Research on the influence mechanism of community value on customer loyalty

In the real and virtual environment, there are two types of consumer communities, namely service community and product community. Based on Social Identity Theory and the empirical study, this paper explored the similarities and differences in the influence mechanism of community value and customer loyalty between these two communities. This paper dimensioned community value by functional value (FV) and service value (SV), and then introduced community identity as the mediating variable to clearly explain the relationship of community value and customer loyalty. Through the field study on a fitness club and an online product community, we received 224 questionnaires and examed the hypotheses model by LISREL 8.7. The results indicate community value is the driving factor of customer loyalty, community identity fully mediates the relationship of SV and customer loyalty in product community and of FV and customer loyalty in the service community. In the end, managerial suggestions and future research are provided.