Exploring Communication Activities in Online Communities: A Longitudinal Analysis in the Financial Services Industry

Online communities (OCs) are seen as important stimulus to electronic business. However, surprisingly little is known about how the communication activity of their participants develops and changes over time. A longitudinal study bears the potential to better elaborate the enabling and inhibiting factors of the participant's communication activity in OCs. To explore these phenomena, we aimed to develop a conceptual framework that serves as a foundation to guide an explorative data analysis of real OCs. We use the notions of common ground, information overload, interactivity, and social loafing to explain the communication activity of the participants in OCs. The empirically explored framework will help organizations to support the development of OCs and utilize them in an economically successful way. Based on a literature review, we developed a first conceptual framework. Then, we apply it to describe the development of the communication activity and its determinants in an OC hosted by a German financial service provider. In this study, we examined over 33,000 participants and 1.03 million messages over a period of 3 years. We found a strong effect of external factors on the size of this OC. The size of the OC showed no direct influence on the communication activity of the participants. However, in reaction to the increasing information load, communication strategies changed and herewith influenced the communication activity. The heterogeneity of the participant's activity was growing over time, and a small minority of participants wrote more and more of the postings.

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