Knowledge Contribution in Customer-Centric Brand Community: A Person-Environment-Fit Model

Recently, we witness a shift from product-centric to customer-centric brand community. The customer-centric approach allows value co-creation in brand community by involving customers in various activities that bring a product to the market. It is thus interesting and necessary to examine customers' motivations in helping brand and community grow and succeed. Based on the person-environment fit framework, this study presents an attempt to investigate consumer contribution in one of the largest brand communities (i.e. XiaoMi Community) in Mainland China. The results demonstrate that both complementary fit and supplementary fit significantly predict consumers' satisfaction with and their commitment to the community, which in turn leads to contribution intention. The findings further suggest the importance of person-environment fit in promoting knowledge sharing in customer-centric brand community, and contribute to both research and practice on facilitating consumer participation.