Article ID: | iaor20123114 |
Volume: | 49 |
Issue: | 2 |
Start Page Number: | 111 |
End Page Number: | 117 |
Publication Date: | Mar 2012 |
Journal: | Information & Management |
Authors: | Tsai Hsien-Tung, Pai Peiyu |
Keywords: | survey, customer relationship management, virtual communities |
We investigated how online community building might affect the development of relationships with customers of online stores. Adopting social identification and relationship marketing perspectives, we examined the positive and negative aspects of online community cultivation and tested the meditating mechanisms involved in member participation processes. A survey‐based study, conducted with 913 online consumers, revealed that community interaction can lead to consumer power through community identification and relationship investments. Furthermore, we found that perceived e‐tailer support negatively affected the relationship between identification and consumer power. We concluded with a discussion of the key managerial and research implications of our findings.