UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ LE THI MUI FACTORS INFLUENCING QUALITY OF LIFE: A STUDY OF BRAND COMMUNITIES IN VIET NAM MASTER OF BUSINESS (HONOURS) Ho Chi Minh City – 2018 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ LE THI MUI FACTORS INFLUENCING QUALITY OF LIFE: A STUDY OF BRAND COMMUNITIES IN VIET NAM MASTER OF BUSINESS (HONOURS) SUPERVISOR: Assoc. Nguyen Thi Mai Trang Ho Chi Minh City - 2018 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF CONTENTS List of tables. 2 List of figures. 8 Value co-creation practices and brand relationship quality.8 Brand relationship quality and consumer hope.12 Consumer hope and quality of life.16 Design and Sample.18 Data analysis and results.
18 Testing the measurement model. 18 Testing the hypothesis model.24 Discuss and implications. 25 Limitations and direction for future research.52 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com List of tables Table 1: The profile of respondents in the study Table 2: Cronbach’s Alpha for all constructs Table 3: Pattern Matrix in EFA analysis Table 4: Standardized CFA loadings of items Table 5: Correlations of items Table 6: Regression Weights in SEM analysis Table 7: A again qualitative survey report 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com List of figures Figure 1: Proposed research Model 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Abstract This research investigates the impact of value co-creation practices in online brand community on quality of life by the mediating of brand relationship quality and consumer hope. The research was designed for the sample size about 250 respondents in online brand communities such as Apple brand community for Iphone fans, Channel brand community for perfume fans, 38 Degree flowers brand community for flower fans and SamSung brand community for the fans of Galaxy lines.
The results indicate that it can be said that the existence of relationship between two elements of value co-creation practices in online brand community including impression management, brand use and brand relationship quality as well as the presence of the relationship in series from brand relationship quality to consumer hope and then quality of life. Finally, some implications are discussed to gain point of view objectively about research results. 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Introduction The fourth industrial revolution has had a dramatically booming stage in recent years and seems breaking most of traditional industries in every country because the fact that the remarkable number of global online retail sales was to increase from US$236 billion to US$521 billion over five years, from 2007 to 2012, was estimated to reach $1248.7 billion in 2017 (Verma et al. Consumer have had awareness of benefits of this channel such as great price and flexible time by the significant increase in e-commerce platforms global (Denegri‐Knott, 2006; Nedergaard & Gyrd- Jones, 2013).
The fact that it has changed significant marketing industry, leading to a creatively online marketing stage thanks to the unique aspect of social media and its huge spread for revolutionizing marketing process (Hanna, Rohm, &Crittenden, 2011) and consumer behavior from absorbing information for making purchase online (Mangold & Faulds, 2009; Powers, Advincula, Austin, & Graiko, 2012). Otherwise, compared with the online ones, the other benefits of social media based brand communities are the lower cost of initiating these communities, higher reward, and the number of greater reach because of normally using free the platforms (LaPointe,2012). Accordingly, the rapidly popularizing of social networking technologies has generated ideal circumstance including a new platform and opportunities to retain existing members and attract new customers for brand community (Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, & Silvestre, 2011). 5 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Specifically, the concept of brand community is taken into as one of main considerations in marketing field recently (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001).
When researchers study initial about brand communities, online brand communities are deemed as tools in order to build relationships between consumers and brands thanks to corresponding internet condition (Schultz& Bailey, 2000). The brands and consumers are provided many values such as sharing knowledge and engaging supportive consumers by brand communities (Andersen, 2005), making strong impression to customers on the brand features and stimulating their loyalty (Andersen, 2005; McAlexander et al., 2002), gaining valuable market data for development and research (Von Hippel, 2005), and co-creating benefits with consumers (Schau, Muñiz, & Arnould, 2009). Moreover, the brand community on social media help new customers stimulate purchase intention by joining and participating in brand clubs and associates (Algesheimer et al. In conclusion, it may be argued that brand community helps value co-creation practices to be more convenient and efficient.
Customer- brand relationship that customers can create an active relationship with brand is like building relationship with friends, which means brands are considered as customer’s partners (Hudson et al. A study of individual relationships in social psychology as well as personality presents the metaphor of brand relationship (Breivik & Thorbjornsen, 2008; Smit et al. Customers participate in brand relationships because of benefits from the meanings they gain into their life, not only possessing well good brand with its function and utilitarianism but also more 6 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com psychological and emotional (Fournier, 1998). Thus, it possibly be claimed that brand relationship quality interrelated obviously to brand community.
Although many previous researches point out that value co-creation practices have an important influence on enhancing brand loyal (McAlexander et al., 2002; Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001; Muniz & Schau, 2005; Habibi, Laroche, & Richard 2016), and demonstrate how value co-creation practices influence brand relationships quality in brand communities (Luo et al, 2015). However, individual quality of life concept have not been mentioned while the previous studies present value co-creation practices in brand community concept, moreover, those have not demonstrated the influence of value co-creation practices on quality of life with the mediating of consumer hope. Therefore, it may be extremely virtual to address the gap recognizing the worth of consumer hope for mediating role because of providing insights into customer’s perceptions as well as feeling in an online brand communities context (Raggio, Walz, Godbole, & Folse, 2014). The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of value co-creation practices in online brand community on quality of life by the mediating of consumer hope and then it is suggested suitable recommendations.
The paper is organized with the next section is literature review based on foundation of previous research models tested in the research and followed by the right methodology, next sections, the data analysis and results, and discussion and implications will be indicated. Finally, the paper rounds off with limitation and direction for future research and conclusions. 7 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Literature review Brand community Brand community is defined as a “specialized, non-geographically bound community and based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand” (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001, p. 412), covering a huge community entire from virtual (Adjei, Noble,& Noble, 2010) to undersized brand communities (Schouten,McAlexander, & Koenig, 2007).
In addition, brand communities are conducive to sharing of benefits including information and experience; enhancing the band values (Muniz& O’Guinn, 2001), resulting in “co-creation and negotiation of meaning” (McAlexander et al. That valuable knowledge make individual connect feeling insights among members intje brand community (Kuo & Feng, 2013). On the other hand, shared features are representative of communication that maintain meanings and cultural norms, finally, obligations to society are a felt sense of responsibilities for the member in community (Kuo & Feng, 2013). Value co-creation practices and brand relationship quality The co-creation of member benefits and community potential by variety activities within a brand community is considered as value co-creation practices while members in brand community create worthy thing for the brand or others in the community (Schau et al.
Furthermore, value co-creation practices is supported favorably to implement by the platform of social network and make members and other elements of a brand community obtain a high-context interaction, leading to reinforce 8 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com the brand relationship quality brand community (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001). Moreover, the progressive of value co-creation combination including series of particular elements, such as “welcoming, empathizing, milestoning, documenting, evangelizing, justifying, customizing, commoditizing and so on”, these are mainly led by four elements: “social networking, community engagement, impression management and brand use” (Schau et al. Thus, another research also demonstrates value co- creation practices has a positively influence on brand relationship quality (Habibi, Laroche, Richard, 2016). Social networking Social networking including such practices as “welcoming, empathizing, and governing” pertains to “creating, maintaining, and cementing ties” among brand community members” (Schau et al.
In addition, according to social capital theory, the social networks and trustworthy relationships, and enhance the togetherness will be established and strengthened propitiously by frequent interpersonal interactions (Chang & Chuang, 2011; Lee, Kim, & Kim, 2012; Lee, Xiong, & Hu, 2012), influence positively to the identification with the brand (Algesheimer et al. For instance, other authors (Habibi et al.,2014) indicate many cases welcoming a new member in communities on Facebook, or “like” and “comment” their stories, and make direct conversations or make friend relationships on social media, resulting in that the more committed the member is about the rituals of the community, the more they would like to be involved in value co-creation practices. Therefore, it is hypothesized that 9 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com H1: Social networking in brand community related positively to brand relationship quality. Community engagement According to the brand community theory (McAlexander et al., 2002; Schau et al., 2009) community engagement is identified as regular activities including “documenting, badging, milestoning and staking” that consumers share their important milestone and evolve cohesive personal brand narratives, related to enhance members' engagement in the community.
Furthermore, members collaboratively build social capital, for instance, concentrating on a specific thing of shared interest with individuals or sharing unique experiences they gained about using the brand (Schau et al. Otherwise, consumer’s experiences and knowledge in online brand community are improved significant brand community by sharing photos, videos, and text-based stories in their brand usage (Habibi et al. Therefore, brand relationship quality will be stimulated by these reinforce members’ regular engagement with the brand community. So another hypothesis is presented: H2: Social networking in brand community related positively to brand relationship quality.
Impression management Next another element of value co-creation practices is impression management including evangelizing and justifying (Schau et al. Previous researchers presents the effort to create a favorable impression on outside of community brand through conducting impression management practices of the brand community 10 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com members, they are ‘‘activities that have an external, outward focus on creating desirable impressions of the brand, brand enthusiasts and brand community in the social university beyond the brand community’’(Schau et al. In addition, other research proves impression management is implemented in different ways, share helpful items about the brand to be feel a strong sense of connectedness, obligations to society as well as commitment to the rituals, and obtain participation in impression management (Habibi et al. Since members define this community as part of their self-identity (Algesheimer et al., 2005), it is every member’s duty to maintain and increase a favorable image of the community among others, leading to affect positively on brand relationship quality.
Thus, another hypothesis is proposed that: H3: Impression management in brand community related positively to brand relationship quality. Brand use The last elements of value co-creation practices is brand use “including customizing, grooming and commoditizing” that the activities that help individuals in brand communities using effective brand, and enhance others members use brand, related to “the member’s tendency to help other members with newer, improved and enhanced ways to use the focal brand” (Schau et al.