探索社會認同、吸引力和人像品牌對社群商務

的影響：人像品牌階段之調節效果

Exploring the impacts of social identity, attractiveness

and human brand on social commerce: Moderating

effect of human brand phases

ABSTRACT Based on social identity theory, this study proposes a research model

to explain that three social identity characteristics are the antecedents of attractiveness and the dual social identification can be influenced by attractiveness and thus results in customer loyalty. Furthermore, from the perspective of human brand, this study employs a human brand building trajectory to explore how attractiveness and social identification work effectively in the social commerce community. The human brand phases play the role of moderator to show the impacts of different identity phases on the formation process of customer loyalty. In this study, a total of 658 valid samples were collected and SEM is employed to test the research model. The results show that identity similarity, identity distinctiveness and identity prestige have positive impacts on the dual social identification via attractiveness, and the dual social identification is positively associated with customer loyalty. Different phases of human brands also show the moderating effects on the dual social identification and customer loyalty. The finding contributes to the field of social commerce and social identity theory and also provides insights for influencers who want to build a human brand in the social commerce community.

Keywords: Social commerce, Human brand, Social identity theory, Attractiveness,

Identification

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1. INTRODUCTION Social media (e.g., Facebook, Instagram) have played a significant role in

individuals’ daily life recently. Social media are not only the platforms for people to share and obtain the information of products/services (Liang & Turban, 2011), but also can create new online commercial opportunities (Hajli, 2015; Liang, Ho, Li, & Turban, 2011). The new phenomenon of commercial activities on social media is called “social commerce”. Social commerce is a network that provides an environment for both consumers and sellers to share related information and have shopping activities as well as social interactions with others (Curty & Zhang, 2013). Because more and more people purchase products and search product information on social media, it is important to explore the determinants of customers’ participation intention on commercial activities of social media.

This online social community can be created by a particular individual who has been regarded as a kind of influencer to gain a mass of followers (McQuarrie, Miller, & Phillips, 2012). Social commerce not only provides a place for consumers to share related information and have interaction and connection with others but also allows influencers to change their roles from consumers to sellers (Kim & Park, 2013; Stephen & Toubia, 2010). Some types of the influencers may simply like to share information with followers. Others may usually publish sponsored posts and recommend products for that brand or company. Still others may even build up their own brands to become professional celebrities. Although the extant literature has examined the issue of social commerce (Lee, Cha, & Cho, 2012), few studies propose an integrated framework to simultaneously address on the various types of influencers on social media. Therefore, this study aims to figure out what factors that influencers attract followers and then lead to maintain a long-term relationship.

Because social media provide the environments where everyone has the opportunities to gain a number of followers, influencers can manage their own social communities to build up themselves as human brands that can be analogized to the company brand (Erz & Christensen, 2018; McQuarrie et al., 2012). The term “human brand” can be defined as any well-known persona who makes efforts in marketing activities in the past (Rindova, Pollock, & Hayward, 2006; Thomson, 2006). A human brand is co-created by multiple stakeholders, including consumers and various clients (Hillebrand, Driessen, & Koll, 2015). Based on the social identity theory (Tajfel, Turner, Austin, & Worchel, 1979), consumer-company identification motivates consumers to keep connected with a brand and promotes them to develop a more loyal relationship with the brand (Currás-Pérez, Bigné-Alcañiz, & Alvarado-Herrera, 2009). If consumers

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can identify a brand as distinctiveness, similarity and prestige, they may be attracted to this brand (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2003). Furthermore, in the context of online community, the individual-based identification and group-based identification are both critical factors for users’ participation (Hu, Zhang, & Wang, 2017). Therefore, based on the dual identification framework (Belén del Río, Vazquez, & Iglesias, 2001), we presume that consumers tend to identify themselves depending on the human brand identification and community identification toward a human brand on social media to influence their loyalty behaviors. Accordingly, the social identity characteristics (i.e., similarity, distinctiveness and prestige), human brand attractiveness, dual identification (i.e., human brand and community) are all critical factors in the formation process of customer loyalty for the social commerce community.

Furthermore, according to social identity theory (Tajfel et al., 1979), consumers identifying with human brands in both inner performance and outer image of human brand and their communities (Saboo, Kumar, & Ramani, 2016). The different degrees of identification toward the influencer may lead to different degrees of human brands attractiveness. Erz and Christensen (2018) proposed a blogger transformation trajectory to describe that consumers may view the influencers as three types of human brand: (1) Individual influencer is only to share shopping experiences and the audiences may interact with one another; (2) Collective influencer is to start to earn money from sponsors by posting professional recommendations; (3) Influencer brand is that the influencer becomes like a brand symbolization and their relationship with stakeholders has changed to like partnership rather than business commission. We suspect that the three-phases human brand framework proposed by Erz and Christensen (2018) may have moderating effects on the dual social identification and on customer loyalty (i.e., active engagement and purchase intention) and included it in the research model.

In short, drawn on social identify theory and other related concepts (Belén del Río et al., 2001; Tajfel et al., 1979), the aim of this study is to understand the formation process of customer loyalty in the context of social commerce and examine the moderating role of human brand phases. The research objective are as follows: (1) Propose an integrated research model to investigate the formation process of customer loyalty in the social commerce community by considering the factors of social identity characteristics, human brand attractiveness, dual social identification. (2) To examine the moderating effects of human brand phases on the formation process of customer loyalty in the social commerce community.

2. LITURATURE REVIEW AND HYOTHESES

2.1 Social Commerce and Human Brand

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The term “social commerce” was first proposed by Yahoo in 2005 (Ko, 2018; Wang & Zhang, 2012). Social commerce is a network that provides an environment for both consumers and sellers to share related information and have shopping activities as well as social interactions with others (Curty & Zhang, 2013). Notably, previous studies have shown that the demarcation between consumers and producers are not so strict in social commerce. In other words, social commerce has a particular feature that enables customers to change their role into sellers as well (Han, Xu, & Chen, 2018). Therefore, although there are various types of social commerce at the present time, social commerce has been seen as a broader concept than others like social shopping or collaborative shopping (Afrasiabi Rad & Benyoucef, 2011). Since having social support and interacting with others are important to individuals, increasing commercial features in social media is a significant development accompanied with business values. Moreover, currently, individuals like to follow human brands and join their online social communities through social media. Accordingly, this study wants to figure out the human brand building trajectory in social commerce and investigate the potential causes that may create customer loyalty.

Human brand can be considered one of the various operational concepts of a brand (Thomson, 2006). In general, “brand” has been widely applied to companies, products and services in marketing and has also been described as an image and perceived quality as well (Thomson, 2006). Previous studies about brands have focused more on brand equity. Customer-based brand equity is defined as the extent to which consumers respond to a brand in the market, based on their awareness of and association with that brand (Keller, 1993). Celebrities can be regarded as brands because of their brand association and characteristics and they can also be managed professionally (Thomson, 2006). Since customers try to identify themselves with human brands, they may consider both inner performances and outer images of human brands and their communities (Saboo et al., 2016). Besides, the identification with human brands is also regarded as customers’ psychological condition of perceived values, feelings and belongingness with human brands (Lam, Ahearne, Hu, & Schillewaert, 2010). As a result, customers may perceive different degrees of identification and values from human brands and their communities.

Nowadays, the prosperous development of social media allows everyone to show their own image and to manage themselves in order to increase the amount of audience on the Internet (McQuarrie et al., 2012). Those influencers who need self-expression, vanity or connection with others are more motivated to participate in blogs (Chen, 2012). Human brands can be viewed not only as celebrities but also as influencers who displays themselves and gains attention on the social network. Along with the

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development of Internet technology, human brands are expanding through different kinds of social media. Apparently, building up or creating a human brand on social media is closely related to commercial activities. However, studies of investigating this subject in depth have not been carried out. Accordingly, this study follows these concepts and adopts a scenario that builds up a human brand in social commerce.

2.2 Social Identity Characteristics and Attractiveness

Assimilation and differentiation are two opposing but harmonious social needs for people. Assimilation has been regarded as individual’s desire to perceive senses of integration or belongingness from other people within a social group, while differentiation refers to the individual’s desire to identify and distinguish themselves from others in a social group (Currás-Pérez et al., 2009). Based on social identity theory, self-continuity, self-distinctiveness and self-enhancement have been thought of as three fundamental self-definition needs (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2003). Consumers are stimulated to maintain a stable and accordant sense of self in order to understand themselves and the social world. The connection between human brand identity similarity and perceived human brand identity attractiveness is proposed to take place (Dutton, Dukerich, & Harquail, 1994). That is, when consumers feel the human brand’s identity is more similar to their own self-concept, they may obtain more attractiveness from the human brand identity (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2003). Therefore, this study infers that the more identity similarity consumers perceived from the human brand, the more attractiveness may be enhanced.

H1. Perceived identity similarity is positively related to attractiveness.

Consumers’ attachments to a human brand are generally based on two images, what the human brand means to consumers themselves and what they think it means to others (Dutton et al., 1994). If the identification with a human brand helps consumers obtain continuity, distinctiveness or appreciations, which enhances the attachments between consumers and the human brand. The distinctiveness not only occurs via the identification with a single consumer but is related to other human brands. When consumers perceive a human brand identity more distinctive than that of other competitors, consumers may feel more attractiveness (Currás-Pérez et al., 2009). Accordingly, this study infers that the more identity distinctiveness consumers perceived from a human brand, the more attractiveness may be enhanced.

H2. Perceived identity distinctiveness is positively related to attractiveness.

Self-esteem has been considered associated with the social identity theory, which pointed out that individuals may be motivated to have positive evaluation on themselves

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since they categorize themselves to a group, feel belongingness and they may tend to evaluate the group positively as well (Currás-Pérez et al., 2009). Furthermore, consumers identify themselves with a human brand which has positive prestigious qualities in order to satisfy their self-enhancement. The human brand prestige identity allows consumers to feel honors of themselves because of the reflection of the prestigious human brand. Therefore, this study infers that the more identity prestige consumers perceived from the human brand, the more attractiveness may be enhanced.

H3. Perceived identity prestige is positively related to attractiveness.

2.3 Attractiveness and Social Identification

Brand attractiveness has been seen as a positive outcome of consumer-brand identification since it can help consumers to define their self-concept needs (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2003). Interpersonal attraction framework proposed that the attraction resulted from communications and interactions between individuals has includes three different dimensions of attractiveness: task attraction, social attraction and physical attraction. Social commerce provides an environment and allows consumers to have connection and interaction with others within the community, which is similar to the interpersonal communication concept. Accordingly, this study adopts a three-dimensional interpersonal attraction framework to describe human brand attractiveness. In social commerce, first, task attractiveness is regarded as the ability that a human brand provides useful and correct information for consumers (McCroskey, Hamilton, & Weiner, 1974). Second, social attractiveness is that consumers can feel intense attraction and social support through the interaction with members in the community managed by a human brand (McCroskey et al., 1974). Third, physical attractiveness can be viewed as a human brand with great appearances, and consumers feel attracted to the designed posts and pictures as well (Cyr, Head, & Ivanov, 2006).

As discussed above, the initiative of human brand attractiveness is the continuous communications and meaningful interactions between consumers and the human brand, which finally leads to consumers’ perceived self-identity (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2003). In social commerce communities, consumers may identify themselves via the human brand and others in the same community. A previous study has divided identification into individual-based and group-based identification (Belén del Río et al., 2001). Therefore, this study infers that human brand attractiveness may develop consumers’ identification with the human brand and with his or her community.

H4a. Attractiveness is positively related to human brand identification.

H4b. Attractiveness is positively related to community identification.

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2.4 Social Identification on the Social Commerce Platform

Social commerce provides a platform for consumers and sellers to have shopping performance and social interaction (Curty & Zhang, 2013), and allows consumers to change their roles into sellers as well. Moreover, when building a human brand on a social commerce platform, identification with the human brand can be regarded as an application of individual-based identification. Social Identification has been distinguished into two states, individual-based identification and group-based identification (Belén del Río et al., 2001). Recent studies have explored social identification in different states. Particularly, consumer-brand identification has been defined as consumers’ perceived values and their belongingness with a brand (Lam, Ahearne, Mullins, Hayati, & Schillewaert, 2013). Since the primary relationship between consumers and brands is consumption, the key outcome of consumer-brand identification is to maintain a long-term relationship and brand loyalty as well (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2003). In addition, consumers’ support or promotion of a human brand is another way, besides consumption, to increase profits of the human brand (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2003). Consequently, this study infers that the consumer-brand identification may stimulate consumers’ purchase intention and their supportive activities like active engagement as well.

H5a. Identification with a human brand is positively associated with active engagement.

H5b. Identification with a human brand is positively associated with purchase intention.

consumers can share their consumption experiences and recommend products or services to others and have the communication with the human brand through the community on the social commerce platform. Furthermore, people tend to identify themselves through the interaction with other members when in a social group. According to social identity theory, individuals recognize themselves part of a group and thus achieve the sense of oneness or belongingness and emotional connection. Community identification is one of the social identities, which is originated from group identification and individuals recognize their membership through other people (Luo, Zhang, Hu, & Wang, 2016). As a result, consumers may gain both practical advantages (i.e., WOM and shopping experiences), and psychological benefits (i.e., belongingness and emotional connection) through the identification with the community. Therefore, this study infers that consumers may have stable customer loyalty to the community.

H6a. Identification with a community is positively related to purchase intention.

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H6b. Identification with a community is positively related to active engagement.

2.5 Moderating Role of Different Human Brand Phases

According to the previous study, social commerce has been though of as a broader concept (Curty & Zhang, 2013). Some types of social commerce are raised up by particular individuals. For instance, a collaborative shopping of online friendship group is managed by an influential leader (Sun et al., 2016). Another type allows consumers to share information on an online social site. Previous studies have explained that a human brand may be related to consumption activities. Consumer bloggers are those have no professional background but gather a mass of audience, and share their shopping experiences online (McQuarrie et al., 2012). Besides, a mature human brand is co-created by multiple stakeholders including clients, sponsors, friends, the audience or competitors (Hillebrand et al., 2015). Only when the audiences purchase the product introduced and recommended by a human brand, will clients and sponsors will keep cooperating with the human brand so that he/ she can maintain the operation.

Based on the trajectory of bloggers changes (Erz & Christensen, 2018), this study proposes a three-phase human brand framework in social commerce including individual influencer, collective influencer and influencer brand. In the context of various social commerce types, the three-phase human brand framework may be considered one of them because of the similar features of their social activities. Individual influencers share shopping experiences and their audiences may share their own ideas to interact with one another. Collective influencers manage an online community to have social interaction with consumers and start to earn money from sponsors or clients after posting professional recommendations and their consumers have purchase activities. Although influencer brands have a similar concept with collective influencers, the most significant difference is that the influencer brand becomes more like a brand symbolization and their relationship with stakeholders has changed to the one more like partnership rather than business commission.

Since the trajectory is a continuously related process that human brands change from individual influencers to influencer brands, we propose that the moderating effect comparison should be divided into two parts. The first part is to compare individual influencers and collective influencers and the other one is to compare collective influencers and influencer brands. Firstly, as explained previously, attractiveness is individuals’ positive initial evaluation of others. In the first phase, individual influencers are those who want to express their self-concept, share their self-experience and their relationship with consumers tends to be like having conversations with like-minded friends (Erz & Christensen, 2018). In other words, without considering

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commercial activities, individual influencers focus more on the social interaction with consumers. As a result, the relationship between individual influencers and consumers is closer as well. Therefore, from the above discussion, we infer that:

H7. The positive effect of attractiveness on human brand identification is stronger for phase one than for phase two.

H8. The positive effect of attractiveness on community identification is stronger for phase one than for phase two.

As mentioned previously, individual influencers treat their consumers as like-mended friends, while the relationship with consumers in collective influencers are more like talking to audiences (Erz & Christensen, 2018). In the social community managed by individual influencers, there are more interactions and the relationship is more intimate. In other words, the community plays an important role in the individual influencer identity. Community identification has been regarded as one part of the social identity that individuals identify themselves through the interactions with the community members (Luo et al., 2016). Also, considering the situation that there is no consumption behavior in individual influencer’s social community, we only consider that the human brand phases will have significant moderation influence on active engagement in this part. Therefore, we infer the following:

H9. The positive effect of community identification on active engagement is stronger for phase one than for phase two.

Compared to individual influencers, collective influencers start to have monetary compensation from sponsors and clients (Erz & Christensen, 2018). Collective influencers not only have more interactions with other influencers but both pictures and texts they post online are more organized (Erz & Christensen, 2018). The recommended products and the shared information with related knowledge by collective influencers seem to have more credibility and accuracy. Consumers’ perceived values with a collective influencer result in consumer-brand identification (Lam et al., 2013) and then lead to customer loyalty and commitment. In other words, consumers may tend to spread positive eWOM and actively participate in the community managed by the collective influencers. Thus:

H10. The positive effect of human brand identification on active engagement is stronger for phase two than for phase one.

In the second part, as the comparison between collective influencers and influencer brands is considered, both of these two phases have influences on consumers’ consumption behaviors. Hence, we discuss the influence of the dual identification on

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purchase intention in this part. However, even though collective influencers become more specialized, and start to earn money through the social community (Erz & Christensen, 2018) they are still not as professional as influencer brands. Through the identification with the community, consumers may obtain the sense of belongingness and emotional connection (Ashforth & Mael, 1989) and gain more consumption related information via interactions with other consumers as well. Therefore, we infer the following:

H11. The positive effect of community identification on purchase intention is stronger for phase two than for phase three.

In the last phase of human brand framework, the influencer brand has been regarded as a kind of brand career with a high degree of professionalism (Erz & Christensen, 2018). They may have stable clients and professional managers, and the interaction with consumers tends to be like a company serving their customers. Product or service related information provided by influencer brands may be more comprehensive. Consumers identify themselves with a human brand identification and have stable loyalty. In addition, consumer-brand identification probably contribute to promote consumption behaviors (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2003). Thus:

H12. The positive effect of human brand identification on purchase intention is stronger for phase three than for phase two.

3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research Design

The research model, as shown in Fig. 1, explains potential antecedents and consequences of dual social identification. The model draws on the basis of social identity theory and identification concept. We propose that identity distinctiveness, identity similarity and identity prestige influence the dual social identification through attractiveness and the dual social identification influence customer loyalty (i.e., active engagement and purchase intention).

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Figure. 1 Research Model

3.2 Measure

Since an online survey was conducted in Taiwan, the questionnaire was first translated into Chinese, and then a backward translation method was employed to ensure the equivalence. Measures of all constructs in this study were adopted mainly from previous researches and were slightly modified to fit the current research context. For all measures, a seven-point Likert-type scale ranging from “strongly disagree” (1) to “strongly agree” (7) was employed. Table 1 lists the measures.

Table 1 Measurements Constructs References Measures

Identity

Similarity

(Bhattacharya &

Sen, 2003)

IS1

IS2

I recognize myself in [human brand A]

My sense of who I am matches my sense of [human brand A]

Identity

Distinctiveness

(Bhattacharya &

Sen, 2003; Currás-

Pérez et al., 2009)

ID1

ID2

ID3

I think [human brand A] has a distinctive identity

I think [human brand A] stands out from its competitors

[human brand A] is different from the other brands in the sector

Identity Prestige (Bhattacharya &

Sen, 2003; Currás-

Pérez et al., 2009)

IP1

IP2

IP3

IP4

[human brand A] is a first-class, high-quality human brand.

People in the same community have a positive image of [human brand A].

In general, [human brand A] is a respected human brand.

[human brand A] is a human brand with a good reputation.

[Attractiveness] (Shen, Li, Sun,

Chen, & Wang,

2019)

TA1

TA2

TA3

TA4

The information provided by [human brand A] is pretty much what I need.

[human brand A] adequately meets my information needs.

[human brand A] enhances my effectiveness in finding suitable products.

[human brand A] helps me make the task easier to get done.

Task

Attractiveness

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Social

Attractiveness

(Shen et al., 2019) SA1

SA2

SA3

SA4

It is conductive to interact with other members through [human brand A].

It is easy to interact with other members through [human brand A].

[human brand A] helps me to form warm relationships with other members.

[human brand A] gives me the chance to recommend ideas to others.

Physical

Attractiveness

(Shen et al., 2019) PA1

PA2

PA3

PA4

The design (i.e., colors, boxes, menus, etc.) of [human brand A] is attractive.

The overall look and feeling of [human brand A] are visually appealing.

[human brand A] looks professionally designed.

[human brand A] is visually pleasant.

Human Brand

Identification

(Hu et al., 2017) HBID1

HBID2

HBID3

I am proud to be [human brand A]'s follower.

[human brand A] represents values that are important to me.

My values are similar to those of [human brand A].

Community

Identification

(Hu et al., 2017) CID1

CID2

CID3

I really identify with people who follow [human brand A].

I feel I belong to the community with other followers of [human brand A].

[human brand A] is supported by people like me.

Active

Engagement

(Shen et al., 2019) AE1

AE2

AE3

I am engaged in leaving messages in [human brand A]’s community.

I often participate in online activities in [human brand A]’s community.

I often follow the news about [human brand A].

Purchase

Intention

(Currás-Pérez et al.,

2009)

PI1

PI2

PI3

The next time when I want to browse the social network, I will choose

[human brand A].

In the future, it is very likely that I will buy a product of [human brand A] or

the products recommended by [human brand A].

I will tend to buy a product of [human brand A] or the products

recommended by [human brand A].

3.3 Data Collection

Data collection took place from January 19, 2019 to March 15, 2019. Before taking the test, the participants were asked to fill in the name of the human brand whom they have followed for a while and have participated in his/ her online community. They also needed to filled in which social media platform they have used to follow the human brand and selected the phase they thought the human brand belonged to. The participants were required to recall their recent interaction with the human brand and other members in the community and then completed the questionnaire based on their actual experiences in the online community.

Total 658 valid samples were collected. Among them, 61.1% were females and 38.9 were males. Most of the participants were 20 to 25 years old and have received higher education in universities or graduate schools (96.4%). Besides, most of them spend 2 to 3 hours online every day. Table 6 demonstrates the demographic information of the participants in detail. The majority of them chose three main social media

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platforms, (YouTube, N=376; Instagram, N=152; Facebook, N=120), which are famous social media platform in Taiwan. In addition, the first phase of the human brand comprised 38.3% of the participants (N=251), 27.4% were the second phase (N=181), and the remaining 34.3% were the third phase (N=226).

4. RESULTS

4.1 Measurement Model Analysis and Structure Model Testing We employed structural equation modeling (SEM) technique to validate the

research model. The partial least squares (PLS) approach was adopted with the analysis software SmartPLS 3.2.8 to evaluate the measurement and the structural model in this study. This study adopted a confirmative factor analysis to examine the reliability and validity of the measurement. Besides, attractiveness is a reflective second-order construct containing three first-order constructs: task attractiveness, social attractiveness and physical attractiveness. The reliability and validity of the research instrument were evaluated by testing three criteria. First, composite reliability (CR) and Cronbach’s α (CA) was assessed to evaluate internal consistency and should be above the threshold value of 0.7 (Chin, 1998). The result of reliability and convergent validity are shown in Table 2. Second, average variance extracted (AVE) should exceed 0.5 for the convergent validity test and the loading for all individual items should be above 0.7 with respect to their proposed factors (Chin, 1998). As shown in Table 2 and 3, all items in this model exceeded the threshold.

Table 2 Reliability and convergent validity analysis Cronbach’s Alpha rho_A Composite Reliability AVE

Identity Similarity 0.846 0.852 0.928 0.866

Identity Distinctiveness 0.922 0.923 0.951 0.865

Identity Prestige 0.891 0.892 0.925 0.754

Task Attractiveness 0.921 0.923 0.944 0.809

Social Attractiveness 0.920 0.920 0.944 0.807

Physical Attractiveness 0.884 0.883 0.920 0.742

Human Brand

Identification

0.896 0.896 0.935 0.828

Community Identification 0.866 0.872 0.918 0.789

Active Engagement 0.878 0.880 0.925 0.804

Purchase Intention 0.828 0.830 0.897 0.744

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Table 3 Discriminant validity analysis

IS ID IP TA SA PA HBID CID AE PI

IS 0.931

ID 0.251 0.930

IP 0.409 0.647 0.869

TA 0.621 0.283 0.389 0.899

SA 0.506 0.241 0.331 0.524 0.898

PA 0.420 0.563 0.766 0.422 0.381 0.861

HBID 0.617 0.459 0.634 0.535 0.570 0.663 0.910

CID 0.486 0.421 0.530 0.471 0.598 0.563 0.758 0.888

AE 0.560 0.233 0.327 0.500 0.632 0.390 0.646 0.643 0.896

PI 0.578 0.385 0.513 0.563 0.556 0.555 0.704 0.655 0.716 0.862

Finally, average variance extracted (AVE) was adopted to assess the discriminant

validity test, the square roots of each AVE should be greater than inter-construct correlations (Chin, 1998), cross-loading analysis shown the ranged from 0.818 to 0.938, demonstrating satisfactory values. This research also employed Heterotrait-Monotrait Ratio (HTMT) to evaluate the discriminant validity, since HTMT was more conscientiousness, all items should be below the standard value 0.9 (Henseler, Ringle, & Sarstedt, 2015). All constructs in this research exceeded the threshold, and the contrastive results are demonstrated in Table 4.

Table 4 HTMT analysis ID IS IP TA SA PA HBID CID AE PA

ID

IS 0.282

IP 0.713 0.496

TA 0.305 0.702 0.428

SA 0.261 0.573 0.366 0.569

PA 0.624 0.483 0.862 0.465 0.423

HBID 0.505 0.708 0.708 0.588 0.628 0.745

CID 0.476 0.562 0.610 0.522 0.666 0.618 0.861

AE 0.250 0.647 0.361 0.554 0.703 0.432 0.721 0.792

PI 0.433 0.692 0.590 0.647 0.634 0.643 0.812 0.766 0.831

Fig. 2 illustrates the result of the estimated structural model test for the total

samples (N=658), including path coefficients and the variance explained (𝑅" ) by

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dependent variables. A PLS bootstrapping technique with 5000 samples as suggested by (Chin, 1998). The model explained 53.0% and 47.2% of the variance in purchase intention and active engagement. We can find out that all the hypothesizes in this model were all supported.

Figure. 2 Data Analysis Results

4.2 Moderating Effects

This research adopted the multi-group analysis in SmartPLS3 in order to analyze the moderating effect. Since there are three parts in human brand phases, this process divides the comparation into two groups: phase1(individual influencer) and phase2 (collective influencer) as well as phase2 (collective influencer) and phase3 (influencer brand). It is necessary to test the metric invariance first; therefore, there are two procedures to follow when multi-group analysis is tested. Firstly, the MICOM (measurement invariance of composite models) procedure refers the method to study the invariance before the multi-group analysis. After verifying the existence of invariance, the next step is to compare the explained variance for each group. Henseler et al. (2015) referred to use the MICOM (measurement invariance of composite models) procedure when using PLS-SEM. They proposed a three-step analysis process (1) configural invariance, (2) compositional invariance and (3) the equality of composite, meaning values and variances. The result confirms the fact that measurement invariance holds. Therefore, multi-group analysis is reasonable.

Secondly, this study examined the moderating effect that there may be different influence among different phases of human brand. Considering the definition of human brand phases a continuous trajectory (Erz & Christensen, 2018), this study separately

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compared phase1(individual influencer) and phase2 (collective influencer) as well as phase2 (collective influencer) and phase3 (influencer brand). To find out the different influence between the adjacency, we used PLS to estimated path coefficients for both groups. The last step is to analyze the differences between coefficients in the different paths. If there are significant differences, human brand phases have a moderating effect. As shown in Table 5.

Table 5 Multi-group analysis test results Hypothesis Path Path Coefficients-diff p-value Result

Phase1 vs. Phase2

H7 A -> HBID 0.089 0.048 Phase1 > Phase2

H8 A -> CID 0.113 0.016 Phase1 > Phase2

H9 CID ->AE 0.313 0.008 Phase1 > Phase2

H10 HBID -> AE -0.266 0.006 Phase2 > Phase1

Phase2 vs. Phase3

H11 CID -> PI 0.256 0.011 Phase2 > Phase3

H12 HBID -> PI -0.198 0.031 Phase3 > Phase2

Note: phase1 = Individual influencer, phase2 = collective influencer, phase3 = influencer brand

5. DISCUSSION

5.1 Theoretical Implications

The findings demonstrate that the dual social identification framework explains 47.2% of the variance in active engagement and 53% of the variance in purchase intention and thus confirms the crucial role of the dual social identification framework in facilitating consumer intention. The result demonstrates the importance of the potential antecedents and consequences of the dual social identification (Hu et al., 2017). In addition, attractiveness and the dual social identification have the mediation effects on customer loyalty (i.e., active engagement and purchase intention) (Shen et al., 2019). With an overview from researches on customer loyalty in social commerce activities (Han et al., 2018), we conceptualize and measure that social identity is a basic sociological theory to understand customer loyalty in an online community (Bhattacharya & Sen, 2003; Currás-Pérez et al., 2009).

The moderating effects shows that, by comparing phase one and phase two, phase one has more effect of attractiveness on the dual identification and community identification on active engagement than phase two, whereas phase two has a greater effect of human brand identification on active engagement. Because of the individual

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influencer is the beginning of building a human brand, consumers feel more attracted by the individual influencer’s personal attractiveness and the social support from the social community (Erz & Christensen, 2018). Moreover, by comparing phase two and phase three, phase two has more influence of community identification on purchase intention than phase three, while phase three has more influence of human brand identification on purchase intention. (Erz & Christensen, 2018). The possible reason is that the influencer brand shows a high degree of professionalism and therefore consumers tend to rely more on the influencer brand than on the community for their purchase activities

5.2 Practical Implications

This study provides some practical implications for the three human brand phases: individual influencers, collective influencers and influencer brands to maintain customer loyalty as well as improve their management strategies. First, since the individual influencer is the initial phase to build up a human brand, the relationship between consumers and individual influencers are more like friends. Consumers tend to identify themselves with an individual influencer and his/ her online community through generating feelings of attractiveness. In this regard, we suggest that the individual influencer can focus more on how to attract consumers by promoting their textual quality, encouraging social activities and improving visual effects. In addition, because of the friend-like relationship, the atmosphere in the social community built by an individual influencer seems to be friendlier and more comfortable. Thus, we infer that when an individual influencer wants to promote consumers’ activity engagement, they may satisfy consumers’ community identification in advance.

Second, while a consumer keeps following an individual influencer until he/she has transformed into a collective influencer, it seems that the consumer confirms his/her satisfaction with the human brand identification. Since collective influencers start to have monetary consumptions, consumers who participate in the collective influencers’ social community not only want to gain emotional connection but to get practical product knowledge. However, the collective influencer is not a specialist, consumers still have to depend on other members in the same social community for further information before their consumption. Therefore, we imply that if collective influencers want to stimulate consumers to participate in their social communities actively, they can first boost consumers’ community identification and then show their professionalism in the textual and visual posts. Third, when individuals have developed into influencer brands, they show a high degree of quantity as well as professionalism. In this phase, influencer brands run their “influencer brand identity” as a career and their self -concept becomes a brand as well. Consumers trust the professional advices

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and recommendations provided by influencer brands before their commercial activities. Therefore, we imply influencer brands can focus on convince consumers with human brand identification in order to promote consumers’ purchase intention.

5.3 Limitations and Future Research

Although this study has several notable implications, it does have the limitations. We have given a sight from consumers’ viewpoints and focus on the relationship between consumers and the human brand. However, we didn’t explain the relationship between the human brand and other stakeholders or the identity changings. Thus, future studies can go beyond the research scope to look into when collective influencers change into influencer brands, whether their relationship with sponsor brands and managers will become competitors or cooperationists

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