How Relationship Quality Drives Knowledge Sharing on Facebook Brand Pages

Abstract

Highly interactive social media brand pages depend on knowledge sharing (KS) within the virtual brand community (VBC). Relationship quality (RQ) is important for fostering KS, but research on how this works in the rapidly evolving context of VBC is still somewhat limited. Much RQ research aggregates RQ components into a reflective second order factor, but disaggregating them allows for better assessment of how RQ works. An online survey among Thai users of Facebook brand pages confirms four components of RQ, including trust in providers and users, conflict, satisfaction, and commitment. Trust positively affects satisfaction and commitment. Conflict reduces satisfaction but does not have a direct impact on commitment, likely because the overall level of conflict was not very high. Satisfaction and commitment both have direct effects on KS, but both trust and conflict are fully mediated by these two RQ sub-dimensions.

Keywords:

• Brand community
• Facebook
• knowledge sharing
• relationship quality
• social media

Disclosure statement

No conflict of interest has been declared by authors.

Data availability statement

Data are available on request from the authors

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Siriluck Rotchanakitumnuai

Siriluck Rotchanakitumnuai is Professor of Management Information Systems at Thammasat Business School (TBS), and previously served as Dean of TBS, and Vice President of Academic Affairs at Thammasat University. She received her MBA from University of Texas Austin, and her PhD in Management of Technology from Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand. She has also served as International Board Member, and Conference Chair of the International Conference on Electronic Business (ICEB). Most of her research is on electronic commerce, social networks, and management applications of IT systems.

Mark Speece

Mark Speece is Adjunct Research Faculty at the Thammasat Business School (TBS). Prior to semi-retiring in 2019, he taught in Kuwait (7 years), Alaska (10 years), and Southeast Asia (16 years, mostly Thailand, also Singapore, Hong Kong, and Vietnam), and remained an adjunct in Thailand even when teaching outside. He has a PhD in Marketing from University of Washington, and a PhD in Middle East Economic Geography from University of Arizona. Much of his research for several decades has been on customer/user perceptions about internet technologies and IT systems. Nowadays, much of this focuses on social media.