IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aac/ijirss/v8y2025i1p282-295id3804.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social media-based online brand community characteristics’ impact on consumer relationship formation: The moderating effects of platform initiator types

Author

Listed:
  • Alona Gubalane
  • Yongsoo Ha

Abstract

This research investigates the impact of online brand community characteristics on social media. Information quality, system quality, virtual interactivity, and rewards are modeled as key indicators examining their effects on two types of consumer relationships: consumer-brand and consumer-other-consumer relationships. This research further explores how these consumer relationships influence community identification and electronic word-of-mouth communication. Additionally, it examines the moderating effects of platform initiator types such as firm-initiated and consumer-initiated brand communities on the link between consumer relationships and community identification. A quantitative study was conducted using an online questionnaire distributed through Amazon Mechanical Turk, and data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The findings indicate that forming social media-based online brand community characteristics as a latent construct is significantly influenced by information quality, system quality, virtual interactivity and rewards. These characteristics have a notable impact on both types of consumer relationships significantly influencing community identification and electronic word-of-mouth. Test results have also shown that the moderating effects of platform initiator types are significant only in the relationship between the consumer-other-consumer relationship and community identification. In firm-initiated brand communities, consumer-other-consumer relationships significantly influence community identification whereas in consumer-initiated brand communities, this relationship was not significant. Therefore, marketers are encouraged to establish branding strategies that align with the nature of the community to cultivate and sustain consumer relationships.

Suggested Citation

  • Alona Gubalane & Yongsoo Ha, 2025. "Social media-based online brand community characteristics’ impact on consumer relationship formation: The moderating effects of platform initiator types," International Journal of Innovative Research and Scientific Studies, Innovative Research Publishing, vol. 8(1), pages 282-295.
  • Handle: RePEc:aac:ijirss:v:8:y:2025:i:1:p:282-295:id:3804
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ijirss.com/index.php/ijirss/article/view/3804/590
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aac:ijirss:v:8:y:2025:i:1:p:282-295:id:3804. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Natalie Jean (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://ijirss.com/index.php/ijirss/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.