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Toward a Taxonomy of Virtual Communities from a Value Cocreation Perspective
Author(s) -
RodríguezLópez Nuria,
DizComesaña M. Eva
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
psychology and marketing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.035
H-Index - 116
eISSN - 1520-6793
pISSN - 0742-6046
DOI - 10.1002/mar.20954
Subject(s) - perspective (graphical) , value (mathematics) , marketing , customer value , customer engagement , affect (linguistics) , psychology , product (mathematics) , taxonomy (biology) , virtual community , business , knowledge management , sociology , computer science , social media , world wide web , political science , the internet , ecology , communication , geometry , hierarchy , mathematics , machine learning , artificial intelligence , biology , law
The enormous growth that social networks have experienced in recent years has caused firms to begin to view social networks as enabling environments for supplier–customer interactions. It has been argued that company behavior influences customer participation; however, this notion has rarely been investigated. Therefore, the purpose of this research is twofold as follows: to determine if there are differences among virtual communities regarding customer participation and define the main factors that can cause differences in cocreated value. We used the perspective of grounded theory to analyze seven communities on Facebook that focus on a single product. Our results confirmed the existence of four types of communities. Additionally, community structures and goals were highlighted as the key factors that differentiate communities and affect customer interactions.