A diffusion model for measuring electronic community growth and value

Abstract

Marketing practitioners have pursued understanding, support and leverage of virtual communities, given their potential for aggregating people/consumers with shared interests, fostering connections and relationships, and influencing behavior. A challenge for practitioners in building successful virtual communities has been understanding the dynamics of an online community with respect to growth, and, in turn, predicting the potential equity of an electronic community. Organizations armed with this predictive ability could better decide in which communities to be a first/early entrant and where they can build valuable customer relationships. We address this issue by developing and proposing a diffusion model of electronic community growth and value, based on a respected diffusion model, with modifications and adjustments to fit the special characteristics of electronic communities. This should help organizations to better understand how to build or identify valuable virtual communities, and better invest marketing dollars in community-related activities such as promotions and customer relationship building. © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.