THE ROLE OF REGULATORY FIT IN VIRTUAL BRAND COMMUNITIES

In our current digital era, virtual brand communities (VBCs) play an important role in building and strengthening companies' brands and in maintaining customer relationships. In this research, the authors collected primary and secondary data from two VBCs to demonstrate the role of regulatory fit in consumers' VBC participation. The authors found that the regulatory fit between promotion focus and brand ideal self-congruence, not the fit between prevention focus and brand ought self-congruence, had significant positive impacts on utilitarian benefit and hedonic benefit. Further, the regulatory non-fit between promotion focus and brand ought self-congruence and that between prevention focus and brand ideal self-congruence had significant negative impacts. The authors then discussed the implications of these findings.