The Effect of Utilization Motivation and Commitment regarding Brand Community on Brand Fanship

Abstract

As recently increased penetration of internet and smart phones, various brand communities are appearing. The brand communities are being used as a means of corporate marketing to introduce product and service contents, and many consumers have been using them. Thus this study try to reveal that brand community have positive effect for company and consider how company can foster the customers with brand fanship. In this study, we analyzed how a variety of utilization motivation of brand community have impact on the commitment of brand community and attempted to figure out brand fanship as an important consequence of brand community commitment. This study gathered 214 users from broadcasting and movie contents communities targeting American dramas and Hollywood movies. For the survey results, basic statistics, reliability and validity analysis was carried out through SPSS 18.0 and structural equation model analysis was conducted by using AMOS 18.0. As a result of this study, we observed that the two components of utilization motivation increased brand community commitment, with a high degree of brand community commitment increasing brand fanship. That is, consumers’ emotional motivation and social motivation about using brand community makes customers’ brand community commitment increase, and the strong commitment can foster customers' fanship about the brand. Therefore, if companies encourage the customers to have commitment of brand community through focusing on customers' motivation, they will have valuable fans and good marketing performance.