Title: Formation path of customer engagement in virtual brand community based on back propagation neural network algorithm

Authors: Mengmeng Song; Lin Qiao; Rob Law

Addresses: College of Tourism, Hainan University, Haikou, 570100, China ' College of Tourism, Hainan University, Haikou, 570100, China ' School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

Abstract: The formation path of customer engagement in a virtual brand community (VBC) with customer engagement, which explores the customers' non-transactional behaviours, has become increasingly popular in the marketing field. In this study, we introduced an approach that integrates structural equation modelling and back propagation artificial neural network to identify the motivating factors (e.g., interactivity, information quality, and convenience) that influence the perceived information and social values of a VBC and customer engagement. The results show that when perceived value plays a mediating role in the influence of interactivity and information quality on customer engagement, interactivity is associated positively with customer engagement in the VBC. This study aims to provide meaningful insights into companies' utilisation of brand fan pages.

Keywords: neural network algorithm; virtual brand community; VBC; brand fan page; perceived value.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCSE.2020.109405

International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering, 2020 Vol.22 No.4, pp.454 - 465

Received: 25 Jul 2019
Accepted: 30 Oct 2019
Published online: 08 Sep 2020 *

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