Abstract: In the era of Web 3.0, great changes have taken place in the clustering mechanism and interactive process of online brand community, so the existed theory and research perspectives should be further deepened and expanded. Taking six typical cases as the samples, this paper employs the grounded theory and qualitative comparative research method to explore the consumer’s psychology and behavior when they join the online brand community and form their brand loyalty. It reveals the six categories and the logical relationship between them, which are “non-interactive participation of members”, “absence of perceived value”, “interaction”, “community social capital”, “community and brand identification”, and “brand loyalty”. It also constructs the conceptual models of the generation, composition and function process of online brand community social capital. It is found that the social capital of online brand community follows the dual generation path and affects the brand loyalty through such indirect factors as community identification, brand identification and so on. This process is also impacted by the member involvement degree, the perceived community-brand fitness, and so on.

Key words: online brand community; social capital; brand loyalty; grounded theory