Abstract: Companies use online brand communities to facilitate user interaction behaviors as a major path to value co-creation. Through in-depth interviews with 19 active community members, data were collected and programmatically coded using a grounded theory approach to construct a theoretical model of the transformation process and drivers of user interaction behavior. According to the extent of user participation in value co-creation in the community, user interaction behavior can be classified as human-machine interaction, human-human interaction and human-enterprise interaction. The transition from human-machine interaction to human-human interaction is mainly influenced by information quality, social experience and self-realization, while the transition from human-human interaction to human-enterprise interaction is mainly influenced by community incentive, social enhancement and symbiotic co-creation. And the driving factors of users’ behavioral transitions can be categorized into visceral layer, behavioral layer and reflective layer, with information quality and community incentives in the visceral layer playing a greater role in the early stages of each behavioral transition, while self-realization and symbiotic co-creation in the reflective layer having the most effective and longest driving role. The results provide a theoretical reference for an indepth understanding of the transformation mechanism of user interaction behaviors in online brand communities, as well as suggestions for enterprises to target the promotion of user interaction behaviors and value co-creation at different stages.

Key words: Online brand community, User interaction, Behavior transformation, Value co-creation, Grounded theory