Sustainable Community Marketing for Probabilistic Goods: The Paradox of Brand Love and Jealousy in a Dual Emotional Engagement Model

This study investigates online community marketing as a strategy to cultivate brand–consumer-relationship sustainability. Blind boxes have recently gained worldwide popularity but are increasingly criticized for sustainability concerns. While previous research mainly assumes cooperation among members, we highlight cooperative and competitive emotional interactions in building a sustainable online community. Integrating the conditioned-expectancy theory of vicarious emotion with social comparison theory, we propose a dual emotional mechanism consisting of brand love and brand jealousy to reflect cooperative and competitive emotions. This study obtained 601 valid responses from online communities of blind boxes. The results show that online community marketing is positively related to purchase intention. Although they are paradoxical, brand love and brand jealousy coexist, and both mediate the abovementioned relationship. We also find a serial mediation through brand love and jealousy and then engagement. In post hoc analysis, we further find a curvilinear mediation via brand love, which accelerates the emotional engagement in community marketing, while brand jealousy maintains a linear position. This study provides new insights on sustainable community marketing and suggests practical implications for innovative marketing approaches.