From customer participation and involvement to brand evangelism: Analysing the mediating role of customer brand engagement in social media brand communities (SMBCs)

Abstract
Despite the growing acknowledgment of brand evangelism’s significance in online brand communities (OBCs), empirical insights into its drivers and dynamics remain limited. This paper aims to explore whether customers’ involvement and participation improve their brand evangelism and whether that improvement is mediated by online brand community engagement (CBE). A formal questionnaire survey collected data from 303 MTurk OBCs users, and structural equation modelling was used to test the proposed conceptual model. Customer involvement and participation enhance their online brand community engagement and, in turn, brand evangelism. This study disintegrated the two integral parts of online brand community engagement; participation and involvement and investigated not only their direct effects but also their indirect effects via online brand community engagement on evangelism to provide a comprehensive understanding of customers’ voluntary consumption and communication behaviours.
Key words: Involvement, Participation, Brand community engagement, Brand evangelism, Online brand communities
Paper type: Research paper