Relationships and online consumer communities
Abstract
Purpose
To explore, through a case study approach, relationship and community development in online consumer communities.
Design/methodology/approach
A case study‐based analysis of three organizations that are supporting online community creation and development is used as the basis for grounded theory development. Two of these organizations, the Consumers Association, and Emerald Group Publishing Limited, are publishers, and are building on established community. The third case study, Letsbuyit.com seeks to bring together a consumer community in pursuit of the good deals with suppliers. Online communities are analysed in terms of relationships, including the nature and types of relationships, the role of value creation and commitment, customer‐to‐customer interaction, and relationship lifecycles.
Findings
These case studies demonstrate that whilst communication, content and commerce are often associated with consumer online communities, each e‐business needs to develop its own model of community building activities.
Originality/value
Commercial organizations need to translate customer relationships that have been created in traditional business environments into the virtual marketplace, and to use online communities to strengthen these relationships. This paper contributes to the limited empirical research in this area, and provides some models, and an agenda for future research into online consumer communities.
Keywords
Citation
Farquhar, J. and Rowley, J. (2006), "Relationships and online consumer communities", Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 162-177. https://doi.org/10.1108/14637150610657512
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2006, Emerald Group Publishing Limited