Brand loyalty, an important part of the development of brand community theory, is a comprehensive, multi-dimensional concept including cognition, attitude, and behavior. Asseal [
9] argued that brand loyalty represents a particular brand’s preference, which leads to continuous buying behavior. Dick and Basu [
10] found that, in addition to emphasizing repeat purchase behavior, brand loyalty must have a strong and sustained attitude toward the brand. Oliver [
11] believed that brand loyalty is a strong commitment to buy a preferred product or service again, which promotes repeated purchases of brands, even when buying scenarios and marketing tools may lead to changes in buying behavior. Bodie et [
12] suggested that engaged consumers exhibit enhanced consumer loyalty, satisfaction, empowerment, connection, emotional bonding, trust, and commitment. Hajli [
1] looked at the co-creation of value in the branding process with members of online communities. Thus, user’s continuance intention is one of the necessary and external manifestations of customer loyalty, which plays an important role in the formation of brand loyalty. This theory applies equally to the brand community.
From the perspective of the sustainable management of the brand community, the key to the sustainable survival of the brand community is its continuous use by community members. In research on the online brand community, the behavior of brand community users has the characteristics of freedom and diversity. Chen [
13] found that social interaction, knowledge quality, and system quality have a positive impact on the user’s willingness to continue knowledge exchange, in a study of virtual communities with professional knowledge. Wang [
14] found that Facebook user’s cognitive and emotional decision-making processes when using the platform will affect their willingness to use, in a study on Facebook. Lee and Kwon, Lin and Qu [
3,
15,
16] explored the formation and influencing factors of user’s continuance intentions in an online community. However, they focused on different perspectives. Lee and Kwon [
3] pay attention to affective factors rather than cognitive factors. Lin [
15] emphasized the positive effect of perceived sacrifices and the perceived value on the user’s willingness to share in a virtual community. Qu [
16] explored the influence of the user’s experience and personal interest perception. However, these studies focused on the general virtual community. They did not highlight the role of brand building in the virtual community. They also did not notice the intermediate variable of customer satisfaction. Therefore, we propose a more systematic mechanism of “benefits–satisfaction–continuance intention” to construct an extended ECM model. This model applies to the general brand virtual community, and it helps users to form continuous intention and brand loyalty.
2.1. Customer Perceived Benefit and Customer Satisfaction
Nambisan and Baron [
17] showed that providing the benefits needed by members is a key element in building a successful brand community, and these benefits are crucial to driving continued engagement in the brand community. Users can perceive different benefits when they participate in, and use an online brand community [
17,
18,
19]. For a long time, scholars have studied the perceived interests of customers, and have classified the interests of customers from different perspectives; for instance, functional benefits, psychological benefits, hedonic benefits, and social benefits [
17], targeted earnings, self-value discovery, maintenance of interpersonal relationships, social status, and entertainment benefits [
19], learning benefits and social integrative benefits, personal integrative benefits and hedonic benefits [
17], and so on.
However, the focus of these studies on brand community should not be focused on utilitarian interests, but to emphasize the benefits of user engagement and interaction. It should emphasize the emotional improvement of the user’s satisfaction, thus forming the user’s continuous intention. So this paper attempts to use the “customer perceived benefits”, including learning benefits, self-realization, hedonic benefits, and social benefits, to describe the benefits that users expect to obtain when they participate in and use the brand community.
The learning benefits include the information that users can obtain from a community, or use to solve a product problem. At this point, it can be approximated as perceived usefulness. In Davis’s technology acceptance model, perceived usefulness was defined as how users perceive the extent to which information systems can improve job performance. In the context of brand community, perceived usefulness can be extended to the degree to which users perceive the usefulness of a brand in order to satisfy its own needs. For example, through the brand community, users can more easily obtain information about the brand, without having to spend a lot of time and cost to find information about the brand. If a community can effectively solve the user’s problems, customers will save their time and energy, thereby enhancing their satisfaction. Therefore, customer-perceived learning benefits in online brand communities have a positive impact on customer satisfaction.
Self-realization is that members gain self-respect and realize their own self-worth by sharing relevant product information and personal experiences in the community, or by helping other members. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, users can gain social needs, respect for needs, and self-actualization needs from social networking sites. Sometimes, using brand communities by users can increase their confidence in the ability to contribute knowledge, and this can bring satisfaction and awareness of self-efficacy. Gardner and Pierce [
20] considered self-efficacy as the extent to which community members contribute to the community through individual knowledge-sharing behaviors. It can enhance their personal sense of honor, achievement, and impact. At the same time, community identity and authority represent the user’s influence and their right to use resources, which can stimulate the user’s continued use of the brand community, through self-actualization. For example, some bloggers share their experience in the brand community and offer practical advice for other people to buy goods, which can achieve the benefits of self-actualization. In general, users are respected by guiding other users through their own knowledge and community experience, thereby increasing customer satisfaction with the community. Self-realization is the highest level in Maslow’s demand theory; it can help to improve customer satisfaction. In other words, customer-perceived self-realization benefits in online brand communities have a positive impact on customer satisfaction.
Hedonic benefits, involves members receiving better entertainment experiences, and they engage in online communities with ease and pleasure. Martocchio and Webster [
21] believed that the higher an individual’s recreational attributes, the higher the enthusiasm and performance within an activity. For example, online communities are designed to enrich the use of communities with incentives, to let users perceive the incentive mechanism to bring higher entertainment value, and then promote users to be more willing to use them and encourage interactive participation. As a result, users’ stickiness and activities are enhanced. Generally speaking, engaging and using online brand communities easily increases the user’s experience of an entertainment experience in the community, thereby increasing customer satisfaction with the community. Therefore, customer-perceived hedonic benefits in online brand communities have a positive impact on customer satisfaction.
Social benefits refers to the establishment of good interpersonal relationships, and the expansion of social network communities, so that community members gain a sense of belonging and social identity. Social identity theory, proposed by Tajfel and Turner [
22], argued that people define self-concepts by maintaining relationships with social groups or organizations. In the context of brand community, community members celebrate the virtues of their beloved brands, and help other brand identities by participating in collective activities. This not only promotes the interaction among the members of the community, but also strengthens the mutual influence and cooperation between them. It also strengthens the brand identity of the members of the community. For example, many communities are divided into different circles; users with similar interests tend to participate in specific circles to get social benefits. When an online community activity is high, it results in the generation of many comments. These users’ comments, even negative comments, and subsequent responses, are an important information source for potential customers [
23]. The establishment of good interpersonal relationships among community members will enable members to have a sense of belonging and social identity, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction with the community. Thus, customer-perceived social benefits in online brand communities have a positive impact on customer satisfaction. To sum up, we propose these hypotheses:
H1a: Customer-perceived learning benefits in online brand communities has a positive impact on customer satisfaction.
H1b: Customer-perceived self-realization benefits in online brand communities has a positive impact on customer satisfaction.
H1c: Customer-perceived hedonic benefits in online brand communities has a positive impact on customer satisfaction.
H1d: Customer-perceived social benefits in online brand communities has a positive impact on customer satisfaction.
2.2. Customer Perceived Benefit and User’s Continuance Intention
Based on the theory of social exchange, users continue to gain certain benefits or value in a brand community, which will maintain the continuous willingness of users in the brand community. Qu [
16] proposed that the user’s experience and perception of personal interests will significantly affect the continuance intention and behavior of the community, from a study of a non-transactional virtual community.
Users often improve their community sensitivity after solving problems in the community, and are more willing to help the community. This means that after the emergence of similar problems, they can once again participate in the community through solving these problems. Thus, customer-perceived learning benefits in online brand communities have a positive impact on the user’s continuance intention. When users provide advice and respect others through their own knowledge and experience, users tend to establish a sense of belonging to the community. Therefore, customer-perceived self-realization benefits in online brand communities have a positive impact on the user’s continuance intention. Users engage in community interactions because they want to be recognized in the community and to find a sense of belonging in the community. When this sense of belonging arises, users tend to enter the community to form their own circle, and they continue to engage in interaction. Thus, customer-perceived social benefits in online brand communities have a positive impact on the user’s continuance intention. Based on this,
H2a: Customer-perceived learning benefits in online brand communities has a positive impact on user’s continuance intention.
H2b: Customer-perceived self-realization benefits in online brand communities has a positive impact on user’s continuance intention.
H2c: Customer-perceived hedonic benefits in online brand communities has a positive impact on user’s continuance intention.
H2d: Customer-perceived social benefits in online brand communities has a positive impact on user’s continuance intention.
2.3. Customer Satisfaction and the User’s Continuance Intention
The users’ satisfaction is the key factor that influences the users’ continuance intention, based on the expectation confirmation model in information system (ECM-IS). Whether brand community can provide users with satisfactory perceived benefits, it will affect the user’s continuing intention of the brand community [
24,
25].
The experience gained by users in using the community, the effectiveness of solving the problem, or their perception of the sense of belonging in the community, all increase the user’s satisfaction with the community, and thus establish the user’s loyalty and trust to the community. As a result, users tend to join communities and gather community information, and then interact frequently in the community. On the one hand, they can continue to experience this wonderful experience. On the other hand, it reduces the time and energy costs of finding alternative communities. Therefore, the customer satisfaction in an online brand community has a positive impact on the user’s continuance intention. Therefore, the following hypotheses are offered.
H3: The customer satisfaction in an online brand community has a positive impact on the user’s continuance intention.