How online social community participation affect product stickiness: a study on green energy technology product

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to develop a conceptual model for GET products that participate in brands’ online communities, based on social cognitive theory (SCT), with environmental factors, personal factors and behavioral factors being used to explore whether users of GET products participate in brand online communities as well as to determine whether participation in a community forum causes users to stick with GET products. In addition, expectancy confirmation is also considered in the research model.

Design/methodology/approach

This research examines whether environmental and personal factors have a positive effect on the behavioral factors of Gogoro users, and then further effects on green energy technology (GET) product stickiness for users in online communities. A website was used to distribute links to two Facebook club sites: Gogoro Series 2 Fan Club and the Gogoro Fan Club. The respondents’ qualification criteria were restricted to people who had used Gogoro products and participated in a Gogoro online community. A total of 581 valid responses were collected for structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis, and expectancy confirmation was found to be moderate from a hierarchical regression.

Findings

The results of SEM show that virtual interactivity has a positive effect on product-related content, and social norms were found to have significant effects on creating product-related content. Brand community identification, perceived relative advantage and brand knowledge self-efficacy are found to be related to both creating and contributing product-related content. Also, creating product-related content and contributing user participation behaviors influence ET product stickiness.

Practical implications

Online community managers can boost user participation by increasing interaction, and community identification by enhancing users’ perceptions of benefiting from participating in their communities. Companies can also encourage users to create product-related content to increase users’ stickiness to GET products. Further, GET companies can try to enhance users’ intrinsic connection with other community users to increase their brand community identification if they want to increase users’ willingness to participate.

Originality/value

This study adopted SCT to measure the GET product stickiness formation process in an attempt to determine what factors boost user participation based on triadic reciprocality. Also, expectancy confirmation plays an important role in the relationship between community users’ participation behaviors and GET product stickiness. The results indicated that it was appropriate to add virtual interactivity to environmental factors and perceived relative advantage to personal factors to measure users’ participation in an online social community. Actual product users’ online community participation behavior could be a very influential indicator of actual product stickiness formation.

Citation

Lin, Y.-H., Chang, H.H. and Chiu, C.P. (2024), "How online social community participation affect product stickiness: a study on green energy technology product", Information Technology & People, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/ITP-09-2022-0676