مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

In a socially networked marketplace, the conventional role of consumers has been significantly changed (Labrecque, vor dem Esche, Mathwick, Novak, & Hofacker, 2013; Weinberg, de Ruyter, Dellarocas, Buck, & Keeling, 2013). Consumers have become active participants in the value co-creation rather than outsiders of firms and passive receivers of goods and services (Bowen, 1986; Vargo & Lusch, 2004). For instance, customers supply technical assistance to other customers in firm-sponsored forums, create ads for Doritos and other brands, and make new product suggestions for Starbucks (mystarbucksidea.com). In this situation, consumers act as employees of firms, obscuring the firm–customer border (Achrol & Kotler, 1999). Recently, brands have become highly interested in organizing consumers in online brand communities (OBCs) in the current era of social media to harness the potential of consumers in value co-creation (Manchanda, Packard, & Pattabhiramaiah, 2015; Schau, Muñiz, & Arnould, 2009). In fact, previous studies have demonstrated that members in brand communities are ideal collaborators of firms in a variety of areas, such as product knowledge diffusion (Thompson & Sinha, 2008), product innovation (Füller, Matzler, & Hoppe, 2008), and word-of-mouth marketing (Kozinets, de Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010), among others.

However, organizing and maintaining a firm-hosted OBC is not an easy task (Butler, 2001). In comparison with the nuisance of employees’ turnover that traditional organizations experience, OBCs suffer from the turnover of community members at a much higher level. About 68% of newcomers in an online community are reported to leave that community after their first participation because of the nature of voluntary participation in OBCs (Ren et al., 2012). Those who join the online community but leave at once are usually called “tourists” (Kozinets, 2002). An online community will not thrive if these tourists represent a large proportion of community members. Previous studies have also have noted that “insiders” of communities, those who identify with brand communities, participate in communities frequently and collaborate with firms in value co-creation, thus guaranteeing the success of OBCs (Füller et al., 2008). Therefore, firms now increasingly make efforts to integrate community members as quasi-employees into their organizations by socializing them as insiders (Kozinets, 2002). These socialization efforts entail a wide range of practices, such as initiating brand events, offering the newest product information, rewarding members, formulating and implementing community policies, and so on (Homburg, Ehm, & Artz, 2015).

Previous research on OBCs has mainly focused on the motivational drivers (Dholakia, Bagozzi, & Pearo, 2004) and outcomes of customer participation in OBCs (Algesheimer, Borle, Dholakia, & Singh, 2010; Goh, Heng, & Lin, 2013; Manchanda et al., 2015). However, less is known about the role of firms’ efforts in maintaining OBCs. Given the popularity of firm-hosted OBCs and firms’ considerable efforts in managing communities, the lack of research attention is unexpected. In this paper, we draw from organizational socialization theory to address this research issue. The basic premise of organizational socialization theory is that socialization tactics adopted by organizations help employees to adapt to the organization. Considerable research has indicated that socialization efforts not only exist in traditional organizations but also in unique form of organizations, often referred to as online communities, extensively (Ahuja & Galvin, 2003). Thus, we introduce organizational socialization theory to the study of OBCs and develop a conceptual framework, in which we analyze how three socialization tactics (i.e., member education, interaction support, and participation feedback) employed by sponsors of OBCs affect the membership continuance intention in an online community. Furthermore, we investigate whether or not these tactics are equally effective for all segment members. In particular, we examine the contingent factor of membership duration.