A Study on the Influence of Opinion Leader Characteristics on Customers'Willingness to Participate in Value Co-creation in Virtual Brand Communities:The Mediating Role of Community Identity
In the rapidly developing Internet era,virtual brand communities have become a platform for value co-creation between enterprises and consumers.The influence and appeal of opinion leaders in vir-tual brand communities have an impact on consumers'willingness and behaviour,and adopts an empir-ical research method to explore the influence of opinion leaders'characteristics on customers'willing-ness to participate in value co-creation.The study shows that opinion leader characteristics and commu-nity identity in virtual brand communities have significant positive effects on customers'willingness to participate in value co-creation;opinion leader characteristics have significant positive effects on com-munity identity;community identity plays a partly intermediary role in the effects of opinion leader characteristics on customers'willingness to participate in value co-creation.Finally,it is suggested that virtual brand community managers should:pay attention to opinion leaders and be good at discovering outstanding opinion leaders;establish relevant incentive mechanisms and give appropriate rewards to o-pinion leaders;vigorously carry out interactive activities between opinion leaders and community cus-tomers;and strengthen the construction of virtual brand communities to enhance customers'commu-nity identity.