The Outcomes of Social Media Based Brand Communitie's Impact on Brand Trust and Brand Loyalty

Given the increasing tendency of Iranian young people towards social networks, these networks could be applied for better connections with would-be and existing customers. Present work mainly aims to study impact of social media-based brand communities on shared knowledge, , and trust and loyalty in brand, by using shared awareness(the main feature of brand communities) and value creation activities (in online brand communities) variables The study of this study is a survey-descriptive one. In order to test study hypothesis, the questionnaire was distributedamong406 respondents, and hypotheses put to test by using SPSS and AMOS applications. The results show that using social media-based brand communities leave a positive impact on the shared knowledge of members (a main component of brand community)which could be apply to value creation activities of brand’s online community including social networking, influence management, society interaction and use of the brand. Moreover, while the effect of value creation activities in brand communities on trust in brand was not confirmed, the impact of trust in brand on loyalty in brand was verified.