The pivotal role of community building in electronic commerce

Firms competing in the arena of electronic commerce (e-commerce) strive to understand the new business potentials which the Internet offers. The paper considers Virtual Communities of Transaction as an important arena to realize these potentials. Since they can grow trust, cultivate a collective awareness, and stress community knowledge, they can be a valuable component of e-commerce sites. We focus on electronic product catalogs (EPCs) as a popular example of a component in the e-commerce setting and propose an architecture for an "enhanced EPC": the Participatory Product Catalog (PEP). The PEP brings the notion of virtual communities to e-commerce by combining aspects of product information and community building for business use. PEPs offer: (1) the social building of trust, (2) the ability to foster the growth of valuable community knowledge and (3) the effective use of personalization strategies. To personalize PEPs, we present the "My PEP" approach which uses collaborative filtering to alter the interface and the underlying data store. Concluding remarks stress the pivotal role of community building in successful e-commerce strategies.

[1]  Ken Berryman,et al.  Electronic Commerce: Three Emerging Strategies , 1998 .

[2]  Richard Zeckhauser,et al.  Recommender systems for evaluating computer messages , 1997, CACM.

[3]  R. Wigand,et al.  Electronic Markets and Virtual Value Chains on the Information Superhighway , 1995 .

[4]  Petra Schubert,et al.  Virtual Communities of Transaction: The Role of Personalization in Electronic Commerce , 2000, Electron. Mark..

[5]  Beat Schmid,et al.  Elektronische Märkte - Merkmale, Organisation und Potentiale , 1999 .

[6]  Brian S. Butler,et al.  Intermediaries and Cybermediaries: A Continuing Role for Mediating Players in the Electronic Marketplace , 1995, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[7]  D. Peppers,et al.  Enterprise One to One: Tools for Competing in the Interactive Age , 1996 .

[8]  Karin Geiselhart,et al.  Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet , 1998 .

[9]  Petra Schubert,et al.  Virtuelle Transaktionsgemeinschaften im Electronic Commerce: Management, Marketing und soziale Umwelt , 1999 .

[10]  Suzanne P. Weisband,et al.  Developing trust in virtual teams , 1997, Proceedings of the Thirtieth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[11]  T. Erickson,et al.  Social interaction on the Net: virtual community as participatory genre , 1997, Proceedings of the Thirtieth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[12]  D. Hindman.  The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier , 1996 .

[13]  Howard Rheingold,et al.  The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier , 2000 .

[14]  Beat Schmid,et al.  Architecture and Business Potential of Mediating Electronic Product Catalogs , 1997 .

[15]  Shoshana Zuboff,et al.  In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power , 1989 .

[16]  S. Viswanathan,et al.  Recommendation Systems: Decision Support for the Information Economy , 1998 .

[17]  William N. Robinson,et al.  Creating a custom mass-production channel on the Internet , 1998, CACM.

[18]  Paul Resnick,et al.  Recommender systems , 1997, CACM.

[19]  J. Bakos.  Reducing buyer search costs: implications for electronic marketplaces , 1997 .

[20]  Kerry Webb,et al.  Hosting Web Communities: Building Relationships, Increasing Customer Loyalty, and Maintaining a Competitive Edge , 1999 .

[21]  S. Klein,et al.  Interorganisationssysteme und Unternehmensnetzwerke , 1998 .

[22]  D. Spar,et al.  Ruling the Net , 1996 .

[23]  Arie Segev,et al.  IMPACT OF THE INTERNET ON PROCUREMENT , 1998 .

[24]  K. Tarapanoff,et al.  In the age of the smart machine: the future of work and power: Shoshana Zuboff. Oxford: Heinemann professional publishing Ltd, 1988. 468 pp. ISBN 0 434 92486 5. £16.95 , 1990 .

[25]  G. Hutton.  Net gain: Expanding markets through virtual communities , 1998 .

[26]  J. Hagel,et al.  Net gain: Expanding markets through virtual communities , 1999 .

[27]  S. Turkle.  Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet , 1997 .