The Time‐Varying Effects of Online Brand Communities and Their Content Sharing on Digital Goods Sampling

ABSTRACT Product sampling is critical to the success of digital goods (e.g., music) offered by human brands. A two‐part strategy to encourage sampling on the Internet is to build and grow an online brand community (i.e., improve reach) to aggregate consumers loyal to the brand, and then have these community members share brand content with others (i.e., amplify content). Both actions are in line with percepts of social identity theory, helping online brand community members feel stronger ties with the brand while also experiencing a sense of self enhancement. Using secondary time series data across twenty musical artists, we evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy by examining how the sampling of music videos is affected by (a) the growth of an online brand community and (b) the extent of content sharing. Our unique econometric approach (non‐linear ARDL) not only tests for short‐run and long‐run effects but also asymmetric ones. The results show that while most musical artists succeed in using their online brand community to encourage sampling in the short run, only half succeed in the long run. Additionally, several instances of both short‐run and long‐run asymmetry are found.