The Impact of Customer Participation on Customer Value: Does Customer Resource and Regulatory Focus Matter?

Abstract

With the development of technology and the improvement of customer awareness, customers and enterprises are becoming more and more proactive in the process of cooperation. Among these developments is the value creation of customers in the brand network. The community changes with the accumulation of resources during the customer journey, and it is particularly important to explore the impact of customer resource accumulation and regulatory focus of enterprises for customers on customer value. Previous research mainly focused on the role of customer resources in the stages of value creation and value realization, ignoring the impact of customer participation on customer resources accumulation and customer value during the customer journey and the moderating effect of customer regulatory focus between them. This paper investigates this from the perspective of resource theory. Based on the investigation in 451 active customers in the Chinese famous brand network community, it uses the SEM method to test the relationships among customer participation, customer resources and customer value, and the moderating role of regulatory focus during the customer journey. The empirical results show that both customer relationship resources and human resources positively affect customer lifetime value and customer engagement value and play a mediating role between customer participation and customer value during the customer journey. Furthermore, the customer promotion focus positively moderates the relationships between customer participation and customer resources, while the prevention focus only positively moderates the relationship between customer participation and customer human resources. The research results provide a theoretical basis for brand network communities to sustainably cultivate and guide customers to contribute a higher value.

1. Introduction

With the rapid development of the brand network community, the interaction between customers has become more convenient. Enterprises can more directly understand customer ideas to enhance the relationship between customers and brands, and gain the value brought by customer participation. During the customer journey, the accumulation of resources brought about by customer engagement is very important for the sustainable transformation of their value, and the regulatory focus of different characteristics of customers by enterprises will also affect the accumulation of customer resources. For example, customers accumulate resources by continuous interaction with product and service operators, logistics providers, advertisers and external partners during the customer journey [1], and bring transactional value-customer lifetime value and non-transactional value-customer engagement value. It is necessary to explore how to enable enterprises to accumulate resources through customer participation in the customer development process to obtain customer value. At the same time, it is instructive to analyze the fact that enterprises use customers’ own characteristics to regulate and guide the sustainable accumulation of resources.

The advent of the mobile internet era brings both opportunities and challenges in the field of customer resource management and understanding of customer value [2]. Current research on customer value shows that customers bring value to enterprises through various forms of participation [3], and customer value can be divided into customer lifetime value, customer influencer value, customer referral value, and customer knowledge value [4,5]. However, there is a lack of in-depth research on the dynamic formation mechanism of customer value from the perspective of the customer journey [6]. Enterprises pay limited attention to the cultivation of customer resources, the management of customer value and the targeted guidance of different customers. We know little about the impact of resources on value and the role of customers’ own inclination on resource accumulation. The formation of customer value is the result of customers’ continuous participation in brand activities and gradually enriching their product information and emotional connection according to individual needs during the customer journey. Different resource accumulation forms different customer value. Customer value has a double-sided connotation, which includes not only the value perception brought by the customer obtaining the product from the enterprises, but also the value obtained by the enterprises from customer behaviors. This study mainly focuses on the latter. Therefore, this study focuses on the influence of different types of customer resource accumulation on the formation of customer value during the customer journey.

Loic P (2016) believes that resources are the core and foundation of value co-creation [7], and Vargo and Lusch (2012) propose that operational resources are the fundamental source of competitive advantage [8]. In the stage of value creation, the technology, knowledge, experience, and other knowledge resources related to brand products owned by customers provide the enterprise with valuable personalized demand information and product optimization knowledge to help enterprises realize the creation of product value [9]. In the realization stage of value, the relationship resources such as customer experience, emotional link, and social identity related to brand products owned by customers can help enterprises target customers and improve brand word-of-mouth advertising and achieve the acquisition of product value [10]. In fact, during the customer journey, customers are more likely to accumulate customer relationship resources when they have emotional connections to the brand such as loyalty, positive word-of-mouth experiences, and recommendations [11]. Customers are more likely to accumulate customer human resources when they have product knowledge and evaluation capabilities that can influence other customers’ purchasing decisions [3]. According to resource theory, with the increasing degree of customer participation in the brand network community, customer participation can bring different values and irreplaceable customer resources for the enterprise and contribute value that the enterprise can obtain. Therefore, this study focuses on analyzing the role of customer resources between customer participation and value.

According to the regulatory focus theory, the process of individual self-regulation reflects the specific ways and tendencies of people to achieve the goals of work tasks. Previous studies have shown that brand responsibility and self-improvement moderate the relationship between customer psychological ownership and customer engagement [9], and it is also shown that there is a significant difference in the behavior between promotion-focused customers and prevention-focused customers [12,13]. In addition, the regulatory focus of customers will affect the sensitivity and behavior of customers to product information, and prompt targeted customers to pay more attention to product information that can cause either delight or depression. Additionally, the regulatory function is beneficial for customers’ purchase behavior and positive engagement behavior [12]. The prevention focus of customers pays more attention to product information that causes relaxation–anger emotions, and it will reduce customers’ purchase intention and increase negative engagement behaviors [12]. In particular, high-regulation focus is more sensitive to the accumulation of customer relationship resources and customer human resources than low-regulation focus. Therefore, it can be concluded that customers with high-regulation focus can accumulate more customer resources during the customer journey. Therefore, another objective of this study is to explore the moderating role of customer regulatory focus between customer participation and customer resources.

Based on this, this research mainly studies three questions: (1) From the perspective of the customer journey, analyze the impact of customer resources on customer value. (2) Explore the mediating role of customer resources between customer participation and value based on resource theory. (3) According to the regulatory focus theory, analyze the moderating role of customer regulatory focus between customer participation and customer resources. Using survey data from 451 active customers of Chinese famous brand online communities, we test the relationships among customer participation, customer resources and customer value, and the moderating role of the regulatory focus during the customer journey. The findings indicate partial support to our model and confirm the role of customer resources and customer regulatory focus in the influence of customer value formation.

Our research is useful for marketing and user-sustained value acquisition. Firstly, this study explores the dynamic process of customer participation in the accumulation of customer resources to customer value acquisition from the perspective of the customer journey and resource theory and enriches the theoretical research of customer value. Secondly, this study explores the influence of regulatory focus on the process of customer resource accumulation based on the customer’s different inclination, which can help researchers understand the effect of customer participation on customer resources under the regulatory focus. Finally, since today’s enterprises must think in terms of customer value and deliver superior value [14], it provides theoretical guidance for enterprises to cultivate customer resources and manage customer value in the digital economy era.

2. Theoretical Background

2.1. Regulatory Focus Theory

The regulatory focus theory is a new perspective on the research of human motivation theory, which mainly focuses on individuals reflecting the specific ways and tendencies of people to achieve the goals of work tasks through the process of self-regulation. Regulatory focus can be divided into chronic regulatory focus and situational regulatory focus depending on the factors affecting its formation. Chronic regulatory focus mainly refers to the stable personality traits formed by different learning methods and standard values in the long-term socialization process, while situational regulatory focus is the temporary motivation focus induced by the influence of the current external situation [15]. From the perspective of the types of individual needs, the regulatory focus theory mainly includes two different regulatory focuses, namely, the promotion focus related to increasing needs and the prevention focus related to safety needs [16]. There are significant differences in emotion, thinking style and behavior style among individuals with different regulation focus.

In terms of individual emotions, the individual who promotes focus will pay more attention to ideal self-guidance. When there is a gap between the real self and the ideal self, the individual will have obstructive emotions such as sadness and disappointment. When the real and ideal self are in harmony, they will produce excitement such as happiness and motivation. Prevention-focused individuals focus on deserving self-guidance. When there is a gap between the real self and the deserving self, the individual will show anxiety such as tension and worry. When they are in harmony, they will show calm emotions such as calmness and relaxation [17]. In terms of individual thinking, when people face failure, individuals who promote focus often produce additive reverse thinking, that is, if they take different behaviors, they will not miss the opportunity to achieve their goals; and prevent-focused individuals will produce subtractive reverse thinking, that is, if there is no wrong behavior, they can obtain a safe goal [18]. In terms of individual behavior, individuals who promote focus will pursue efficiency in the process of completing tasks, while individuals who prevent focus are more focused on accuracy, that is, there exists a “goal looms larger’’ effect [19]. In addition, the regulatory focus theory has been extensively cited in marketing studies, including individual new product purchase behavior, brand evaluation behavior, and customer engagement behavior [12], and focusing on the direct and moderating effects of regulatory focus on customer creativity [20,21], although it is less often applied to the effects of customer resource accumulation. Therefore, this study needs to explore the mechanism of customer regulatory focus on regulating between customer engagement and customer resources

2.2. Customer Resource and Customer Value during the Customer Journey

The customer journey refers to the process of continuous interaction between customers and enterprises in order to achieve specific goals [22]. In this interactive process, there needs to be active interaction between the multi-party subjects involved, so as to realize the exchange of resources and the creation of value [23]. Customers can sustainably accumulate customer resources through learning product information to help individuals make purchase decisions. Customers invest their physiological resources, accumulated social resources and cultural resources, etc. to contribute value to the enterprise through customer engagement behavior. Customer resources can be divided into physiological resources, cultural resources and social resources. This study mainly focuses on customer cultural resources and social resources related to brands, and uses the definition of M Xiao and Qin-Hai MA (2019), who named them as customer human resources and customer relationship resources [24]. According to the value co-creation theory, the operational resources owned by customers can provide enterprises with transactional value and non-transactional value through different roles. Kumar et al. (2016,2010,2018) collectively calls the customers’ value to the enterprise customer engagement value, including customer lifetime value, customer influencer value, customer referral value and customer knowledge value [3,4,5,6]. On the basis of previous research, this study divides customer value into customer lifetime value and customer engagement value by combining the commercial stage of customer value generation. Customer engagement value mainly includes customer non-transactional value, including customer knowledge value at the stage of value creation and customer influencer value at the stage of value realization [3,4,5,6] and customer referral value.

With the continuous enrichment of customer interaction and experience, the degree of customer engagement has gradually grown from a “non-engagement” to “high engagement” state [25]. The relationship resources and human resources that customers continuously acquire and transform into active relationships sustainably drive customers to continuously contribute transactional and non-transactional value to the company in the course of their interactions. According to the concept of continuous engagement degree of Brodie et al. and the customer experience journey of Keller and Verhoef [1,25], this study divides the customer journey in the brand network community into the following three stages: the customer introduction period with customer purchase as the goal, the customer loyalty period with customer repeat purchase as the goal, and customer co-creation period with customer engagement as the goal, as shown in Figure 1.

In the customer introduction stage, the matching between customer needs and product features is the key to enterprise marketing. Customers enhance product knowledge through customer–customer interactions to enhance brand information search and customer-business interactions for brand knowledge consultation, etc., so as to make purchase decisions to meet the needs [1]. This stage of the study focuses on the customer purchase decision process model, lack of customer care, and customer relationship management. With the promotion of marketing practice, marketing practitioners have found that enterprise profits come more from customer groups with loyalty, and the customer journey has entered the stage of customer loyalty. At this stage, the academic community focused on the impact of customer experience on customer loyalty [26] and repeat purchase behavior. From the perspective of customers, good service quality and complaint handling quality make customers more loyal, thereby bringing lifetime value to the enterprise, and customers’ resources can enable enterprises to gain engagement benefits such as word-of-mouth sharing and problem feedback. The corporate perspective focused on customer complaints and customer relationship quality to enhance customer lifetime value. According to the service-dominant logic, customers are no longer passive responders but active value creators and contribute value to value creation by integrating integrator roles of individual physiological, social, and cultural resources. In addition, the improvement of data processing technology also impels the enterprise to mine new needs and new ideas of customers. Therefore, the change of marketing thinking and technological upgrading push the customer journey into the stage of customer co-creation. At this stage, the role of customer resources in enterprise value creation has become an important issue that academia is currently paying attention to. With the deepening of customer participation, the continuous accumulation of customer relationship resources and human resources will benefit its customer engagement behavior [1], and sustainably contribute to the enterprise’s new product innovation, research and development, design and production, marketing and promotion.

Studies related to customer value and customer resources show that customers bring value to the enterprise through various forms of engagement [3] and contribute corresponding value at different stages, but there is a lack of in-depth exploration of the dynamic formation mechanism of customer value from the customer journey perspective in existing studies [6]. Therefore, this study describes the way in which customer value is divided and the different contributions of customer value in the three dynamic stages of the customer engagement process with a customer journey perspective, as has been elaborated in this section. In addition, most of the existing studies on the impact of customer resources on customer value consider that customer resources can create and acquire product value for the enterprise in the value creation stage and realization stage [9,10], ignoring that customer resources bring the enhancement of the customer’s own value for the enterprise. Additionally, current research has less considered the specific role that customer resources play between customer engagement and customer value as customer journey involvement deepens, so this study further explores the impact of customer resources on customer value and explores the role that customer resources play between customer engagement and value.

3. Hypotheses

3.1. Customer Resource and Customer Value

Customer relationship resources are more reflected in customers’ wishes. According to psychological ownership theory and service-dominant logic, when there is an emotional connection between customers and brands [27], customers are more inclined to produce engagement behavior, such as loyalty, positive word-of-mouth effects, and recommendation behavior for brands [9]. As the emotional connection increases, customers are more inclined to share their needs and insights during new product development links, such as new product design and testing [28]. From the perspective of the customer journey, customer emotional connection is conducive to the generation of customer loyalty, commitment and other important factors of repeated purchases to enhance customer lifetime value [28]. Through the above analysis, it can be concluded that customer relationship resources can promote customers’ value. The following hypotheses are proposed:

Hypothesis (H1):

Customer relationship resources positively affect customer value.

Customer human resources are customer skill resources, which mainly measure the customer’s knowledge of the existing products and the ability to evaluate the performance of the products [29]. Therefore, customers with higher product knowledge and evaluation capabilities are more likely to filter out valuable information, identify the value of the products, and help them complete the purchase decision [30]. In addition, customers with higher human resources tend to play the role of experts in the customer group, and their product knowledge is conducive to discovering and proposing valuable customer suggestions and behaviors and providing more new product development ideas [9]. Customers with high human resources often have an important network position and network leader status in the network community. Their product knowledge and evaluation capabilities play an important role in other customers’ purchasing decisions, which can bring higher influence value and referral value for the enterprise. Additionally, when enterprises successfully coordinate the integration of their resources by providing better partnerships, customer transactional value increases [31]. In short, through the above analysis, it can be concluded that customer human resources can promote customer’s value.

Hypothesis (H2):

Customer human resources positively affect customer value.

3.2. The Mediating Role of Customer Resources

According to resource theory and the customer journey, With the increasing degree of customer participation in brand network community, it can bring different value and irreplaceable customer resources for the enterprise, then contribute the value that the enterprise can obtain. Customer participation plays an important role in customer resource accumulation and customer value contribution. Customer participation means that customers actually engage in behaviors related to the definition and delivery of service (or value), through which they define their role in the delivery process of service and obtain their expected value [32]. Previous research has clearly shown that as customer engagement increases, so does customer value [33]. The reason why customer participation plays an important role is that customer participation can bring about the improvement of relationship resources and the expansion of human resources for enterprises. Specifically, the deepening of customer participation in the customer journey enables customers to continuously acquire stronger relationship intention and knowledge accumulation. From passive participation to active value creation, customers contribute their own value to value creation by integrating individual relationship resources and human resources.

In terms of customer relationship resources, customer participation is the main goal of customer relationship quality maintenance, which can enhance customer commitment and customer dependence, and promote deeper customer participation. A high degree of customer participation can allow customers to correctly establish customer expectations, reduce customers’ perceived risks and conversion behaviors, and improve customers’ willingness to generate positive word-of-mouth [34], thereby accumulating more customer relationship resources. Based on the hypothesis of H1, H2 and the above discussion, we propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis (H3):

Customer relationship resources have a mediating role between customer participation and customer value, namely, customer engagement enhances its value through customer relationship resources.

In terms of customer human resources, both ordinary consumers and expert consumers can provide enterprises with better ideas in participating in different innovation tasks of enterprises. Customer participation in new product development can bring external knowledge to enterprise product development activities, improve the efficiency and effectiveness of new product development [35], and obtain customer human resources. Therefore, customer participation can improve the accumulation of customer resources. Based on the hypothesis of H1, H2 and the above discussion, we propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis (H4):

Customer human resources have a mediating role between customer participation and customer value, namely, customer participation enhances its value through customer human resources.

3.3. The Moderating Role of Promotion Focus

According to the regulatory focus theory, the regulatory focus of customers will affect their attention to product characteristics, information processing, and behavioral preferences [15], so as to have an impact on customers in terms of cognition, emotion, and behavior [36]. Customers with promotion focus tend to pay attention to and remember positive views and events when participating in brand activities [15], thereby generating and promoting the accumulation of customers’ human resources and relationship resources, resulting in purchasing behavior and customer engagement behavior.

The individual’s promotion focus will cause pleasure–frustration emotions. Additionally, customers are more inclined to provide positive feedback after experiencing a pleasant shopping experience, resulting in more positive customer engagement behaviors [12]. Pleasant emotions will further increase customer stickiness, bring more relationship fission, and enhance the accumulation of customer relationship resources. Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis (H5a):

Promoting focus has a significant positive moderating role on the relationship between customer participation and customer relationship resources.

Individuals who promote focus have a more agile, continuous and creative thinking structure [37,38], and they can search for more information to find the best solution when solving problems, so as to give play to creative thinking with more positive results [36]. Customers with promotion focus are more likely to pay more attention to self-improvement feedback and increase self-improvement behavior results [39] in brand activities, bring more valuable question feedback and product suggestion to the enterprise. Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis (H5b):

Promoting focus has a significant positive moderating role on the relationship between customer participation and customer human resources.

3.4. The Moderating Role of Prevention Focus

Compared with individuals who promote focus, individuals who prevent focus are more risk-averse [36]. Preventive focus customers are more alert, pay more attention to the safety features of products [15], and tend to search for limited information and adopt conservative online shopping expectations in brand activities [12], which weakens customers’ willingness to take the purchase behavior and engagement behavior. Individuals who prevent focus are more likely to elicit quiet–angry emotions and vigilant motives. It is difficult to establish relationship resources with the brand in brand activity participation, and lack of creativity [36], thus reducing the role of relationship resources on customer value. Therefore, customers with preventive focus are not conducive to improving the individual’s relationship resources in the participation of brand activities. We propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis (H6a):

Preventive focus has a significant negative moderating role on the relationship between customer participation and customer relationship resources.

In addition, individuals with preventive focus are more likely to have a sense of responsibility for the brand. This sense of responsibility will promote customers to participate in brand activities and behave more accurately and carefully [37,38], which is conducive to acquiring more complete brand knowledge to help them complete tasks and improve individual human resources, and help them make purchase decisions and generate precise engagement behaviors through brand knowledge [12]. Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis (H6b):

Preventive focus has a significant positive moderating role on the relationship between customer participation and customer human resources.

The conceptual model of our paper is presented in Figure 2.

4. Methods

4.1. Sample

This study collected data on the characteristics of smartphone users in China and their behavior in brand online communities through an online questionnaire. After three times of back-translation and pre-investigation, the research questions were further adjusted to form the final questionnaire. We collected a total of 528 user questionnaires, excluding 77 invalid questionnaires, and obtained 451 valid samples, yielding a response rate is 85.42%.

In total, 451 responses were received with the following characteristics: 46.3% male and 53.7% female, and there were 370 people aged from 19 to 29 years old accounting for 81.6% of the total sample. Among the degree distribution, there were users with bachelor’s degree accounting for 50.1% of the total sample; 182 users with master’s degree accounting for 40.4% of the total sample, and 17 users with doctoral degree, accounting for 3.8% of the total sample. The top three mobile phone brands used by users are Huawei, Apple, and Samsung, accounting for 30.2%, 24.4%, and 12.9% of the total sample, respectively. In terms of the usage time distribution of the existing mobile phones, 130 users have used the existing mobile phones for less than 1 year, accounting for 28.8% of the total sample; 155 users have used the existing mobile phones for 1 to 2 years, accounting for 44.3% of the total sample; 127 users have used the existing mobile phones for 2 to 3 years, accounting for 28.3% of the total sample; and 39 users for more than 3 years, accounting for 8.6% of the total sample.

4.2. Measurement

In order to ensure the quality of the questionnaire, measures were adopted from prior high-quality journal literature to suit the brand network community context and are illustrated in

Table 1. Results of validity and reliability analysis.

Constructs	Measurement Items	Unstandardized	S.E.	t-Value	Factor Loading
CP CR = 0.96; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.774; AVE = 0.89	I often give advice on improving the quality of service to the phone brand I currently use.	1.000			0.933
	I will work with the mobile phone brand service provider to decide how to serve me.	1.039	0.026	39.583 ***	0.946
	I will work with the mobile phone brand service provider to find a solution to the problem I am facing.	1.061	0.026	40.394 ***	0.951
PRO CR = 0.868; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.866; AVE = 0.567	In life, many of my hobbies have caught my attention and inspired me to invest.	1.000			0.745
	All along, I feel that I am fairly sucessful in life.	1.035	0.065	15.846 ***	0.776
	I was able to do well with the different things I tried myself.	0.882	0.058	15.163 ***	0.743
	I usually get what I want out of life better than most people.	0.985	0.064	15.321 ***	0.751
	When it comes to things that are important to me, I am as good as I would like to be.	0.911	0.059	15.318 ***	0.751
PRE CR = 0.936; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.905; AVE = 0.745	When I was growing up, I often got into a lot of trouble for not being careful enough.	1.000			0.798
	When I was growing up, my parents often objected to the way I did things.	1.080	0.051	21.147 ***	0.858
	When I was growing up, I often violated the rules and regulations set by my parents.	1.149	0.050	23.055 ***	0.911
	When I was growing up, I often worried my parents.	1.136	0.053	21.302 ***	0.862
	When I was growing up, I always “crossed the line” and did things that my parents could not tolerate.	1.160	0.053	22.039 ***	0.883
CLV CR = 0.923; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.847; AVE = 0.751	If necessary, I will also buy the current brand mobile phone.	1.000			0.842
	I am very satisfied with the purchase of the current brand mobile phone.	1.043	0.043	24.01 ***	0.882
	When buying a current-branded phone, I feel like it’s worth the money.	0.992	0.043	23.256 ***	0.865
	I am very happy to have a current-branded phone.	1.029	0.043	23.769 ***	0.876
CRV CR = 0.929; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.751; AVE = 0.814	I love sharing the brand experience of the phone I use with other customers.	1.000			0.863
	I would recommend my brand phone to my friends and family around me.	0.986	0.036	27.722 ***	0.914
	I would recommend other customers to buy the brand phone I am using now.	1.044	0.036	28.669 ***	0.929
CIV CR = 0.96; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.865; AVE = 0.857	I actively discuss the brand of phone used on various occasions.	1.000			0.922
	I like to talk about my experience with the brand of phone I use now.	1.024	0.030	34.613 ***	0.920
	I discuss with others the value I get from the brand of phone I use.	0.982	0.027	36.623 ***	0.936
	I often chat with people about the brand of phone I use.	0.990	0.028	35.188 ***	0.925
CKV CR = 0.967; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.882; AVE = 0.879	I will provide my own experience feedback for businesses using mobile phone brands.	1.000			0.935
	I will provide advice on improving the performance of the business of the mobile phone brand used.	1.020	0.026	38.544 ***	0.935
	I will give feedback or suggestions for new products from the brand of phone I am using.	1.027	0.026	40.076 ***	0.945
	I will provide feedback or suggestions for the new product development of the mobile phone brand used.	1.011	0.026	38.583 ***	0.935
CRS CR = 0.947; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.818; AVE = 0.817	The brand of phone I use now reflects who I am.	1.000			0.830
	I can communicate to others what kind of person I am through my current mobile phone.	1.186	0.046	25.633 ***	0.915
	I think my current phone has made me the person I want to be.	1.274	0.048	26.728 ***	0.936
	I think the phone brand I am using now reflects the way I want to present myself to others.	1.276	0.048	26.443 ***	0.931
CKC CR = 0.858; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.73; AVE = 0.669	I know very well that the phone I needed to buy is the one I am using now.	1.000			0.813
	I will keep an eye on the brand of phone I am using.	1.164	0.056	20.907 ***	0.878
	Even if my phone is mixed in with other brands, I can quickly identify the brand I use.	0.924	0.053	17.516 ***	0.759
CKA CR = 0.916; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.761; AVE = 0.785	I am able to keep up with the latest developments on the brand phones I am currently using.	1.000			0.894
	Before buying this phone, I gathered a lot of up-to-date information about the phone I am using now.	0.978	0.035	28.03 ***	0.890
	I enjoy researching information and knowledge about the phone I use.	0.945	0.035	26.901 ***	0.874
CKE CR = 0.896; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.737; AVE = 0.743	I know the quality pros and cons in different brands of phones.	1.000			0.838
	When collecting the cell phone information I need, I can easily know the best cell phone products.	1.050	0.043	24.157 ***	0.883
	I have sufficient product information and knowledge to verify the authenticity of their mobile advertising claims.	1.039	0.045	23.291 ***	0.864
CKM CR = 0.901; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.751; AVE = 0.752	I can remember which models of mobile phone brands I currently use.	1.000			0.845
	When I get to know other phones, I know the difference between them and my current phone.	1.031	0.042	24.778 ***	0.895
	I can remember specific characteristics of the phone I use.	0.978	0.042	23.213 ***	0.861
CKS CR = 0.964; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.952; AVE = 0.869	CKC	1.000			0.856
	CKA	1.410	0.081	17.499 ***	0.948
	CKE	1.332	0.079	16.900 ***	0.980
	CKM	1.253	0.076	16.482 ***	0.941

Note: CR = composite reliability, AVE = average variance extracted, *** = meets or exceeds criterion of t > 1.96, p < 0.001 (2-tailed).

. After three back-translations and pre-research, the research questions were further adjusted to form the final survey questionnaire. All items were measured on a seven-point Likert scale from (1) “strongly disagree” to (7) “strongly agree”.

In the measurement of customer resources, customer relationship resources mainly were adapted from the research results of Wilson et al. (2017) [40], and mainly measure the connection relationship between customers and enterprises, including four measurement items. Customer human resources mainly were drawn from the research of Barrutia and Gilsanz Achievement (2012) [30], measured from the four dimensions of cognitive effort, analysis, elaboration and memory, including twelve measurement items in total.

In the measurement of customer value, customer engagement value mainly includes customer non-transactional value, including customer knowledge value at the stage of value creation and customer influencer value at the stage of value realization and customer referral value. Customer lifetime value, customer influencer value, and customer knowledge value were drawn from the research results of Kumar and Pansari (2016) [6], including four measurement items. The customer referral value was adapted from the research results of Cambra-Fierro, etc. (2015) [41], including three measurement items.

In the measurement of customer participation, customer participation willingness and degree of participation were mainly measured. The measurement of customer participation mainly was adapted from Solem’s research (2016) [42], including three measurement items.

In the measurement of regulatory focus, the regulatory focus mainly includes two different regulatory focuses, namely, the promotion focus related to increasing needs and the prevention focus related to safety needs (Tumasjan and Braun, 2012) [16]. The customer’s chronic regulatory focus vector table mainly were drawn from the research results of Higgins et al. and Chen et al. (2017) [12], which includes five measurement items.

In the measurement of the control variable, we mainly chose the year, education, profession, and brand. We also chose four variables: year, education, profession, and brand, which represent the customer’s existing mobile phone usage time, educational level, current profession, and brand of mobile phone use. See

Table A1. Variable measurement question design.

Concept	Title
Promotion focus	I usually get what I want out of life more than most people.
	When I work “mentally” harder, I always get things done better.
	I was able to do well on the different things I tried.
	When dealing with things that are important to me, I perform as well as I would ideally like to.
	I think I’ve been pretty successful in life.
	Many of my hobbies in life draw attention and motivate me to engage.
Preventive focus	Growing up, I always “crossed the line” and did things that my parents would not tolerate.
	Growing up, I often worried my parents.
	Growing up, I often violated the rules and regulations set by my parents.
	Growing up, my parents often objected to the way I acted in doing things.
	Growing up, I often got into a lot of trouble for not being careful enough.
Customer relationship resources	I felt a connection between myself and the brand of phone I was using.
	The brand of phone I am using reflects the kind of person I am.
	I identify with the brand of phone I am using now.
	I can communicate to others what kind of person I am through the cell phone I am using.
	I think the phone I am using now has made me the person I want to be.
	I think the brand of phone I am using reflects the way I want to present myself to others.
	I feel that the brand phone I am using is particularly suitable for me.
Cognitive dimensions	I can easily find the brand of phone I use from the website.
	I can quickly identify the brand of phone I am using even when I am mixed in with other brands of phones.
	I will keep an eye on the brand of cell phone I use.
	It was clear to me that the phone I needed to buy was exactly what I was using now.
Analysis Dimension	I like to research information and knowledge about the cell phones I use.
	Before purchasing the phone, I gathered a lot of up-to-date information with the phone I am using now.
	I am able to keep up to date with the latest developments in the brands of cell phones I am currently using.
Elaboration Dimension	I have sufficient product information and knowledge to verify the authenticity of their cell phone advertising claims
	I can easily know the best cell phone products when collecting the needed cell phone information.
	I know the advantages and disadvantages of quality in different brands of cell phones.
Memory Dimension	I was able to remember the specific characteristics of the phone I was using.
	When learning about other phones, I know the difference between them and the phone I am using now.
	I can remember which other models of cell phones I currently use.
Customer Engagement	I often express my demand for cell phone information online or offline.
	I often provide service quality improvement suggestions to the cell phone brand service providers I currently use.
	I will work with the cell phone brand service provider to decide how to provide service to me.
	I will work with the cell phone brand service provider to find a solution to the problem I am facing.
Customer Lifetime Value	If necessary, I will also purchase the brand name phone I am currently using.
	I am satisfied with the purchase of the branded phone that I am using now.
	I feel like I got my money’s worth when buying the brand name phone I am currently using.
	It makes me happy to have a branded phone that I am currently using.
Customer Referral Value	I like to share my brand experience with other customers about the phones I use.
	I like to share my honest opinions with other customers about the brands of cell phones I use.
	I would recommend the brand of cell phone I use to my friends and family around me.
	I will suggest other customers to buy the brand of phone they are using.
Customer Influence Value	I will actively discuss the brand of cell phone I use on various occasions.
	I like to talk about my experience with the brand of phone I am using now.
	I will discuss with others the value I get from the brand of phone I use.
	I often talk to people about the brand of phone I use.
Customer Knowledge Value	I will provide feedback on my own experiences for the companies whose cell phone brands I use.
	I will provide advice to improve the performance of the companies using cell phone brands.
	I will provide feedback or suggestions for new products of the cell phone brand I use.
	I will provide feedback or suggestions for new product development for the cell phone brands I use.

in the Appendix A for specific measurement questions.

4.3. Reliability and Validity

All latent variables were subjected to a series of confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) to ensure unidimensionality, reliability, and convergence and discriminant validity. Each item loading was restricted to its a priori construct and each latent construct was allowed to correlate with all other constructs. Fit indices for the measurement model demonstrate adequate fit, providing support for the dimensionality of our measures: χ2 = 2205.256, df = 513, χ2/df = 4.299, CFI = 0.909, NFI = 0.905, TLI = 0.901, RMSEA = 0.080, and SRMR = 0.074. All standardized factor loadings were above 0.70 and were significant in the predicted direction (p < 0.001) and in support of convergent validity (Table 1). All composite reliabilities for latent constructs were above commonly accepted thresholds, indicating acceptable internal reliability. The Cronbach’s α coefficient value of the overall scale is 0.824, and the Cronbach’s α coefficient value and the combined reliability coefficient of each latent variable are both greater than 0.7, indicating that the scale has good internal consistency and combined reliability. The AVE coefficient value of each latent variable is greater than 0.5, indicating that the scale has good convergence validity. We found that support for discriminant validity by verifying the square root of the average variance extracted by each latent construct was greater than its correlation with all other constructs. Descriptive statistics and correlations are provided in

Table 2. Mean, standard deviations and correlations.

Construct	Mean	S.D.	PRO	PRE	CLV	CRV	CIV	CKV	CRS	CKS	CP
PRO	5.164	0.962	0.754
PRE	3.711	1.573	0.288	0.863
CLV	5.245	1.103	0.493	0.243	0.867
CRV	5.004	1.215	0.484	0.351	0.808	0.902
CIV	4.569	1.484	0.464	0.497	0.577	0.832	0.926
CKV	4.575	1.481	0.400	0.491	0.531	0.726	0.850	0.937
CRS	4.166	1.577	0.504	0.614	0.530	0.674	0.766	0.692	0.904
CKS	4.934	1.168	0.549	0.453	0.696	0.779	0.750	0.691	0.671	0.932
CP	4.251	1.619	0.429	0.544	0.448	0.630	0.816	0.838	0.715	0.656	0.943

Note: The lower triangular data in the table is the correlation coefficient matrix between the latent variables, the diagonal boldface is the square root of each latent variable AVE, and the lower triangular facet is the Pearson correlation.

.

4.4. Common Method Variance

We also investigated the potential for our results to be tainted by common method variance. Therefore, we used the Harman one-factor test for common method bias. The proportion of the first principal component is 18.320%, which is lower than 40%. The results indicated that the data collected in this study were not disturbed by common method variance.

5. Results

The study used Amos22.0 software and structural equation model analyzed to test the relationship between customer participation, customer resources and customer value, and tested hypotheses H1 and H2. The specific path coefficient test is shown in

Table 3. Results of path coefficients of structural equation model.

Path	Non-Standardized Coefficient	Standardized Coefficient	Standard Deviation	t-Value	Significance
CRS ← CP	0.638	0.746	0.037	17.439	***
CKS ← CP	0.413	0.694	0.030	13.798	***
CLV ← CRS	0.081	0.103	0.035	2.325	*
CRV ← CRS	0.236	0.267	0.033	7.045	***
CIV ← CRS	0.527	0.488	0.040	13.048	***
CKV ← CRS	0.463	0.433	0.044	10.642	***
CLV ← CKS	0.750	0.664	0.065	11.564	***
CRV ← CKS	0.856	0.673	0.065	13.211	***
CIV ← CKS	0.775	0.500	0.065	12.023	***
CKV ← CKS	0.730	0.475	0.069	10.65	***

Note: * means the significance level is 0.05, and *** means the significance level is 0.001.

.

As shown in Table 3, the relationship between customer participation, customer resources, and customer value all show positive and significant correlation, indicating that customer participation can improve the relationship resources and human resources of customers to the brand, and customer relationship resources and customer human resources also have positive effects on customer value, assuming that H1 and H2 are supported.

On this basis, we used the analysis of the Bootstrap mediation effect developed by Hayes to further test the mediating role of customer relationship resources and customer human resources. The results are shows in

Table 4. Results of the mediation role of customer resources.

Path	Point Estimate	Product of Coefficients		Bias-Corrected 95% CI		Percentile 95% CI
		S.E.	Z	Lower	Upper	Lower	Upper
CP → CRS → CLV	0.088	0.041	2.150	0.008	0.173	0.005	0.170
CP → CRS → CRV	0.125	0.042	2.980	0.038	0.206	0.037	0.205
CP → CRS → CIV	0.165	0.046	3.590	0.075	0.256	0.072	0.252
CP → CRS → CKV	0.063	0.044	1.430	−0.022	0.152	−0.025	0.150
CP → CKS → CLV	0.325	0.058	5.600	0.222	0.445	0.219	0.44
CP → CKS → CRV	0.328	0.055	5.960	0.227	0.444	0.231	0.444
CP → CKS → CIV	0.206	0.044	4.680	0.127	0.297	0.128	0.301
CP → CKS → CKV	0.147	0.040	3.680	0.077	0.237	0.076	0.234

. Through the test of Bootstrap = 5000, it can be found that the confidence interval between customer participation and customer lifetime value, customer referral value and customer influencer value does not contain 0; it shows that customer relationship resources play a mediating role among customer participation and customer lifetime value, customer referral value and customer influencer value. The confidence interval of bias-corrected 95% CI and percentile 95% CI between customer engagement and customer knowledge value are [−0.022, 0.152] and [−0.025, 0.150], indicating that customer relationship resources have no mediating role between customer participation value and customer knowledge value. This means the relationship resources accumulated by customers are conducive to customer emotional connection and affect repeated purchase behaviors such as customer loyalty and commitment during the customer journey. This then enhances the customers lifetime value, while the impact on the knowledge value of customer engagement value is relatively weak. Therefore, it is assumed that the H3 part is supported.

The confidence interval of customer human resources among customer participation and customer lifetime value, customer referral value, customer influence value and customer knowledge value does not contain 0, indicating that customer human resources play a mediating role between customer participation and customer value. Therefore, it is assumed that the H4 part is supported.

The study uses SPSS 22.0 software to statistically verify the research hypothesis. As shows in the regression results of model 2 and model 6 in

Table 5. Hierarchical regression test results.

Variable	Customer Relationship Resources				Customer Human Resources
	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5	Model 6	Model 7	Model 8
Control variable
year	−0.028 **	−0.004	−0.007	−0.007	−0.039 ***	−0.017 *	−0.022 *	−0.022 *
education	0.033	−0.112 *	−0.079	−0.091	0.049	−0.078	−0.029	−0.036
profession	0.045	0.032	0.042	0.052 *	−0.018	−0.029	−0.014	−0.009
brand	0.042	0.009	0.008	0.008	0.019	−0.010	−0.011	−0.012
Independent variable
CP		0.686 ***	0.600 ***	0.561 ***		0.605 ***	0.475 ***	0.454 ***
Moderator
PRO			0.211 ***	0.251 ***			0.315 ***	0.337 ***
Independent variable × regulated variable
CP*PRO				0.140 ***				0.078 *
R2	0.048	0.477	0.515	0.538	0.048	0.381	0.464	0.471
Adjusted R2	0.040	0.471	0.508	0.531	0.039	0.374	0.457	0.463
F	5.647	81.266	78.450	73.769	5.590	54.751	64.076	56.418

Note: * means the significance level is 0.05, ** means the significance level is 0.01, and *** means the significance level is 0.001.

and

Table 6. Hierarchical regression test results.

Variable	Customer Relationship Resources				Customer Human Resources
	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5	Model 6	Model 7	Model 8
Control variable
year	−0.028 **	−0.004	0.002	0.003	−0.039 ***	−0.017 *	−0.015	−0.012
education	0.033	−0.112 *	−0.144 **	−0.139 **	0.049	−0.078	−0.092	−0.078
profession	0.045	0.032	0.028	0.027	−0.018	−0.029	−0.031	−0.034
brand	0.042	0.009	−0.013	−0.014	0.019	−0.010	−0.020	−0.024
Independent variable
CP		0.686 ***	0.545 ***	0.557 ***		0.605 ***	0.541 ***	0.579 ***
Moderator
PRE			0.312 ***	0.295 ***			0.141 **	0.087
Independent variable × regulated variable
CP*PRE				0.040				0.125 ***
R2	0.048	0.477	0.543	0.545	0.048	0.381	0.394	0.409
Adjusted R2	0.040	0.471	0.537	0.538	0.039	0.374	0.386	0.400
F	5.647	81.266	88.089	75.803	5.590	54.751	48.200	43.864

Note: * means the significance level is 0.05, ** means the significance level is 0.01, and *** means the significance level is 0.001.

, customer participation has a significant positive impact on customer relationship resources (β = 0.686, p < 0.001), and has a significant positive impact on customer human resources (β = 0.605, p < 0.001), which is consistent with the AMOS 22.0 software path test results.

At the same time, this study adopts the method of hierarchical regression to test the moderating role of promotion focus and prevention focus. As shown in model 4 and model 8 in Table 5, customer participation and promotion focus have significant marginal effects on customer relationship resources (β = 0.140, p < 0.001) and customer human resources (β = 0.078, p < 0.05). That is to say, the promotion focus significantly positively moderates the relationship between customer participation and customer relationship resources, and significantly positively moderates the positive effect of customer participation on the accumulation of customer human resources. Therefore, H5a and H5b are supported, respectively.

Similarly, as shows in model 4 in Table 6, the interaction between customer participation and preventive focus on customer relationship resources (β = 0.040, p > 0.05) is not significant, so H6a is not supported. According to the results of model 8, the interaction between customer participation and prevention focuses on customer human resources (β = 0.078, p < 0.05) is marginally significant, that is to say, prevention focus significantly positively moderates the relationship between customer participation and customer human resources. So H6b is supported.

In order to reflect the moderating role of promotion focus, this study draws a schematic diagram of the moderating role (Figure 3). The results show that the impact of customer participation on customer relationship resources and customer human resources is relatively slow when the degree of promotion focus is low, and as the degree of promotion focus increases, the slope of the dotted line increases significantly in the figure, which confirms the positive t role of promoting focus. Compared with customer human resources, promotion focus has a stronger moderating effect between customer participation and customer relationship resources. Similarly, the higher the degree of prevention focus, the more beneficial it is to enhance the positive relationship between customer participation and customer human resources (Figure 4).

6. Discussion

The study analyzes the relationship between customer engagement, customer resources and customer value from the perspective of the customer journey by dissecting user value in branded online communities, and explores the impact of customer regulatory focus on them. This study divides customer value into customer lifetime value and customer engagement value. The empirical study shows that the accumulation of customer resources has a positive impact on customer value, which is in line with our expectation. Similar to the findings of M Xiao and Qin-H MA (2019), who concluded that customers’ human and relational resources significantly and positively affect customer value [24]. Sashi, C. M (2012) [24] argues that customer emotional connection facilitates the generation of important influences on repeat purchases such as customer loyalty and commitment, thus enhancing customer lifetime value [28]. His view also supports this view of ours.

At the same time, we confirm that customer resources partially have a mediating role between customer engagement and customer value, which is largely in line with our expectations. This study is partially identical to the findings of Cui A S and Wu F (2016) and Marquardt A J (2013), who concluded that customer resources can achieve product value creation and acquisition for firms when customer engagement is in the value creation and value realization stages [9,10], and their views partially support our experimental results. The difference is that the focus of our study is on the ability of customer resources to influence the enhancement of customers’ own value. Both focuses suggest that customer resources can positively contribute to value enhancement as engagement deepens. Customer relationship resources do not have a mediating role between customer engagement and customer knowledge value, which is different from our expectation. The main reason is that customer relationship resources facilitate customer emotional connection and have an impact on repeat purchase behaviors such as customer loyalty and commitment, thus enhancing customer lifetime value, but have a weaker impact on knowledge value in the value of customer engagement.

According to the regulatory focus theory, the experimental results indicate that the promotion focus positively moderates the impact of customer engagement on customer human resources and customer relationship resources, and the prevention focus positively moderates the impact of customer engagement on customer human resources. Some of the results met our expectations, and our findings were partially supported by the views of Chen X et al. (2017) and X Cao et al. (2020), where individuals with promotion focus had a more agile thinking structure and were able to search for more information to enhance resource accumulation during problem solving [12,43]. Based on their views, this study further found the moderating role of prevention focus on customer engagement on customer resources, that is, that individuals with prevention focus are more likely to develop a sense of responsibility for the brand, and this sense of responsibility will promote customers to be more precise and careful in brand activity engagement and behavioral performance [38]. We originally thought that prevention-focused individuals would be more likely to induce vigilance motivation in brand activity engagement, have difficulty building relational resources with the brand, lack creativity, and thus reduce the impact of relational resources on customer value. However, beyond our expectation, prevention-focused individuals only had difficulty building relationship resources and did not lead to relationship deterioration, so they did not have a negative moderating effect.

6.1. Theoretical Implications

First, both customer relationship resources and customer human resources have a significant positive effect on customer value. This conclusion complements the lack of in-depth exploration of the mechanism of dynamic formation of customer value from the perspective of the customer journey and the inadequate customer relationship management in the past. It emphasizes the role of customer human resources on customer value, and elaborates on the accumulation of resources and value contribution of customers from the three stages of the customer development journey in the previous section. The conclusion can provide some reference for scholars who explore the direction of customer value in the future and has important theoretical value for enterprises to carry out marketing activities such as customer engagement and product knowledge education.

Second, customer resources play a significant mediating role in customer engagement and customer value. While most scholars have previously explored the influence of customer resources on the realization of product value in the dynamic process of customer engagement, this study proposes the influence of customer resources as a mediating variable on customer value in this dynamic process. The findings extend the research on resource theory and further investigate the relationship between customer involvement, customer resources and customer value. The findings can be used as a reference for future research on customer resources and can help enterprises to clearly understand the resources that customers already have and the resources that they may accumulate in the future.

Third, customer regulatory focus can positively affect the effect of customer engagement on customer value accumulation, and promotion focus positively moderates the accumulation of customer relationship resources and customer human resources, while prevention focus only positively moderates the accumulation of customer human resources. Most previous studies have focused on the direct and moderating effects of regulatory focus on customer creativity, and have been less applied to the effects of customer resource accumulation. The present findings expand the scope of research on the regulatory focus theory, help researchers understand the effect of customer engagement on customer resources under the regulatory focus, and provide theoretical guidance for enterprises to identify users’ own characteristics and accumulate appropriate resources.

6.2. Managerial Implications

First of all, on the basis of building a brand network community, enterprises should label customers through the accumulation of resources shown during customer participation, so as to better guide customers to accumulate and manage resources at a deeper level. Enterprises should pay attention to the various resources owned by customers before acquiring the value of customers. Enterprises should focus on increasing customers’ experience and relevant knowledge, improving the degree of connection between customers and enterprises, and deepening customers’ awareness of their own capabilities. Therefore, it is recommended that enterprises take the following measures: In the process of customer participation, the enterprise groups users through user behavior, and recommends specific content to users with different levels of customer relationship resources and customer human resources accumulation in the customer development process. In the process of customer development, customers can enhance the accumulation of resources and increase their value contribution. For example, during the customer journey, the accumulation of customer relationship resources brought about by customer participation has a weak impact on the knowledge value of customer engagement value. When recommending content to customers who are good at accumulating customer relationship resources, it can reduce the knowledge value content push proportion.

In addition, paying attention to the characteristics of the customers themselves is of great practical significance in making the customer value cultivation plan and decision-making. First, enterprises should make it clear that individuals who promote focus are more creative thinkers, and individuals who prevent focus show more risk-averse ways of doing things and are more concerned about product safety. In branded online communities, enterprises can identify users’ own characteristics through two types of activities. First, at the early stage of joining a branded online community, a simple questionnaire is used to determine the user’s regulatory characteristics by setting questions related to the user’s characteristics. The second way is to analyze the user’s interests by using the user’s online participation behavior data and the point data, and to draw a precise customer portrait according to the customer’s output content, and then match the reflected user characteristics with the two regulation characteristics that have been clarified and push the corresponding content to guide and obtain their output value. For customers who are accumulate human resources easily, the proportion of creative tasks that enterprises increase can more stimulate their accumulation of human resources.

Finally, according to the behavior changes in the customer participation process during the customer journey, the enterprise pushes the relevant task content through accurate algorithms in a timely manner, to improve user resources and better obtain the unique value brought by it. This study shows that the accumulation of different resources in the process of user participation and the regulatory focus characteristics of customers will have an impact on the user’s value, which can guide companies to better identify and manage and guide different types of users, while users will feel the company’s affirmation and importance of their own value in the process of participation, which will also enable companies and users to establish a sustainable relationship of two-way choice.

7. Conclusions

This study found that with the development of technology and the improvement of customers’ individual awareness, customers and enterprises are becoming more and more active in the process of cooperation. Among them, the value creation of customers in the brand network community changes with the accumulation of resources in the customer’s development process, and the different characteristics of users themselves will produce different results for their accumulation of resources.

Limited by the limitations of the research samples, the research only considers the relationship resources between customers and brands, ignoring the relationship resources between customers and customers. The follow-up research needs to explore here to analyze the influence mechanism of customer–customer relationship resources on customer participation and customer referral value. In addition, the relationship between customer participation and customer resources still needs to be deeply dissected to provide theoretical support for the practice of customer training. We hope future research will help deepen our understanding of the impact of customer value.