Promotion Regulatory Fit or Prevention Regulatory Fit, Which Is the King on Social Media? Influence of Social Identification on Brand Loyalty

Author: 

Shang Chen
Xuefei Xu
Qingfei Min

Abstract: 

An increasing number of companies have established brand pages on social media to build brand loyalty. Prior studies have mainly focused on the independent impacts of brand identification and identification with other users of brand pages on brand loyalty. However, the current study investigates whether the relative impacts of brand identification and identification with other users of brand pages on brand loyalty vary according to consumers’ regulatory focus. In particular, we further verify the difference between the two types of brand loyalty. Besides, the moderating effects of product type on the relationship between promotion/prevention regulatory fit and brand loyalty are explored. Finally, this study uses different combinations of IT affordances to explore their influences on -two identification targets. This research adopts a qualitative methodology and involves conducting semi-structured interviews with 27 brand page users in regard to IT affordances and their subdimensions. Then, the authors tested their hypotheses with survey data collected from the United States and China. The results support our hypotheses and confirm the differential effects of promotion and prevention regulatory fit on brand loyalty. We expect that this paper can contribute to the existing literature and provide marketers with important practical suggestions.

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Published Date: 

November, 2022

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