VIRTUAL COMMUNITY

BY  KIDENDEI SEGERETI
Virtual communities include everything from discussion boards to massive multiplayer online role-playing games and virtual realities such as Second Life. The business world has assumed that virtual communities can be leveraged to provide access to consumers and consumer data. The benefits of this assumption have not always been realized.

The purpose of this article is to understand why some business ventures into virtual communities fail and others succeed. Why do virtual communities support certain types of business activities and not others? Which firm activities are the best candidates to benefit from being positioned in virtual communities? The theories of social contracts and trust explain how firms can successfully participate in virtual communities.

The theories have implications in the context of transaction-oriented, interest-oriented, relationship-oriented, and fantasy-oriented communities. The value chain provides an instructive background to understand which firm activities are candidates for being included in virtual communities. Success in virtual communities depends on an attitude of contribution, dedication of resources, building a critical mass, and matching community and business needs.

Consumers’ Needs For Community

Electronic communities meet four types of consumer needs.

Communities of transaction primarily facilitate the buying and selling of products and services and deliver information related to those transactions. They are not communities in the traditional social sense. Participants are encouraged to interact with one another in order to engage in a specific transaction that can be informed by the input of other members of the community. Visitors to communities of transaction may want to buy a used car or a vintage wine, and they may want to consult with other community members before doing so.

Virtual Vineyards, a Web based service that sells wines, is a community of transaction. The Virtual Vineyards site offers visitors information on wines and lists special deals on attractively priced offerings. Most of the wines that are listed are from small vineyards and are usually difficult to obtain. Visitors can purchase the wines directly from Virtual Vineyards, using an on-line form, or they can call the on-line service. Although visitors can post E-mail to the organizer of the site (and wine neophytes can post questions to the Cork Dork), they cannot yet trade information with one another. Adding that capability might add value for the site’s visitors, making it a true community.

The organizer of a community of transaction does not need to be a vendor. Community organizers may simply bring together a critical mass of buyers and sellers to facilitate certain types of transactions. For example, a community organizer might offer electronic classified ads or provide a “market space” where everything from used construction machinery to financial investment products and services could be bought and sold.

Therefore virtual community is very importance in doing business in this digital era because you can exchange various ideas by different people in the world but also it gives you network and channels of doing business.