How psychological ownership stimulates participation in online brand communities? The moderating role of member type
Introduction
The proliferation in internet usage and social media adoption has led to the deployment of online brand communities (OBCs) by most of the firms to connect customers with other customers, brands, and firms (Porter & Donthu, 2008; Wu, Chen, & Chung, 2010; Porter, Donthu, MacElroy, & Wydra, 2011; Tsai, Huang, & Chiu, 2012; Baldus, Voorhees, & Calantone, 2015; Martínez-López et al., 2017-, Anaya-Sánchez, Molinillo, Aguilar-Illescas, & Esteban-Millat, 2017). ‘Brand community participation’ is a strong pillar of the success of an online brand community (OBC) and germane to a firm's brand community program (Casaló, Flavián, & Guinalíu, 2007; Koh & Kim, 2004; Zhou, Wu, Zhang, & Xu, 2013). Community participation refers to the members' involvement and engagement in the activities of the community and keeps them together for a longer period of time (Malinen, 2015; Tsai et al., 2012). Participation includes regular contributions in the form of online posts, replies, spending more time on OBCs, posting more messages, and active search for as well as exchange of information (Chen, Wu, Peng, & Yeh, 2015; Nonnecke, Andrews, & Preece, 2006; Sun, Rau, & Ma, 2014). Participation is also referred to as a group level activity under the feelings of ‘we-intentions’ or group level intentions among members (Dholakia, Bagozzi, & Pearo, 2004). Participation of the community members is indispensable for a community's success as it leads to the integration and cohesion of the community (Madupu & Cooley, 2010); enhances brand knowledge (Muniz & O'Guinn, 2001) and brand relationship quality (Flavián & Guinalíu, 2006; Kang, Tang, & Fiore, 2014), and helps in avoiding the problem of community substitution which lies just clicks away in the digital era (Wirtz et al., 2013).
There is growing evidence in the literature that OBC members experience a ‘sense of psychological ownership’ in OBCs and social media networks (Guo, Zhang, & Wang, 2016; Lee & Suh, 2015). Psychological ownership (PO) is a mental state where individuals consider the target object or a part of it as ‘theirs’ (Pierce et al., 2001, Pierce et al., 2003). The long-held belief that the individuals (employees) are susceptible to the feelings of possession and ownership towards organizations (Avey, Avolio, Crossley, & Luthans, 2009; Belk, 1988; Chang, Chiang, & Han, 2012; Pierce et al., 2001, Pierce et al., 2003) has now transcended to marketing literature (Hulland, Thompson, & Smith, 2015; Jussila, Tarkiainen, Sarstedt, & Hair, 2015) and seen in the context of brands and brand communities (Kumar and Nayak, 2019a, Kumar and Nayak, 2019b). A ‘sense of psychological ownership’ in OBCs has been characterised as a facilitator of the members' behavioral contribution in communities (cf. Lee & Suh, 2015; Pierce & Jussila, 2010). Built on the premise of psychological ownership theory of Pierce et al. (2001), the literature shows that peoples' individual and collective sense of PO in an organization results in their organization citizenship behaviors (Pierce et al., 2003; Pierce & Jussila, 2010). Brand community participation in OBCs is similar to the typical organizational citizenship behavior (Ye, Feng, & Choi, 2015). Hence, the theory of psychological ownership could be helpful in understanding members' participation in OBCs.
Researchers have contributed to the understanding of members' participation in brand communities by drawing upon different theories. To mention few, members' participation is analyzed from the lens of social presence theory (Koh, Kim, Butler, & Bock, 2007); Maslow's hierarchy of needs (Maslow, 1943; Bishop, 2007); uses and gratifications theory (Dholakia et al., 2004); organization commitment theory (Lampe, Wash, Velasquez, & Ozkaya, 2010); observational learning theory (Bandura, 1986; Zhou et al., 2013); and social identity theory (Stryker & Burke, 2000; Mousavi, Roper, & Keeling, 2017). All these studies explore and underscore the motivations behind the members' activities, interactions, and contributions in the OBCs. On the contrary, these studies have failed to contemplate on the intra-individual sense of possessiveness in the OBCs that may have an influence on members' participation in OBCs. The sense of ownership towards objects is present in individuals by nature and/or by nurturance; therefore, the sense of ownership in OBCs and its handling inside the OBCs to stimulate participation intentions creates a fertile ground for this research.
In the light of above assertions and supportive theoretical reasoning, this paper attempts to explain how members participate in OBCs by employing PO theory and argues that it is not just the social interactions, needs, information, and the identity-based value conferred by the community that stimulate members' participation, but a sense of possessiveness in the community can also play a constructive role in stimulating their participation.
Another important aspect covered in this study is the disparity in the participation of two widely popular member types in OBCs, viz., active members (who interact with other members and post content in OBCs) and lurkers1 (who join the brand community, silently browse and read the messages and posts but perform no or limited interactive activity; also known as passive or non-interactive members) (Madupu & Cooley, 2010; Schlosser, 2005). The literature has witnessed that different members perceive an OBC differently and member type can act as a moderator in members' participation (e.g., Mathwick, Wiertz, & De Ruyter, 2007; Ridings, Gefen, & Arinze, 2006).
This research attempts to address the above-mentioned gaps by proposing a theoretical model where individual PO and collective PO in OBCs (created by the firms) are proposed as two drivers of members' participation intentions. The sequential model portrays the role of participation intentions in further influencing the brand purchase intentions and word of mouth (WOM) about the community. The moderating role of ‘member types’ is explored in this study keeping the theoretical model at the centre.
This paper uniquely contributes to the academic literature by reporting that members' individual and collective sense of psychological ownership in OBCs play a vital role in their participation in OBCs created by the firms in particular, which further influences members' brand purchase intentions and a positive WOM about the respective community. Moreover, the active members and the lurkers exhibit certain similarities and differences in terms of participation with respect to their psychological ownership levels in the community. This paper is of managerial importance as it highlights that participation has strong links with a sense of psychological ownership, which could be a more parsimonious way of having sustainable brand community rather than investing external resources to motivate participation. The differences in the participation of active members and lurkers offer additional insights into formulating corresponding member management strategies.
The paper starts with reviewing the literature on individual and collective psychological ownership and formulating hypotheses followed by the methodology, results, and a brief discussion on theoretical and practical implications. The paper comes to an end with the limitations and future research directions.
Section snippets
Individual psychological ownership
Psychological ownership (PO) or individual psychological ownership (IPO) has been defined as “that state in which individuals feels as though the target of ownership (material or immaterial in nature) or a piece of it is “theirs”” (Pierce et al., 2001, p. 299). Individuals' sense of ownership towards the targets of possession such as home, electronic gadgets, automobiles, brands, places, destinations, and other people is a common phenomenon (Dittmar, 1992; Kumar and Nayak, 2019a, Kumar and
Survey instrument
The constructs in this study were operationalized with pre-established measures and items borrowed from existing literature (see Table 2 for item details). Four dimensions of individual psychological ownership in OBCs were operationalized with 12 items used to measure employee psychological ownership in organizations by Avey et al. (2009). To measure collective psychological ownership in a community, four items were adapted from the scale designed by Pierce et al. (2017) to measure CPO in an
Measurement model
CFA (confirmatory factor analysis) was used to test the measurement theory through different parameters. Following Anderson and Gerbing's (1988) guidelines, the reliability and validity of the study's main constructs was established first (see Table 2, Table 3). Internal consistency of the measures was checked through Cronbach's α (0.84–0.93) for all the constructs in the study which is higher than 0.70, confirming high reliability; composite reliability (CR) is also established for all the
Theoretical implications
A lower level of members' participation has long been considered detrimental to the OBC program (Ling et al., 2005). Previous studies on members' participation have identified various factors such as knowledge sharing (Lai & Chen, 2014), persuasive strategies (Kim & Sundar, 2014), extrinsic/intrinsic rewards (Wang & Clay, 2012), and other motivation based factors as well as OBC based technical factors, however, an intra-individual perspective related to the inherent possessiveness of the
Limitations and future research directions
This research work has certain shortcomings that might create a ground for future research. Firstly, allowing respondents to select a brand community offers an opportunity to cover a diverse set of OBCs but it may bias the responses on the higher side of the scale as members tend to select the recently visited community or their favourite one; thereby limiting the representation of uncalled many other OBCs the customers hold membership of. This problem can be avoided by studying a single or a
Mr. Jitender Kumar is a Faculty of Marketing at Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH), Greater Noida in India. He holds an MBA in Marketing and possesses four years of industry experience in Marketing and Sales Management, Branding, and Customer relationship management. His research interests include Brand Communities, Brand community relationships, Consumer psychology, and Customer brand engagement. His research work has appeared in International journals like Journal of Retailing
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Mr. Jitender Kumar is a Faculty of Marketing at Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH), Greater Noida in India. He holds an MBA in Marketing and possesses four years of industry experience in Marketing and Sales Management, Branding, and Customer relationship management. His research interests include Brand Communities, Brand community relationships, Consumer psychology, and Customer brand engagement. His research work has appeared in International journals like Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Journal of Product & Brand Management, and Journal of Consumer Marketing, among others. Jitender Kumar is the corresponding author for this manuscript.