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The social media platforms have become progressively vital in modern era as a means of interacting with consumers and as a means for marketers to focus on online social networks so as to foster loyalty of brands. Purpose of this study is to analyze the causal relationship among the characteristics of gamified customer benefits (epistemic benefits, social integrative benefits, personal integrative benefits and hedonic benefits), customer engagement and customer loyalty with respect to online brand communities on social media platforms. This study also analyzes the mediating role of customer engagement between gamified customer benefits and customer loyalty. Data is collected from 250 individuals and Smart PLS-4 is used to empirically test the hypothesis. Results reveals that epistemic benefits, social integrative benefits and hedonic benefits has positive and significant impact of customer engagement and customer loyalty while personal integrative benefits shows insignificant impact on customer engagement and loyalty. This study shows mediating role of customer engagement amid gamified customer benefits and customer loyalty. Thus, this study may help brand managers to better understand role of gamified customer benefits with customer engagement and customer loyalty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Many enterprises recognize that social media is a valuable source of information propagation for brands. Using the self-congruity and social identity theories as theoretical bases, the purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated conceptual model and explore the effects of brand-evangelism-related behavioral decisions of enterprises on virtual community members. Design/methodology/approach: This study targeted community members who had purchased a specific cosmetic brand's products and had been members of an official brand fan page for at least one year. Using a survey of 488 valid samples and structural equation modeling was used to conduct path analyses. Findings: The results indicated that seven hypothetical paths were supported and exhibited desirable goodness of fit. Value congruity can be used to explain effects of dual identification on various relationships. Relationships among variables of brand evangelism are not independent. Specifically, the effect of brand purchase intentions on positive brand referrals is higher than that on oppositional brand referrals. Practical implications: The findings can help brand community managers to adopt innovative and effective strategies to gain community members' identification and maintain a desirable relationship between business and community members. In addition, this study should help marketers to increase the opportunity of maximizing the brand evangelism effect. Originality/value: This study contributes to the understanding for multiple perspectives of value congruity and adopts the extension viewpoint to understand community members not only have brand value and self-congruity problems but also have community membership goals and values related to the fit problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political brands are using Twitter intensively during campaigns. The objective of this study is twofold: to build a theoretical framework to pose that the use of hashtags can be a brand strategy; and to analyze how political brands are effectively using hashtags. First, drawing on the social identity approach, this article3 argues that brands are becoming social identities enacted through horizontal user-to-user relationships. Second, a sample of a million tweets from the last two Spanish elections in 2015 and 2016 is collected to analyze the type of hashtags posted by politicians and the networks of interaction. Results show that political brands mainly used three types of hashtags: party, candidate and branded hashtags; and mainly interacted with their own hashtags. This can be considered as a traditional brand identity strategy. However, a brand community strategy would be more aligned with the horizontal and top-down nature of social networking sites as well as with today's allencompassing political debate. Political brands should foster a co-creative brand identity process to build more effectively the organization's meaningful values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Companies are now using social network sites (SNSs) within their marketing and brand-building activities. Twitter is the preferred SNS for creating brand communities, which offer companies many advantages. The purpose of this paper is to examine how individuals manage their competing needs for being affiliated (operationalized as personal and communal-brand connections) and for being seen as distinctive (operationalized as need for uniqueness (NFU)) when they are members of brand communities on Twitter. The authors have also analysed which type of brand community is able to achieve the balance between both needs, enhancing identification with the brand community.Design/methodology/approach A total of 318 valid responses were collected from three camera brand communities on Twitter. Messages (“tweets”) which included a link to an online questionnaire were sent to community members via Twitter. The authors examine the proposed model using structural equation modelling.Findings The authors demonstrate that consumers can satisfy their need for affiliation in brand communities created in Twitter. However, consumers can only reach a balance between the need for affiliation and the need for distinctiveness in brand communities built around niche brands. In contrast, the two needs work in opposition to shape identification in brand communities of big brands.Originality/value Optimal distinctiveness theory is used as a theoretical background for proposing how the antecedents of identification with the brand community enhance brand loyalty, with reference to the conflict between the individual’s needs for both distinctiveness and affiliation. Consumers’ identification with the brand community is proposed as a mediator to achieve brand loyalty in brand communities. Consumers reach this balance in brand communities built around a niche brand, where individuals with high NFU feel a high identification with the brand community. For big brands, as consumers’ NFU increases, their identification with the brand community and brand loyalty decreases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brand pages in social network sites are becoming a new form of virtual brand communities, in which consumers follow their favorite brands and exchange information and comments with them. Strong emotional relationships are appearing during these interactions. In this context brand love is being more and more used as a new managerial concept. This paper assesses to what extent brand pages are able to enhance brand love in social network sites. An empirical study was developed for comparing reactions of consumers who belong to a brand page with other consumers who do not follow that brand page in a social network site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online social networks have integrated into the computer mediated communication (CMC) environment in the past few years. Social Networks such as Facebook, Myspace, Bebo and Twitter are web-based services that allow people to create a public profile, share the connection with other users, and view and traverse their list of connections in common network. The aim of this study is to find factors affecting the amount of time users spent on Facebook. The Facebook was analyzed from the perspective of usage types, brand and advertising engagement. The results revealed that the main Facebook usage factors were "Social networking", "Writing on wall", "Entertainment", "Searching for friends" and "Free time". Another independent variable was Brand & Advertising engagement, which had three factors named as "Brand Community Engagement", "Brand Community Approach", and "Ad attitude". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]