Stimulating Customer Inspiration Through Online Brand Community Climates: The Mediating Role of Customer Interaction

Abstract

This study examines the impacts of the online brand community (OBC) climate on customer interaction and customer inspiration, which are yet under-explored in the extant literature. The data were collected online from the Chinese respondents (N = 504) to analyze the proposed constructs of the study. Findings show that supportive OBC climate and controlled OBC climate are positively related to customer interaction (including information interaction and social interaction) and exert a significant and positive impact on customer inspiration. A mediating impact of customer interaction is found on the relationship between OBC climate and customer inspiration. This study unravels the importance and mechanism of customer-brand relationships in the online environment and illuminates pathways for marketers and policymakers to positively influence customer inspiration for business promotion. This study updates existing literature boxes of consumer behavior and marketing in the context of online customer-brand relationships. Limitations and future research directions are noted.

Stimulating Tourist Inspiration by Tourist Experience: The Moderating Role of Destination Familiarity

“…Böttger et al (2017) argue that the inspired-by state belongs to the deliberation phase, while the inspired-to-state reflects the transition to the implementation phase. In the stream of tourist inspiration, there is a causal and sequential relationship between the inspired-by state and the inspired-to state where the inspiredby-state exists before the inspired-to state (Böttger et al, 2017;Cao et al, 2021;Dai et al, 2022).…”

“…This study conducted an online survey at Wenjuan Xing 1 , a professional online academic survey platform in China, between November 5, 2019 and November 10, 2019, to gather data from Chinese tourists who were at least 18 years old to ensure the consent requirement of the study respondents (Majeed et al, 2020b;Xue et al, 2020). Wenjuan Xing undertakes a random sampling method to administer surveys and records responses from its more than three million registered users, who demonstrate diverse backgrounds and belong to different cities in China (Cao et al, 2021). Wenjuan Xing adopts a multichannel approach to distribute questionnaires to randomly invited users to reflect a greater representation of the relevant study population for the survey (Cao et al, 2021).…”

“…Wenjuan Xing undertakes a random sampling method to administer surveys and records responses from its more than three million registered users, who demonstrate diverse backgrounds and belong to different cities in China (Cao et al, 2021). Wenjuan Xing adopts a multichannel approach to distribute questionnaires to randomly invited users to reflect a greater representation of the relevant study population for the survey (Cao et al, 2021). The participants in the online survey were Chinese adult tourists who had traveled to tourist destinations.…”

“Net” value co-creation: The effect of interactions on consumer citizenship behavior in online travel communities

“…The scale items were adapted from the extant research. Scale items for consumer interaction were adapted from Cao et al (2021), for example, "I always actively take part in community discussions and have close and intensive interactions with other members of the online travel community." Scale items for selfidentity were adapted from Confente et al (2020), for example, "I would feel totally satisfied with myself if I interact with other members in the community."…”

“…Consumer interaction was defined as the extent to which consumers communicate and interact with each other in online communities ( Casaló et al, 2017 ). Consumer interaction proved beneficial to both consumers and companies ( Cao et al, 2021 ; Cheung et al, 2021 ; Liao et al, 2021 ). On the one hand, consumer interaction can foster information interaction and the community relationship ( Cao et al, 2021 ; Cheung et al, 2021 ).…”