The Mediating Role of Consumer Engagement with the Brand Community and its Effect on Corporate Reputation

Resumo

We have two objectives in this research: first we test the proposed theoretical model to check the impact of perceived homophily and brand involvement on the consumer engagement with brand community, and the effect the latter on corporate reputation. Our results showed that in addition to the high association between consumer engagement and corporate reputation, engagement also fully mediates the relationship between perceived homophily and brand involvement with corporate reputation. As a second objective, while the engagement literature suggests that its definition and measurement vary according to the subject, object and context in which it is used, we argue that the existence of replicated scales in multiple contexts or with multiple objects indicates that keeping the subject constant (e.g., consumer) there can be a more comprehensive definition and more flexible scale that reduce the trend of fragmentation of the area. In this way, we propose that the consumer engagement scale of Vivek, Beatty, Dalela, and Morgan (2014) assumes this role. Because the scale has been validated in different contexts, we now adapt it to measure engagement with a different object. We confirmed the reliability and validity of the scale and show a good fit of the construct when measuring consumer engagement with the brand community.

Keywords: consumer engagement, brand community, social media.

Track: Consumer Behavior.