• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.19-45
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• 2010

Virtual Communities, which are formed on the Internet, are expected to serve the needs of members for e-collaboration, e-communication, information and knowledge sharing. The executives of organizations should consider virtual community as a new innovation or knowledge pool since members share knowledge. However, many virtual community have failed due to members' low willingness to engage and furthermore to share knowledge with other members. Thus, there is a need to understand and foster the determinants of members' sense of belonging behavior in virtual community. This study develops an integrated model designed to investigate and explain the relationships between contextual factors, personal perceptions of virtual community, usability, trust and sense of belonging in using a certain virtual community. Empirical data was collected from 201 and tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) to verify the fit of the hypothetical model. The results show that the perceived usability and community trust of members significantly influences sense of belonging in using the virtual community, and information quality, system quality, familiarity on the virtual community are significantly influence the usability but not reputation. And I confirmed that perceived shared vision and responsiveness play the role of determinants in making the member's trust, perceived risk influence the making community trust in directly. The results of the study can be used to identify the motivation underlying members' sense of belonging in a certain virtual community by investigating the impacts of contextual factors and personal perceptions on virtual community, the integrated model better explains behavior than other proposed models. This study might help executives of virtual communities and organizations to manage and promote these determinants of sense of belonging to stimulate members' willingness to engage the community and futhermore enhance their virtual community loyalty.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.325-335
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• 2001

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.181-203
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• 2015

Customers who show high level of brand loyalty are one of the most important corporate assets. Accordingly, customers' brand loyalty has been addressed as a critical issue for the business success. In today's business environment where business channels to customers have expanded and diversified continuously, especially the use of social network services (SNSs) have drawn a lot of attention as an effective channel to promote customers' brand loyalty. This study, thus, analyzes the impact of the virtual brand community identity on customers' brand loyalty, focusing on the role of the sense of communities as mediators. The analysis was conducted by using the data collected from 239 users of Chinese virtual brand communities. The results show that both virtual brand community identity and the sense of communities significantly influence on customers' brand loyalty. Furthermore, the results reveal that both of the community belongingness and community trust composing the sense of community partially mediate virtual brand community and brand loyalty as hypothesized. Based on the results, the strategic implications are suggested and discussed, focusing on improving the customers' brand loyalty in the context of SNSs. Our findings and discussions can help companies develop their customer strategies for utilizing the virtual communities to strengthen customers' brand loyalty.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.71-90
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• 2003

Virtual communities have been suggested to play important roles such as attracting customers, building customer loyalty, and leading to commercial transactions. Little research in marketing has focused on virtual communities in spite of its importance indicated by many practitioners and conceptual studies. More specifically, little research has empirically examined factors of customer participation and its consequences. This research investigate if customers' participation motives in virtual communities affect their sense of community and if sense of community affects customers' loyalty towards and purchase intentions from the website offering the community service. One hundred ninety six questionnaires were collected from individuals who have participated in and have been involved in online activities in various virtual communities. Major results of this research can be summarized as follows. First, participation motives employed significantly affected customers' sense of community and more specifically, perceived ease of use and perceived playfulness had a large influence on the customers' sense of community. Second, customers' sense of community positively affected their loyalty toward the community and more specifically, membership and emotional connection had a large influence on loyalty. Third, customers' sense of community did not affect directly their purchase intentions. Fourth, customers' loyalty toward virtual communities had a significant, positive, although marginal, influence on their purchase intentions.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.19-38
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• 2014

This study focused on the role of active knowledge seeking (knowledge browsing and knowledge searching) in the context of virtual community of interest. Knowledge seeking is rarely studied as an antecedent in knowledge management (KM) research. Active knowledge seeking is considered as antecedents of sense of virtual community which mediates to knowledge sharing intention and virtual community promotion. Research hypotheses are tested by applying structure equation modeling with survey data from virtual community members in South Korea. Active knowledge seeking behavior was found to be the strong predictor of sense of virtual community, which, in turn, positively affects knowledge sharing intention and virtual community promotion. Implication to practitioners is to understand and accommodate the members' knowledge seeking efforts, who are potential contributors and promoters of the virtual community. Knowledge seeking, knowledge sharing and promoting virtual community are more of human activities than technology and this study extends the understanding of such human activities. By providing a mechanism of how knowledge seeking and sharing could work harmoniously, a virtuous circle with win-win situation could be achieved in virtual communities.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.57-79
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• 2010

In a virtual community, one can possess multiple identities and pretend to be different by creating self-identity in contrast with his or her actual self. Does false identity undermine the qualitative growth of a virtual community by reducing members' accountability? Or does it stimulate their contributive behaviors by ensuring freedom of speech? It is imperative to understand the effects of multi-identity considering the distinct properties of a virtual community in which people easily change their identities at little or no cost. To answer these questions, we adopted the concept of self-discrepancy from the social psychology theory rooted in the concept of the self and developed a theoretical model to predict quality of contribution of the individual member in virtual communities. Based on the self-discrepancy theory, we first identified two different domains of the self: (1) an "actual self" that consists of attributes that the person believes he or she currently possesses in real life and (2) a "cyber self" that consists of attributes the person believes he or she possesses in a virtual community. Next, we derived an index for two different types of self-discrepancy by using the differences between the actual and the cyber identities: Personal Self-discrepancy and Social Self-discrepancy. Personal Self-discrepancy reflects the degree of discrepancy between actual and cyber identity regarding a person's intelligence, education, and expertise. Social Self-discrepancy reflects the degree of discrepancy between actual and cyber identity regarding a person's morality, sociability, and accordance with social norms. Finally, we linked them with sense of virtual community, perceived privacy rights, and quality of contribution to examine how having a multi-identity influences an individual's psychological state and contributive behaviors in a virtual community. The results of the analysis based on 266 respondents showed that Social Self-discrepancy negatively influenced both the Sense of Virtual Community and Perceived Privacy Rights, while Personal Self-discrepancy negatively influenced only Perceived Privacy Rights, thereby resulting in reduced quality of contribution in virtual communities. Based on the results of this analysis, we can explain the dysfunctions of multi-identity in virtual communities. First, people who pretend to be different by engaging in socially undesirable behaviors under their alternative identities are more likely to suffer lower levels of psychological wellbeing and thus experience lower levels of sense of virtual community than others. Second, people do not perceive a high level of privacy rights reflecting catharsis, recovery, or autonomy, even though they create different selves and engage in socially undesirable behaviors in a virtual community. Third, people who pretend to be different persons in terms of their intelligence, education, or expertise also indirectly debase the quality of contribution by decreasing perceived privacy rights. The results suggest that virtual community managers should pay more attention to the negative influences exercised by multi-identity on the quality of contribution, thereby controlling the need to create alternative identities in virtual communities. We hope that more research will be conducted on this underexplored area of multi-identity and that our theoretical framework will serve as a useful conceptual tool for all endeavors.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.89-108
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• 2015

Social networking communities (SNCs) are media designed to facilitate social interaction using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. SNCs can constitute individuals' their own profiles in the online environment and share texts, images and photos in a variety ways. In other words, one of the other motivators is knowledge sharing. Various sites, such as Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, and Hi5 are categorized as SNCs. SNCs have become increasingly popular in recent years among youths, especially students, who use them to build social networks. This study examines whether this usage of SNCs inculcates a sense of community among their members. Several studies have examined the role of a sense of community through increased usage in the context of virtual communities. Although this result may be true of virtual communities, this paper contends that the opposite relationship prevails in the case of SNCs because members interact to build networks and are not obliged to interact. The results reveal that maintaining long-term interactions in the SNCs is helpful in building a sense of community in SNCs. Although short-term usage may not boost the development of a sense of community in SNCs, it does matter if the premise is for a long-term commitment to SNCs. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.49-69
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• 2006

The virtual community has been recognized as an effective marketing tool and has been an important motive of using internet to Internet users, but very few attempts have been done for the development of virtual community success. Although many studies have been made on influencing factors of virtual community success, the comprehensive studies have never been done so far. Therefore, this study focused on developing the comprehensive model and verifying empirically. This study proposed five influencing factors(Virtual Community Operational factor, Characteristics of Users, Usefulness, Trust, Commitment) that affect virtual community success and three success factors(Sense of Virtual Community, Loyalty, Purchasing Intention) by carrying out literature review extensively and suggesting the relationship among factors. The relationship among factors were empirically validated by structural equation modeling. The data used in this study were collected from 292 users of the existing virtual communities. As the result of statistical analysis. It was found that Virtual Community Operational Factor and Characteristics of Users statistically significantly influenced Virtual Community Success. Also, it was shown that the intervening effects of Usefulness, Trust and Commitment were statistically significant, but that the relationship between commitment and Loyalty was not statistically significant. Finally, it turned out that the causality among success variables of Virtual Community was supported, but that sense of Virtual Community was required to be measured by new measurements.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.10 no.8
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• pp.360-369
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• 2010

The objective of this research examines the relationships among privacy concerns, self discrepancy, and sense of virtual communities. According to the relevant literature review, we considered information privacy concerns factor as information collection, control, and awareness of privacy practice, and sense of community factor as membership and immersion on virtual communities. This research surveyed for the online community user and employed hierarchical regression model for the moderating effect test. The results of empirical analysis turns out that awareness of privacy concerns practice has negative impact on the self discrepancy, on the other hand, information collection and control factors do not affect. The next finding is internet use duration has moderating effect on the self discrepancy with information control and awareness of privacy concerns practice. The last findings are self discrepancy affect on the community membership and does not affect on the community immersion. It could be a good guide line for the operational direction on virtual community.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.41-72
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• 2019

Purpose Virtual communities (VCs) are becoming ever more important in these days, sometimes more than offline communities. Notably, they have become significant sources of knowledge sharing. Therefore, in order to foster a VC, it is very important to understand why people share their knowledge in the VC. Under this background, this paper aims at proposing the behavioral model best explains knowledge sharing activities in VCs. Design/methodology/approach We basically design our behavioral model for knowledge sharing in VCs based on theory of reasoned action (TRA). However, to understand knowledge sharing in VCs better, we specify knowledge sharing by dividing it into knowledge contribution and knowledge use. Also, instead of 'subjective norm', we adopt 'sense of virtual community (SOVC)' as a main social factor, which has been found to be important in the literature. We also include the antecedents such as 'quality of the shared knowledge', 'trust in community members', 'passion of the community leader', 'reciprocity', and 'self efficacy', which affect VC users' attitude towards knowledge sharing and SOVC. To test the hypotheses in our proposed model, we collected 253 valid surveys from the VC users. Structural equation modeling (SEM) using AMOS 23 is employed to assess the relationships proposed as the hypotheses. Findings Major findings are as follows. SOVC positively affects both intention to contribute knowledge and intention to use knowledge. And, trust in community members positively affects the attitude towards knowledge use and SOVC. The attitude towards knowledge use is also affected by the quality of the shared knowledge. Reciprocity is found to strongly positively affect the attitude towards knowledge contribution. However, passion of the community leader and self efficacy are found to have insignificant effect on SOVC and the attitude towards knowledge contribution respectively. Our study sheds a light on how to foster VCs from the perspective of knowledge management.