Antecedents and Consequences of Sense of Virtual Community: The Customer Value Perspective

[[abstract]]With the rapid proliferation of the Internet, virtual communities (VCs) based on common interests have been growing rapidly recently. These VCs emphasize ubiquitous collaboration and sharing among users, and they provide unprecedented opportunities for users to share their opinions, insights, experiences and perspective with each other. Sense of virtual community (SOVC) is recognized as the most critical feature for VCs to foster member’s higher relational embeddedness with VCs, thereby further retaining existing community members and attracting newcomers. Despite the importance of SOVC, theoretical and empirical research pertaining to the study of SOVC, its antecedents and consequences has been limited and piecemeal. The objective of this study is to investigate the antecedents of SOVC as well as the effect of SVOC on behavioral loyalty from the customer value perspective. Based on data collected from 355 members of a well-known fashion VC, our research findings show that (1) SOVC positively influences member’s behavioral loyalty; (2) three types of customer value, namely functional, emotional, and social values, all positively affect member’s SOVC. Implications for practitioners and researchers and suggestions for future research are also addressed in this study