Research on the formation mechanism of product contribution in online product communities: content contribution as a mediating variable

PurposeEnterprises build online product community to expect users to contribute: opinion sharing (content contribution) and product consumption (product contribution). Previous literature rarely focused on both. The purpose of this paper is to explain user contribution mechanism by identifying content contribution and product contribution.Design/methodology/approachThis research chose Xiaomi-hosted online product community (bbs.xiaomi.cn) and Huawei-hosted online product community (club.huawei.com) where users can freely share ideas and buy products at the same time. Data were crawled from 109,665 community users to construct dependent variable measurement, and 611 questionnaires were used to verify research hypotheses.FindingsThe results indicate that both cognitive needs and personal integration needs have a significant positive impact on browse behavior; social integration needs and hedonic needs have a significant positive impact on content contribution behavior. Browse behavior not only directly affects but also indirectly influences product contribution through content contribution behavior.Research limitations/implicationsFindings of this research provide community managers with useful insights into the relationship between content contribution and product contribution.Originality/valueThis study explains the formation mechanism of user product contribution and reveals the relationship between user content contribution and product contribution in online product community. This paper provides a different way of theorizing user contributions by incorporating uses and gratifications theory into the “Motivation-Behavior-Result” framework.