Ritualization of Online Brand Community Behaviors and Tribal Bond

Abstract

The online communities are activating recently as using by over half of online users. But the previous online community studies were limited to figure out the influence factors of participation of community and its social affect mainly. So, this study tried to figure out ritual to understand more about individual aspect of online community activities and conducted empirical study of tribal bond that is consequences of ritual to suggest managerial implications. The significant online external ritual antecedent was shared norm and internal ritual antecedents were interdependence, need for approval. Also, the internal ritual had influence on external ritual and tribal bond. The external ritual was not significant influence factor of tribal bond. We suggested managerial implication the efficient management of quantitatively expanded community based on these results and academic implications that extend ritual concept to online, scale development and verification of each concept.