Understanding customer participation in online brand communities : Literature review and future research agenda

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic review of customer participation research specifically in online brand communities and summarize a number of basic issues as important research gaps that future research should address. Design/methodology/approach By using the content analysis method, this paper explores, analyses and presents a literature review by closely examining 113 articles published during 2001-2016, primarily from the leading marketing and management journals. Findings The findings of this review show that regardless of the plenty of studies in this area, a conceptual framework for customer participation is undetermined. This review presents a framework describing various antecedents, mediators, moderators and consequences of online brand community participation. Apart from this, various theories and models used in the reviewed articles are being depicted. The literature classification presented in this paper portrays the current trends and patterns of research in this area. This review also addresses research gaps in this area and presents them in the form of future research directions. Research/limitations/implications This review of literature carried out by the authors suggests that customer participation in online brand communities needs more focused conceptual research and the implications of this study will help researchers in this direction. Moreover, the managers can use the identified variables as a checklist to their online brand communities’ activities. Originality/value This paper is the first to provide a systematic review of customer participation in online brand community area that presents a comprehensive knowledge regarding the current state of research in this area on a single platform and provides a conceptual framework.