The Impact Factors and Consequences of Members' Participation in SME-Managed Online Brand Community

Nowadays, the increasing Internet leads to great changes in models and means of branding. By developing online brand communities, some SMEs achieve brand success. Existing studies on online brand community can be categorized into two aspects: studies on the motivation of members participating in online brand communities and studies on the impact of members' participation. However, most of researchers took the communities established and managed by the advocates of strong brands as the study object. Only few of them concern the communities directly managed by the enterprises, especially by SMEs. Without the influence of strong brands, most of the SMEs are faced with the difficulties in recruiting community members and attracting members to participate in community regularly. However, in the real industry, some SMEs have successfully developed powerful online brand community and achieved branding. In this paper, MEIZU official forum is selected as the main study object. Based on literature review and grounded research, a theoretical model has been constructed. Through large-scale survey and data analysis, the hypotheses and relevant conclusions are verified.