Abstract
Along with the development of social media, the importance of virtual brand communities located on such websites has significantly grown. Nowadays, fanpages serve as a source of information about the brand as well as a mean of building one’s personal image by underlining the views and ideas shared with the brand. Participation in the life of brand communities may also increase consumer’s loyalty toward the brands. The aim of this article is to investigate the purchase decision of the members of virtual brand communities in order to evaluate their loyalty toward the brands which communities the social media users belong to. The authors conducted an empirical quantitative research, by indirect data collection with the use of survey technique, carried out among 650 Polish Internet users. The results confirm the increase of the loyalty toward the brand caused by participation in its brand community; however differences exist, especially between age groups, and are dependent on the member’s level of activity on the fanpage. The research has also shown that the price is often the factor more important for the consumers than their relation with the brand. The results indicate the importance of communicating with consumers via fanpages and promoting their active participation in the life of the community.
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Siuda, D., Grębosz-Krawczyk, M. (2020). Consumer’s Loyalty: Case of the Virtual Brand Communities. In: Bilgin, M., Danis, H., Demir, E., Ucal, M. (eds) Eurasian Business Perspectives. Eurasian Studies in Business and Economics, vol 12/2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35051-2_14
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