A virtual community, e-community or online community is a group of people that primarily interact via communication media such as newsletters, telephone, email, internet social network service or instant messages rather than face to face, for social, professional, educational or other purposes. If the mechanism is computer network, it is called an online community. Virtual and online communities have also become a supplemental form of communication between people who know each other primarily in real life. Many means are used in social software separately or in combination, including text-based chatrooms and forums that use voice, video text or avatars. Significant socio-technical change may have resulted from the proliferation of such Internet-based social networks.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/chatguide/socialising/communities.shtml)
Online communities are very popular, peoples look for friends, group of interest in the Internet and the answer for this demand are online communities. Online communities are challenge for e-marketing. Community members transact with each other. They share information, opinions, gossip, pictures, music and news. The community is a diary, a contact book, a business network. People within it happily trade personal and intimate details, and advertisers see this very much as the Holy Grail.
(http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/search/567426/Digital-Essays-sense-community/).
More than 175million active users on Face book, 3 billion minutes are spend on Facebook each day (worldwide), more than 4 million user’s fans of page each day (http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics)
Therefore this one of the reason to be interested in building awareness, improve customers loyalty, increase repeat visits to company web site by online communities.
Browser based communities Vs. Video games communities
Online video game communities have grown drastically over the years in its size and scope. Its development in to such a large phenomenon is down to the increase use of the internet. Online gaming grew out bulletin board systems and college networks in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
Quake was one of the first games to offer online gaming; it started with 16 players and then eventually offered up to 32 players per game. Gamers quickly began to get themselves organised into different groups and called themselves clans. These clans had their own marketing, rivalries, organisational structures and even their own distinctive looks.
Browser based communities are used for a variety of social and professional groups to interact over the internet. This can come in the form of newsletters, email, internet social networks or instant messages rather than any face to face communication. This can be for social, professional, educational or other purposes. Virtual communities form "when people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships" (Howard Rhinegold.)
Online communities are a way for people who know each other in real life to supplement communication between each other. Also it is a way for people to keep in touch with each other from around the world. There are different means that are used for these communities; these can be text based chat rooms and forums. Also there are communities that use voice texts, video texts or even avatars.
The earliest forms of the virtual communities are TheGlobe.com which was established in 1994, then there was Geocities also established in 1994 and Tripod established in 1995. These communities were very basic they brought people together through chat rooms and the sharing of personal information. These sites allowed people to share their personal ideas and thoughts through blogs and chat rooms. These sites were the predecessor to the modern social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.
Importance of virtual communities to e-marketing:
Establishing a long term relationship between the company and the customer; A virtual communities provides a point of repeated contact with the customer through various means such as interactivity, tracking personalization, customization and email accompanied with customer’s information thus enhances one to one marketing.
Virtual community is a very important source for creating a customers’ database with a high level of personalization and customization. This enables the company to satisfy various customers’ segments and individual customers since it has all the necessary information about them.
Information and knowledge sharing; Virtual communities enhance relationship commitment where by Morgan and hunt propose relationship commitment as the central for relationship marketing and the common interest exists among the members of virtual communities is the level of satisfaction therefore when this attachment becomes very strong, parties go above their normal commitment to build trust whereby trust is a crucial factor for e-commerce to take its course (http://www.hsw-basel.ch/iwi/publications.nsf/)
Marketing perspective - VCs offer the target market with reduced search costs, access to a variety range of information from other community members, economic benefits like special price, customized offers such as free delivery and better services. E-marketers benefit from access to target group with known preferences, and a global reach. Marketers can understand each member-customer as an individual in provide all related services at a single point, addressing promotional messages, and make VC a new marketing channel globally.
Virtual community helps building the store image which is essential for building loyalty. Store image is the perception of organization held in consumers’ memory. Store image is very appropriate as an online store and very different from brand image. If one has a negative store image, may not buy from your online store therefore Virtual communities play an important role in the formation of the store image through members share their experience with each other about different brands. A customer forms his/her image based on others image/word of mouth depending on the trust he/she has over other members.
Possible ways to target online communities
The first fact to reckon with is the location of these communities; they are located online and people interested in the features come to this environment (to get whatever they want). Just like on-ground marketing whereby the target audience is strategically identified in their unique environment and effectively communicated to; same applies to online communities as consumers are located in the social network they belong to. People go online for different reasons i.e. to make a purchase, to search/share information, to socialize, to play games and so on. Therefore marketers can use these various online environments to target their defined publics. Based on what people do online, they can be targeted through their usage of certain communities. The key factors for appropriate targeting however is the size of the market is in view i.e. the number of people who visit the environment. Another factor is the shared interest of these online users, because these people go particular environments to get particular information required per time. In a summary, the ways to target online communities’ members is to locate them by researching the number of people on various networks, segmenting them by their interest, and further understanding their online behaviour by following through the places they go to gather information and hoe they interact with one another.
References
Cothrel, J.P. (2000) ‘Measuring the success of an online community’. academic search complete 28, (2), 17-19
Rheingold, Howard (1993). The Virtual Community (1st. ed.). Addison-Wesley Pub. Co. ISBN 9780201608700. http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/intro.html.
Else, Liz & Turkle, Sherry. "Living online: I'll have to ask my friends", New Scientist, issue 2569, 20 September 2006.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7942304.stm
Rollings, Andrew; Ernest Adams (2006). Fundamentals of Game Design. Prentice Hall. l.
http://www.hsw-basel.ch/iwi/publications.nsf/:Gupta S, Hee-Woong Kim, (2004), Virtual Community: Concepts, Implications and Future Research Directions,
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/chatguide/socialising/communities.shtml
(http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics)
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/chatguide/socialising/communities.shtml)
Online communities are very popular, peoples look for friends, group of interest in the Internet and the answer for this demand are online communities. Online communities are challenge for e-marketing. Community members transact with each other. They share information, opinions, gossip, pictures, music and news. The community is a diary, a contact book, a business network. People within it happily trade personal and intimate details, and advertisers see this very much as the Holy Grail.
(http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/search/567426/Digital-Essays-sense-community/).
More than 175million active users on Face book, 3 billion minutes are spend on Facebook each day (worldwide), more than 4 million user’s fans of page each day (http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics)
Therefore this one of the reason to be interested in building awareness, improve customers loyalty, increase repeat visits to company web site by online communities.
Browser based communities Vs. Video games communities
Online video game communities have grown drastically over the years in its size and scope. Its development in to such a large phenomenon is down to the increase use of the internet. Online gaming grew out bulletin board systems and college networks in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
Quake was one of the first games to offer online gaming; it started with 16 players and then eventually offered up to 32 players per game. Gamers quickly began to get themselves organised into different groups and called themselves clans. These clans had their own marketing, rivalries, organisational structures and even their own distinctive looks.
Browser based communities are used for a variety of social and professional groups to interact over the internet. This can come in the form of newsletters, email, internet social networks or instant messages rather than any face to face communication. This can be for social, professional, educational or other purposes. Virtual communities form "when people carry on public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships" (Howard Rhinegold.)
Online communities are a way for people who know each other in real life to supplement communication between each other. Also it is a way for people to keep in touch with each other from around the world. There are different means that are used for these communities; these can be text based chat rooms and forums. Also there are communities that use voice texts, video texts or even avatars.
The earliest forms of the virtual communities are TheGlobe.com which was established in 1994, then there was Geocities also established in 1994 and Tripod established in 1995. These communities were very basic they brought people together through chat rooms and the sharing of personal information. These sites allowed people to share their personal ideas and thoughts through blogs and chat rooms. These sites were the predecessor to the modern social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.
Importance of virtual communities to e-marketing:
Establishing a long term relationship between the company and the customer; A virtual communities provides a point of repeated contact with the customer through various means such as interactivity, tracking personalization, customization and email accompanied with customer’s information thus enhances one to one marketing.
Virtual community is a very important source for creating a customers’ database with a high level of personalization and customization. This enables the company to satisfy various customers’ segments and individual customers since it has all the necessary information about them.
Information and knowledge sharing; Virtual communities enhance relationship commitment where by Morgan and hunt propose relationship commitment as the central for relationship marketing and the common interest exists among the members of virtual communities is the level of satisfaction therefore when this attachment becomes very strong, parties go above their normal commitment to build trust whereby trust is a crucial factor for e-commerce to take its course (http://www.hsw-basel.ch/iwi/publications.nsf/)
Marketing perspective - VCs offer the target market with reduced search costs, access to a variety range of information from other community members, economic benefits like special price, customized offers such as free delivery and better services. E-marketers benefit from access to target group with known preferences, and a global reach. Marketers can understand each member-customer as an individual in provide all related services at a single point, addressing promotional messages, and make VC a new marketing channel globally.
Virtual community helps building the store image which is essential for building loyalty. Store image is the perception of organization held in consumers’ memory. Store image is very appropriate as an online store and very different from brand image. If one has a negative store image, may not buy from your online store therefore Virtual communities play an important role in the formation of the store image through members share their experience with each other about different brands. A customer forms his/her image based on others image/word of mouth depending on the trust he/she has over other members.
Possible ways to target online communities
The first fact to reckon with is the location of these communities; they are located online and people interested in the features come to this environment (to get whatever they want). Just like on-ground marketing whereby the target audience is strategically identified in their unique environment and effectively communicated to; same applies to online communities as consumers are located in the social network they belong to. People go online for different reasons i.e. to make a purchase, to search/share information, to socialize, to play games and so on. Therefore marketers can use these various online environments to target their defined publics. Based on what people do online, they can be targeted through their usage of certain communities. The key factors for appropriate targeting however is the size of the market is in view i.e. the number of people who visit the environment. Another factor is the shared interest of these online users, because these people go particular environments to get particular information required per time. In a summary, the ways to target online communities’ members is to locate them by researching the number of people on various networks, segmenting them by their interest, and further understanding their online behaviour by following through the places they go to gather information and hoe they interact with one another.
References
Cothrel, J.P. (2000) ‘Measuring the success of an online community’. academic search complete 28, (2), 17-19
Rheingold, Howard (1993). The Virtual Community (1st. ed.). Addison-Wesley Pub. Co. ISBN 9780201608700. http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/intro.html.
Else, Liz & Turkle, Sherry. "Living online: I'll have to ask my friends", New Scientist, issue 2569, 20 September 2006.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7942304.stm
Rollings, Andrew; Ernest Adams (2006). Fundamentals of Game Design. Prentice Hall. l.
http://www.hsw-basel.ch/iwi/publications.nsf/:Gupta S, Hee-Woong Kim, (2004), Virtual Community: Concepts, Implications and Future Research Directions,
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/chatguide/socialising/communities.shtml
(http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics)
