The Mediating Role of Consumer Engagement with the Brand Community and Its Effect on Corporate Reputation

ABSTRACT The literature on media management addresses social media as a means for brands to build relationships, share experiences, communicate interactively, and collectively with consumers, and compete for the attention and engagement of their audiences to maximize performance. In this paper, we check the impact of brand involvement and perceived homophily on consumer engagement with brand communities in social media and the effect of the latter on corporate reputation. We find that community engagement has a strong, positive association with corporate reputation and fully mediates the relationship between brand involvement and perceived homophily with corporate reputation. As reputation positively influences sales and profitability, our results provide important managerial implications for online media professionals, brand managers and marketers, agents who develop communication and content strategies for social media brand communities with the aim of enhancing corporate performance.