Does Social Media Marketing and Brand Community Play the Role in Building a Sustainable Digital Business Strategy?

This study investigates the effects of customer relationships on a brand’s social network website (BSN) for virtual and physical retail channels in the digital business environment. The authors also further explore the sustainable customer relationships with virtual and physical retail channels (i.e., consumer–community identification, CCI; and consumer–retailer love, C-R Love) and customer attitudinal/behavioral loyalty toward a retailer (re-purchase and word of mouth, WOM). The authors develop a framework to describe and examine the connections among customer relationships for BSN, CCI, C-R Love, and user loyalty for a retailer. Furthermore, it tests the mediating effects of virtual (i.e., CCI) and physical (i.e., C-R Love) channels on the correlation between BSN relationships and customer loyalty. The model and hypotheses in this study employ structural equation modeling with survey data. The study shows that partial customer relationships in BSNs directly or indirectly influence CCI and C-R Love, and both CCI and C-R Love positively influence re-purchase intentions and WOM communications. This study contributes a unique model for a process by which the customer relationships in BSNs can affect a sustainable retail loyalty through the virtual/physical channels. This finding can be viewed as pioneering and as setting a benchmark for future research.