This paper aims to explore how enterprise microblogging can influence consumer loyalty and thus generate business value for firms. The study aims to expand traditional brand community theory.,The paper is based on brand community theory, social identity theory and usage and gratifications theory. Using a pre-survey of the fans of an enterprise microblog and a random sample survey of such fans on Sina Weibo, the authors tested the structural equation model with LISREL, which includes multiple fit indices.,The paper provides empirical insights about how enterprise microblogging can influence consumer loyalty and thus generate business value for firms. It suggests that consumers’ perceived value could strengthen their microblog identification, which will influence their perceived relationship with the enterprise and its products directly and indirectly through the mediation of enterprise identification. Perceived relationship can further influence purchase and recommendation intentions.,Because of the chosen data collecting approach, the research results may be still subjective. Moreover, the study overlooks the effects of the different types of enterprise microblogging and consumers.,Enterprises should operate their official microblogging from the perspective of maintaining brand community to improve consumer loyalty. They can generate more value for consumers through their microblogging and predict the operating performance by evaluating the degree of consumers’ relationship perception.,This paper considers enterprise microblogging as a new form of virtual brand community and identifies its features, and expands theories of brand community, and social media/IT business value, social identity theory and gratifications theory.

中文翻译：

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企业微博对消费者忠诚度的影响

本文旨在探讨企业微博如何影响消费者忠诚度，从而为企业创造业务价值。本研究旨在扩展传统的品牌社区理论。本文基于品牌社区理论，社会认同理论以及使用和满足理论。通过使用企业微博粉丝的前期调查以及在新浪微博上对此类粉丝的随机抽样调查，作者使用LISREL测试了结构方程模型，该模型包含多个拟合指标。本文提供了有关企业微博如何进行实证的见解。会影响消费者的忠诚度，从而为公司创造业务价值。这表明消费者的感知价值可以加强他们对微博的识别，这将通过企业标识的中介直接或间接地影响他们与企业及其产品的感知关系。感知的关系可以进一步影响购买和推荐意图。由于所选择的数据收集方法，研究结果可能仍然是主观的。而且，该研究忽略了不同类型的企业微博和消费者的影响。企业应该从维护品牌社区的角度来操作其官方微博以提高消费者忠诚度。他们可以通过微博为消费者创造更多价值，并通过评估消费者的关系感知程度来预测运营绩效。