Value Co-destruction: The Dark Side of Interactions in Online Brand Communities

Abstract

With the advent of online communities, firms have invested heavily in creating their brand communities as a value co-creation platform to engage with their customers. However, customer interactions in online brand communities may not always be beneficial for firms. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we explore how interaction failure as a manifestation of value co-destruction leads to negative customer outcomes in online brand communities. The results of an offline scenario-based experiment and an online survey suggest that interaction failure causes negative customer behaviors through two resource-based mediators: perceived usefulness and perceived fairness. Furthermore, we find that different types of interaction failures lead to different degrees of value co-destruction. Specifically, firm-oriented interaction failure leads to more negative customer behaviors than customer-oriented and peer-oriented interaction failures. Our study provides both theoretical and practical implications for value co-creation in online brand communities.