IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joinma/v37y2017icp32-43.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Consumer Communities Do Well, But Will They Do Good? A Study of Participation in Distributed Computing Projects

Author

Listed:
  • Thompson, Scott A.
  • Kim, Molan
  • Loveland, James M.
  • Lacey, Russell
  • Castro, Iana A.

Abstract

Brand communities and corporate social responsibility have been touted for their ability to both generate significant equity for their brands and strong bonds among community members. However, the reciprocal capacity of these brands to mobilize their followers to engage in prosocial behavior, while very promising, has been largely ignored by researchers and practitioners alike. Given the untapped potential of product aficionados, who are said to possess considerable knowledge, expertise, and engagement, this lack of research and managerial guidance is somewhat perplexing. To address this shortcoming, we conducted a longitudinal investigation of two brand communities and one non-brand based product category community drawn from five years of data from a scientific crowdsourcing project aimed at curing medical diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and AIDS. Employing a hazard modeling approach, we find that contrary to conventional wisdom, brand community participation reduces the likelihood of joining, while participation in a non-brand based product category community increases the likelihood of joining, a prosocial distributed computing project. Furthermore, willingness to help fellow community members plays an important role in the likelihood to join. These findings provide important insights for firms seeking to engage product category and brand communities in prosocial causes.

Suggested Citation

  • Thompson, Scott A. & Kim, Molan & Loveland, James M. & Lacey, Russell & Castro, Iana A., 2017. "Consumer Communities Do Well, But Will They Do Good? A Study of Participation in Distributed Computing Projects," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 32-43.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joinma:v:37:y:2017:i:c:p:32-43
    DOI: 10.1016/j.intmar.2016.07.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1094996816300585
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.intmar.2016.07.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fournier, Susan, 1998. "Consumers and Their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 24(4), pages 343-373, March.
    2. Abagail McWilliams & Donald Siegel, 2000. "Corporate social responsibility and financial performance: correlation or misspecification?," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(5), pages 603-609, May.
    3. Noah J. Goldstein & Robert B. Cialdini & Vladas Griskevicius, 2008. "A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 35(3), pages 472-482, March.
    4. Muniz, Albert M, Jr & O'Guinn, Thomas C, 2001. "Brand Community," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 27(4), pages 412-432, March.
    5. Kevin J. Boudreau & Lars B. Jeppesen, 2015. "Unpaid crowd complementors: The platform network effect mirage," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(12), pages 1761-1777, December.
    6. Aaker, Jennifer L. & Akutsu, Satoshi, 2009. "Why Do People Give? The Role of Identity in Giving," Research Papers 2027, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    7. Thompson, Scott A. & Loveland, James M. & Fombelle, Paul W., 2014. "Thematic Discrepancy Analysis: A Method to Gain Insights into Lurkers and Test for Non-Response Bias," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 55-67.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chien-Lung Hsu & Yi-Chuan Liao, 2019. "Bridging User Perception and Stickiness in Business Microblog Contexts: A Moderated Mediation Model," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-16, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Leenheer, J. & Bijmolt, T.H.A. & van Heerde, H.J. & Smidts, A., 2002. "Do Loyalty Programs Enhance Behavioral Loyalty : An Empirical Analysis Accounting for Program Design and Competitive Effects," Discussion Paper 2002-65, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    2. Ewing, Michael T. & Jevons, Colin P. & Khalil, Elias L., 2009. "Brand death: A developmental model of senescence," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 332-338, March.
    3. Badrinarayanan, Vishag & Suh, Taewon & Kim, Kyung-Min, 2016. "Brand resonance in franchising relationships: A franchisee-based perspective," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(10), pages 3943-3950.
    4. Wang, Yajin, 2022. "A conceptual framework of contemporary luxury consumption," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 788-803.
    5. Jones, Scott & Cronin, James & Piacentini, Maria G., 2022. "Celebrity brand break-up: Fan experiences of para-loveshock," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 720-731.
    6. Carlson, Brad D. & Suter, Tracy A. & Brown, Tom J., 2008. "Social versus psychological brand community: The role of psychological sense of brand community," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 61(4), pages 284-291, April.
    7. Mandl, Leonhard & Hogreve, Jens, 2020. "Buffering effects of brand community identification in service failures: The role of customer citizenship behaviors," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 130-137.
    8. Stremersch, S. & Verniers, I.W.J. & Verhoef, P.C., 2006. "The Quest for Citations: Drivers of Article Impact," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2006-061-MKT, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    9. Koivisto, Elina & Mattila, Pekka, 2020. "Extending the luxury experience to social media – User-Generated Content co-creation in a branded event," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 570-578.
    10. Russell, Stephanie & Brannan, Matthew J., 2016. "“Getting the Right People on the Bus”: Recruitment, selection and integration for the branded organization," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 114-124.
    11. Reed, Americus & Forehand, Mark R. & Puntoni, Stefano & Warlop, Luk, 2012. "Identity-based consumer behavior," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 310-321.
    12. Weijo, Henri & Bean, Jonathan & Rintamäki, Jukka, 2019. "Brand community coping," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 128-136.
    13. Popp, Bastian & Woratschek, Herbert, 2017. "Consumers’ relationships with brands and brand communities – The multifaceted roles of identification and satisfaction," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 46-56.
    14. Veloutsou, Cleopatra & Moutinho, Luiz, 2009. "Brand relationships through brand reputation and brand tribalism," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 314-322, March.
    15. Hogg, Margaret K. & Banister, Emma N. & Stephenson, Christopher A., 2009. "Mapping symbolic (anti-) consumption," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 148-159, February.
    16. Stokburger-Sauer, Nicola & Ratneshwar, S. & Sen, Sankar, 2012. "Drivers of consumer–brand identification," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 406-418.
    17. LaTour, Kathryn & LaTour, Michael S. & Zinkhan, George M., 2010. "Coke is It: How stories in childhood memories illuminate an icon," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 328-336, March.
    18. Strizhakova, Yuliya & Coulter, Robin A. & Price, Linda L., 2008. "The meanings of branded products: A cross-national scale development and meaning assessment," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 82-93.
    19. Ramaswamy, Venkat & Ozcan, Kerimcan, 2016. "Brand value co-creation in a digitalized world: An integrative framework and research implications," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 93-106.
    20. Remi Trudel & Jennifer J. Argo & Matthew D. Meng, 2016. "The Recycled Self: Consumers’ Disposal Decisions of Identity-Linked Products," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 43(2), pages 246-264.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joinma:v:37:y:2017:i:c:p:32-43. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-interactive-marketing/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.