본 연구는 온라인 커뮤니티에서 소비자들에게 제공하는 지원 서비스가 어떻게 커뮤니티 강화요인을 거쳐 소비자의 커뮤니티 충성도에까지 영향을 미치는지, 더 나아가, 이 커뮤니티 충성도가 궁극적으로 관련 기업의 브랜드충성도에까지 영향을 미치는지를 실증 분석하였다. 브랜드 커뮤니티 관련 기존문헌을 고찰하여 연구 모델 및 가설을 만들어, 온라인 음악 커뮤니티 사례에 적용하여 다음과 같은 연구 결과를 얻었다.
첫째, 기업이 브랜드 커뮤니티를 통해 소비자들에게 제공하는 지원서비스의 인식수준은 소비자가 느끼는 브랜드 커뮤니티 강화요인(동류의식, 의례와 전통, 도덕적 책임감)에 긍정적인 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 특히, Armstrong and Hagel(1996)이 제시한 4가지 지원서비스(즉, 거래, 흥미, 판타지, 관계 서비스) 모두가 유의한 영향을 미친다는 것을 알 수 있었다. 둘째, 커뮤니티 강화요인이 높을수록, 소비자는 브랜드 커뮤니티에 대한 충성도가 높아지는 것으로 나타났다. 3개의 커뮤니티 강화요인 모두 유의하게 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났지만 특히 동류의식이 가장 큰 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 셋째, 커뮤니티 충성도가 높아지면, 그 커뮤니티를 지원하는 기업 브랜드에 대한 충성도도 증가하는 것으로 나타났다. 이는 기업들에게 효과적인 브랜드 커뮤니티의 구축과 운영이 그 기업의 브랜드가치에 얼마나 중요한 것인가를 시사해주기도 한다.
본 연구의 학문적 공헌이 있다면, 그것은 본 연구가 그 동안 기존연구에서 부분적으로 연구되었던 커뮤니티 강화요인, 커뮤니티 충성도를 함께 분석하였고, 더 나아가 커뮤니티 충성도가 기업 브랜드가치에 미치는 영향까지도 함께 고려하여 종합적인 결론을 내었다는 점이다. 또한 실무적으로는, 점차 산업으로 중요해지는 온라인 엔터테인먼트 및 음악 사업과 관련지어 우리나라 기업들에게 커뮤니티 활용을 통한 글로벌 경쟁력 제고에 도움이 될 수 있는 전략적 시사점도 제공하였다.
Recently, as internet technology developed enormously, customers are doing brand community activities more online than they are doing offline. As companies are getting more interested in two-way brand marketing that can interact with customers rather than one-way brand marketing, plenty of online brand communities are operated or controlled by companies. For example, music brand communities such as Melon, Dosirak, and MusicOn are supported by telecom companies such as SK Telecom, KTF, and LG Telecom. The companies trying to increase brand loyalty and brand value through brand communities want to find out the way of building and operating brand community effectively. As the customers are doing more brand community activities, the relationship among supporting services, markers of brand communities, community loyalty and company brand loyalty need to be studied.
This research empirically examined the effect of the supporting services of brand communities on the markers of communities, community loyalty and company brand loyalty. We developed research model and hypotheses based on extensive literature review and applied them to the example of online music communities. After having conducted empirical study, three major findings that can have both theoretical and managerial implications were discovered.
First, customers’ satisfaction level of supporting services (transaction, interest, fantasy, and relationship) by company through brand communities have a positive impact on the markers of brand community (consciousness of kind, rituals and traditions, moral responsibility). Especially, consistent with the study of Armstrong and Hagel (1996) which shows that all of the supporting services have significant impact on the markers of brand communities, companies should provide comprehensive supporting services rather than providing one or two particular supporting services to the customers. The result of this study shows that interest and fantasy have stronger impacts than other supporting services such as transaction and relationship. For the case of Apple i-Tunes, it has more than 70% of market share in American markets while it has only 10% of market share in Korean market. This is because Apple provides wide range of services in American market and only transaction service in Korean market.
Second, the greater markers of brand community are, the greater customers show the loyalty towards brand communities. All of the markers of brand communities (consciousness of kind, rituals and traditions, moral responsibility) are statistically significant with the loyalty towards brand communities, and of the markers of brand community, consciousness of kind has strongest impact on customer loyalty towards brand community. This result is consistent with the result of Muniz and O’Guinn (2001)’s study. This result can be viewed as the reflection of unique online environment and self-centered social structure. Because rituals and traditions weakens due to the online environment and moral responsibility weakens due to the self-centered social structure. This result emphasizes that community supporting services have to be developed and provided in the way of improving consciousness of kind in the future.
Third, most importantly, supporting services of brand community has positive impacts on community loyalty(e.g., Melon), and even on the loyalty towards the company (e.g., SK Telecom) supporting brand community. This result implies that building and running successful brand community are critical for companies to build brand loyalty.
This research has managerial implications as well as theoretical implications. Theoretically, this research comprehensively studied markers of brand community and loyalty towards the brand community, which were only partially studied in previous researches. Furthermore, the most important part of this research is that the community loyalty can transfer to the brand loyalty, which has not been discovered in any previous research. For example, the loyalty towards the Melon online community can transfer to the loyalty of SK telecom running Melon community. Managerially, as customers are getting used to online environment and even many of them are feeling more comfortable online, online community is very important for entertainment business. Under this situation, this research proposes the way of building global competitive advantages through online community to business in Korea.
