CONSUMER CO-PRODUCTION IN PRODUCT-RELATED VIRTUAL COMMUNITY – DOES COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT MATTER?

Product-Based virtual community has become a popular platform that consumers can exchange information and social with other consumers on issues related to products. The success of a virtual community, however, relies on the participation of the users. Taking the virtual community management and co-production perspectives, this study proposed a model to test simultaneously the relationships among virtual community management, co-production, and community participation behaviors in online product community. The results show that the virtual community management has a significant positive effect on cooperative norm and motive of participation. Cooperative norm and ability both have positive effects on in-role and extra-role consumer co-production (CCP). It is noteworthy that the relationship of cooperative norm with in-role CCP is stronger than the relationship between cooperative norm and extra-role CCP. A reverse pattern is observed for the effects of motivation and ability. That is, the relationship between ability and extra-role CCP is stronger than the one between ability and in-role CCP. The analysis revealed a similar pattern of results for the relationship between motivation and the two forms of CCP