Effect of social support on customer satisfaction and citizenship behavior in online brand communities: The moderating role of support source

Dong Hong Zhu, Hui Sun and Ya Ping Chang

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2016, vol. 31, issue C, 287-293

Abstract: Customers often join online brand communities to seek support from others when they encounter product problems. Some customers who receive good social support exhibit customer citizenship behavior. This study develops a theoretical model to investigate how social support influences customer citizenship behavior through customer satisfaction with firms in online brand communities. Moreover, the moderating role of support source (i.e., firms vs. other customers) is measured. The research model is tested by using the Partial Least Squares technique. The results show that informational and emotional support significantly affects the customer citizenship behavior of providing feedback to the firm, recommendations, and helping other customers through customer satisfaction in online brand communities. Moreover, informational and emotional support from firms and other customers exert different effects on customer satisfaction.

Keywords: Online brand community; Social support; Informational support; Emotional support; Customer satisfaction; Customer citizenship behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969698915301958
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joreco:v:31:y:2016:i:c:p:287-293

DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2016.04.013

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services is currently edited by Harry Timmermans

More articles in Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().