An empirical study of customer contribution in online brand communities for innovation

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of online brand communities for innovation, whereby customers can contribute their innovation ideas to the companies. The central issues for managers who are interested in harnessing this new form of community include determining which customers may contribute more innovation ideas and understanding how they can further promote customers' contributions. Using the resource-based theory of social structure, we propose hypotheses on the factors that influence customer's contribution of innovation ideas, such as active group size, tenure in the community, connection to social network site (SNS), and interest concentration. Our findings from a preliminary analysis of panel data suggest that active group size and tenure in the community have a negative effect on customer's likelihood of making a contribution while connection to SNS and interest concentration encourage a higher likelihood of contribution. The managerial implications and future directions of the study are discussed.