on consumers it cannot create long-term impact
(Jang et al., 2008).
Conclusion & Future Recommendations
The results of this study show that information creates impact on brand loyalty. The other
two characteristics (reward and interaction) create less impact on the brand loyalty. The study
suggested that information can built trust. More update information available on websites help
customers to make purchasing decision. However, the future research is recommended on the other
characteristics of online brand community that can be influential on not only brand loyalty but on
other marketing objectives as well.
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