Promoting Consumer Engagement in Online Communities through Virtual Experience and Social Identity

Abstract

With the development and proliferation of online games, understanding how to seize these players has become an essential issue for academic scholars and practitioners. Based on virtual experience in online gaming communities and consumer engagement perspectives, this research developed and verified a multi-dimensional framework for assessing how to retain and encourage players continuous dedication and engagement behaviors. The proposed framework illustrates the interrelationships among six constructs in online gaming communities: social presence, telepresence, cognitive social identity, affective social identity, psychological engagement, and behavioral engagement. Data collected from 338 players who have experience in engagement behaviors in online gaming communities. The collected data were examined against the research framework using structural equation modeling (SEM). The research findings offer sufficient evidence that behavioral engagement is influenced by psychological engagement, which consecutively, are determined by cognitive social identity, affective social identity, social presence, and telepresence. More importantly, the mediating analysis indicated that psychological engagement is a crucial mediator, meaning that consumer engagement is a sequential process, and behavioral engagement cannot independently exist without psychological engagement. Taken together, the research results of this study have several critical theoretical and practical implications for future academic researchers and practitioners to have better understanding of consumer engagement. By doing so, the game companies can have sustainable competitive advantage and support sustainable development.