Abstract: Under the background of comprehensively promoting rural revitalization and revitalizing agriculture through digital business, how fresh produce e-tailers can establish high-quality brand cooperation with agricultural producers has become a critical issue in both academia and industry. Based on the critical mass theory, this paper explores the process mechanism of constructing brand communities through a multi-case study of fresh produce e-tailers pairing up agricultural producers. On this basis, we propose the pro-agriculture and the farmer-reliant paths for fresh produce e-commerce brand communities. The findings show that fresh produce e-tailers, driven by category dominance or instance dominance, can form different paths for brand community construction by choosing different directions of attention. In collective action to build brand communities, fresh produce e-tailers adopt gaining models to improve the legitimacy and advancement of brand communities. Meanwhile, the e-tailers select appropriate rural revitalization strategies to address the productive and transactional constraints faced by agricultural producers and establish coordination mechanisms to ensure the effectiveness of rural revitalization strategies. Through the aforementioned process, a bidirectional brand association between the two critical groups is established, and the brand community value is ultimately increased through digital business for rural revitalization. This paper expands the application of critical mass theory in the context of fresh produce e-commerce and deepens the research on brand community at the supply chain level. The conclusions can provide managerial implications for the construction of fresh produce e-commerce branding, the sustainable development of the agricultural industry, and the inclusive development of high-quality fresh produce.

Key words: fresh produce e-commerce, supply chain, brand communities, revitalizing agriculture through digital business, multi-case study