Social Dollars: The Economic Impact of Customer Participation in a Firm-Sponsored Online Customer Community
Social Dollars: The Economic Impact of Customer Participation in a Firm-Sponsored Online Customer Community
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DOI：
10.2139/ssrn.1984350
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发表时间：
2015-02
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Puneet Manchanda;Grant Packard;Adithya Pattabhiramaiah
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Puneet Manchanda;Grant Packard;Adithya Pattabhiramaiah
许多公司在网上运营客户社区。这样做的动机是这样一种信念，即加入社区的客户与公司和/或其产品的联系更加紧密，从而增加了他们与公司的经济活动。我们把这种潜在的经济效益称为“社会收益”。本文利用一家多渠道娱乐产品零售商的数据，为社会资金的存在和来源提供了证据，该零售商在网上推出了一个客户社区。我们发现，由于客户加入公司社区，客户支出显著增加。虽然自我选择与现场数据有关，但我们排除了多种替代解释。社交资金在观察期间持续存在，主要出现在在线渠道。为了评估社会美元的来源，我们假设并测试了它是否受到与客户社区共同属性概念相关的参与行为的调节。我们的研究结果显示，社区内容的张贴者和潜伏者，以及社区中社会关系较多和较少的人产生的社会收入更少。我们发现，对于那些从志同道合的社区成员发布的内容中获益的产品，我们所期望的信息优势的测量结果是无效的。这种结果的整体模式表明，对于客户社区的企业经营者来说，经济效益的社会来源比信息来源更强。对考虑投资和/或管理在线客户社区的公司的几个影响进行了讨论。
Many firms operate customer communities online. This is motivated by the belief that customers who join the community become more engaged with the firm and/or its products, and as a result, increase their economic activity with the firm. We describe this potential economic benefit as "social dollars." This paper contributes evidence for the existence and source of social dollars using data from a multichannel entertainment products retailer that launched a customer community online. We find a significant increase in customer expenditures attributable to customers joining the firm's community. While self-selection is a concern with field data, we rule out multiple alternative explanations. Social dollars persist over the time period observed and arose primarily in the online channel. To assess the source of the social dollar, we hypothesize and test whether it is moderated by participation behaviors conceptually linked to common attributes of customer communities. Our results reveal that posters versus lurkers of community content and those with more versus fewer social ties in the community generated more fewer social dollars. We found a null effect for our measure of the informational advantage expected to accrue to products that differentially benefit from content posted by like-minded community members. This overall pattern of results suggests a stronger social than informational source of economic benefits for firm operators of customer communities. Several implications for firms considering investments in and/or managing online customer communities are discussed.