Effects of online brand community rituals on customer citizenship behavior: exploring the sequential mediation mechanism

Abstract

Purpose Few extant studies have focused on digital rituals and investigated the relationship between them and customer citizenship behavior in the context of online brand communities (OBCs). This study aims to examine the sequential mediation mechanism of emotional energy and spiritual brand identification under interaction ritual theory and identifies membership prototypicality as the moderator. Design/methodology/approach An online investigation of 515 OBC users was conducted to gather data, and structural equation modeling was applied to test the hypotheses. Findings The empirical results revealed that OBC rituals were positively related to customer citizenship behavior. Emotional energy and spiritual brand identification could play mediating roles in the relationship between OBC rituals and customer citizenship behavior. Furthermore, there existed a sequential mediation mechanism with emotional energy as the first mediator and spiritual brand identification as the second. The effect of OBC rituals on emotional energy was more significant for peripheral members than prototypical members. Practical implications Managers of OBCs should conduct various ritualistic strategies to stimulate users to perform customer citizenship behaviors. Discrete ritualized activities should be intended for members of different prototypicalities. Originality/value This study provides a profound insight on how OBC rituals foster customer citizenship behavior and is among the first to explore such a relationship. It also investigates the sequential mediation mechanism, thus broadening the research on the influencing processes of OBC rituals on customer citizenship behavior.