article 6

How to Foster and Sustain Engagement in Virtual CommunitiesAuthor(s): Constance Elise Porter, Naveen Donthu, William H. MacElroy, Donna WydraReviewed work(s):Source: California Management Review, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Summer 2011), pp. 80-110Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/cmr.2011.53.4.80 .Accessed: 27/11/2011 04:39

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toCalifornia Management Review.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/cmr.2011.53.4.80?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

CALIFORNIA MANAGEMENT REVIEW VOL. 53, NO. 4 suMMER 2011 CMR.bERkELEy.Edu80

How to Foster and Sustain Engagement in Virtual Communities

Constance Elise PorterNaveen DonthuWilliam H. MacElroyDonna Wydra

T he rise of social media use among consumers affords managers the opportunity to shift relationships with consumers from dialogue to trialogue—in which consumers engage in meaningful relationships with one another and with the firms.1 Yet, although “most compa-

nies have cottoned on to social media as tools for engagement . . . [the] scale and speed of social media can make falling short instantly painful.”2 It is no wonder that many managers hesitate to fully integrate social media platforms, such as virtual communities, into their overall corporate strategies.3

Although most managers believe that engaging customers through virtual communities can create significant value, it is also clear that they sense signifi-cant financial risk. As one executive put it, when a firm executes a customer engagement strategy, “there is no room for error.”4 Indeed, among the many Fortune 1000 companies that sponsor virtual communities, more than half might actually destroy value for themselves and their customers.5

Getting customers engaged is the greatest obstacle to success for firm-sponsored virtual communities,6 and so we set out to understand how firms can foster and sustain engagement effectively in virtual communities. Our cen-tral premise is that though communities can emerge organically (i.e., managed independently of a firm sponsor), engagement often is amplified by specific, proactive efforts on the part of a firm that provides members with the appropri-ate resources to create value for themselves and for the firm in a community it sponsors.7 So, although customers might enjoy participating in communities that emerge independently of a corporate sponsor, evidence suggests that when customers are strong admirers of a firm and its brand, they desire to engage with others and the firm directly, often in communities sponsored by that firm.8 In addition, needs fulfillment (e.g., social identification), and the extent to which group attachment motivates a desire to participate, can be greater in firm-

How to Foster and sustain Engagement in Virtual Communities

CALIFORNIA MANAGEMENT REVIEW VOL. 53, NO. 4 suMMER 2011 CMR.bERkELEy.Edu 81

sponsored virtual communities than in communities formed independently of a strongly branded sponsoring firm.9

Previous research shows that a sponsor’s efforts help foster engagement by first helping members fulfill basic needs within the community (see Figure 1);

Figure 1. Various Needs that Members Fulfill via Virtual Communities

Virtual community members seek to build productive relationships through interaction with others within a community.

Virtual community members want to achieve self-awareness that they are a member of the community and are gratified by the emotional and cognitive connection with the community, as a whole, as well as their ability to express such connection.

Virtual community members are gratified by helping others within a community, especially those with whom they have developed a personal connection.

Virtual community members are grafitied by achieving flow states while interacting with others by having control over their experience with a community.

Virtual community members desire a sense of attachment to a community, as a whole, and are gratified by having their contributions to the community respected by others.

Virtual community members seek status and influence among others within a community.

Virtual community members find value in a community that provides access to information that helps them learn, solve problems, and make decisions.

relationship- Building

Social identity/Self-expression

Helping Others

enjoyment

Belongingness

Status/influence

information


uNIVERsITy OF CALIFORNIA, bERkELEy VOL. 53, NO. 4 suMMER 2011 CMR.bERkELEy.Edu82

therefore, understanding consumer needs fulfillment and motivations for par-ticipation sits at the core of our framework (see Figure 2).10 Our research effort focuses on how a firm’s efforts to promote participation and motivate coopera-tion help fulfill consumers’ core needs but provide even greater motivation for them to act in ways that are supportive of the firm, rather than only themselves.

Our framework is grounded in both theory and practice. We analyzed a robust set of data that we collected over several years of investigation (see Appendix 1 and Appendix 2 for details regarding our methods). Although the framework is based on our collective findings from analyses of all the data, in this article we focus primarily on the rich insights gleaned from our qualitative data and academic theory.

We derived a three-stage process that managers can follow to successfully foster and sustain engagement through virtual communities (see Figure 2). First, managers must identify the various needs of community members that create the intrinsic motivations for participating in virtual communities. Second, man-agers must promote member participation within the community, while also understanding that people choose to engage in media, including social media,

Figure 2. Foster and sustain Member Engagement

Stage 3

Motivate CooperationMobilize Member-Leaders

Inspire Ideas

Poll a Panel

Stage 2

Promote ParticipationEncourage Content Creation

Cultivate ConnectionsCreate Enjoyable Experiences

Stage 1

understand Consumer Needs and Motivations



to help meet their intrinsic needs.11 Third, after garnering sufficient member par-ticipation, managers can sustain customer engagement by motivating members to work cooperatively with one another and the firm.12

Consistent with the notion that a firm-sponsored community requires proactive management, our framework emphasizes the role of firms in extrin-sically facilitating needs fulfillment and influencing member behavior. Yet it also acknowledges the role of intrinsic moti-vations in initially stimulating customer engagement. In doing so, our framework suggests that managers can leverage a technology-based resource, such as a vir-tual community, to motivate customers to respond in ways that create value for their firms.13 Thus, we also identify three inter-connected sources of value that emerge from a firm’s effort to foster and sustain member engagement in virtual communi-ties: participatory value, relational value, and financial value. We specify the domain of each source of value and also encourage managers to consider each source of value, as well as their intercon-nectedness, as they plan to launch or reinvigorate community-based, strategic initiatives.

Background

“Engagement is like love—everyone agrees it’s a good thing, but everyone has a different definition of what it is.”—Jeffrey Graham, executive director, The New York Times14

From a cognitive perspective, engagement is a positive state of mind that is characterized by high energy, commitment, and loyalty toward a firm. From a behavioral perspective, engagement refers to actions toward a firm that go beyond transactions. Such actions are motivated by both cognitive and emo-tional forces.15

We embrace the inclusive, behavioral definition of engagement and define engagement as a class of behaviors that reflects community members’ demonstrated willingness to participate and cooperate with others in a way that creates value for themselves and for others—including the community spon-sor.16 This definition not only reflects the behavior of members toward the spon-sor, but also acknowledges that engagement with a sponsor is intertwined with members’ intrinsic needs.

In a virtual community, members’ intrinsic needs often are embedded in their relationships with fellow community members who share a collective admiration for a particular firm and its brands. Within these so-called brand communities, members share a “consciousness of kind” and sense of belonging,

Constance Elise Porter is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame.

Naveen Donthu is the Katherine S. Bernhardt Research Professor of Marketing and Department Chair, Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University.

William H. MacElroy is the Chairman of Socratic Technologies, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Donna Wydra is the Senior Vice President of U.S. Shopper & Retail for Ipsos Marketing in Chicago, Illinois.



as well as a sense of shared social identity, traditions, and moral responsibility that obligates them to help individual members and the community as a whole. Although these communities can emerge around any brand, new or mature, they are more likely to form around mature brands that have built a strong image, over time, with consumers.17 During the brand-maturation process, members begin to understand how their social identity aligns with those of other like-minded consumers who admire the brand, which can motivate them to par-ticipate in a virtual community sponsored by the firm that created the brand.18

So, while our framework provides ample guidance to managers of any firm, we illustrate the usefulness of our framework by examining a diverse set of firms with mature brands. Each firm has built a strong image with consumers and shares a communal heritage with them (see Appendix 1 for a listing of firms included in our study). These firms represent an exemplary set of firms from which managers can glean meaningful insight, but we acknowledge that manag-ers of firms with new or emerging brands might find it more practical to leverage other types of social media platforms to support early-stage promotional goals (e.g., Twitter) rather than relational goals, which are the focus of firms with mature brands that are ripe for the birth of a brand community.19

engagement in Virtual Communities: a Framework

We present a three-stage process that managers can follow to successfully foster and sustain engagement via firm-sponsored virtual communities (see Fig-ure 2). Our research effort focused on revealing efforts associated with Stage 2 (Promote Participation) and Stage 3 (Motivate Cooperation) of the three-stage process for engaging in firm-sponsored virtual communities (see Figure 2). How-ever, the efforts of these stages are intertwined with the requirement that man-agers understand how such efforts help consumers satisfy intrinsic needs that form the core of their motivations to engage with firms. Therefore, we briefly review the literature that supports Stage 1 (Understand Consumer Needs and Motivations) as the foundation for the remainder of our framework.

Stage 1: Understand Consumer Needs and Motivations

Engagement is a situated consumption phenomenon that is best under-stood and achieved when viewed through the dual lens of consumer needs fulfillment and motivation. Fulfilling social and psychological needs motivates consumers to engage in a variety of social media platforms, including virtual communities. Social processes trigger members of virtual communities to share a consciousness of kind, such that they: perceive significant overlap between their personal identity and that of other community members; view themselves as a valued member of the community; and feel a general sense of belonging to the community. For example, social capital emerges to facilitate a member’s desire to help other members, particularly in the form of information sharing. Psychological processes also trigger members’ needs that can be fulfilled within a virtual community. For example, some members have a need for approval



or status from participation in the community. Others have a need for fun or enjoyment.20 The social and psychological aspects of members’ needs and their motivations to fulfill such needs are consistent with the notion that community members work to achieve both functional (e.g., information seeking, informa-tion contribution) and communal (e.g., helping others) goals.21

In summary, consumers participate in virtual communities to meet social and psychological needs categorized as follows22:

b Information: Virtual community members find value in a community that provides access to information that helps them solve problems and make decisions.

b Relationship Building: Virtual community members strive to build produc-tive relationships by interacting with others within a community.

b Social Identity/Self-Expression: Virtual community members want to achieve self-awareness that they are members of the community and are grati-fied by the emotional and cognitive connection with the community as a whole, as well as their ability to express such connection.

b Helping Others: Virtual community members find value by helping others within a community, especially those with whom they have a personal connection.

b Enjoyment: Virtual community members want to achieve flow states when interacting with others and to have control over their experiences within a community.

b Status/Influence: Virtual community members seek status and influence among others within a community.

b Belonging: Virtual community members desire a sense of attachment to a community as a whole, and they are gratified by having their contribu-tions to the community respected by others.

Thus, our framework is rooted in the notion that customer engagement is motivated intrinsically, based on the value created when community sponsors help members meet their needs with their virtual community. However, differ-ent community members will try to fulfill different needs at different times. In this way, value-based motivations for participation, as a foundation for customer engagement, is “idiosyncratic, experiential, contextual, and meaning-laden,” depending on an individual member’s needs.23 Thus, managers should target their efforts appropriately according to the different needs of community mem-bers to accelerate and amplify engagement with their firms’ community.

Stage 2: Promote Participation

Although intrinsic needs fulfillment motivates consumers to participate in virtual communities, what extrinsic factors might do so? This question is of utmost importance because the reluctance of members to contribute is a primary cause of community failure24 and providing additional motivation could help sustain the life of the community and set the stage for consumers to reciprocate in kind to a firm that facilitates needs fulfillment through participation.



Thus, Stage 2 focuses on the role of a sponsor in promoting participation in a virtual community, as an extrinsic motivation for consumer participation (see Figure 2). Our findings suggest that three sponsor efforts are effective in promoting participation: encouraging content creation; cultivating connections among members and between members and community as a whole; and creat-ing enjoyable experiences. Each of these efforts to promote participation aligns with the psychological and social needs of members and, in doing so, could fos-ter engagement among community members.

Encourage Members to Contribute High-Quality Content

Proactively encouraging members to contribute content, rather than assuming that such contributions will arise organically, is essential to helping a virtual community thrive with participation. However, stimulating contribu-tions is often difficult. How can sponsors overcome this challenge? In the first stage of the engagement process, managers must determine the extent to which sharing valuable information with others meets intrinsic needs of members and motivates them to participate in the community.25 Confidence in their ability to provide valuable knowledge and the enjoyment derived from helping others, as well as the reputation-building effects received from their knowledgeable con-tributions, motivate members to participate by contributing high-quality content and, in doing so, help them fulfill intrinsic needs (e.g., need to help others, need for status/influence).

After identifying information-based needs that are intrinsically motiva-tional for member participation, in Stage 2, sponsors should focus on encourag-ing members to contribute information that is accurate, timely, and relevant to the community.26 For example, a sponsor can establish a process in which members can rank or tag favored content and make this content easy to locate. A sponsor also can initiate discussion-based events on topics that are relevant to members’ interests (e.g., webinars) or invite members to join or lead such dis-cussions by encouraging and enabling member-driven blogs.

Computer maker Dell provides a quintessential example of such sponsor-ship efforts. On the homepage of its community website, Dell organizes content by the type of social media platform on which the content resides (e.g., blogs, support forums) and by the topic of discussion (e.g., support forums focused on desktop products, laptop products, or gaming products). The firm entices members to join discussions by providing easy access to the most recent blog posts and threads from active discussion forums. Dell also takes a more direct approach in an area of its community called “Be Heard.” In this area, members are invited to provide feedback on products or services in the form of a rating or review.

Nowhere is high-quality information more critical than in the media industry, in which several firms have launched virtual communities to support their publications. Technology Review, publisher of the world’s most preemi-nent technology magazine, is a prime example. The firm incorporates several features that help members easily find high-quality information archived in the



community. For example, on the community’s homepage, the firm displays vis-ible links to blog entries with the most views or most comments and encourages members to comment on their favorite blog posts. As Kathleen Kennedy, Tech-nology Review’s chief strategy officer, said in our interview:

“We are giving individuals tools that let them contribute to the community in an active rather than passive way. . . . Encouraging members to actively contrib-ute and manage content in this way contributes to our overall goal to increase engagement.”

Cultivate Connections Among Members

Interaction is at the heart of every virtual community, as it often facili-tates a member’s need to learn and/or solve problems. Virtual communities that facilitate interactive learning and relationship building among consumers are known as peer-to-peer problem-solving (P3) communities.27 In these com-munities, social capital often emerges as the glue that connects members to the community as a whole and motivates them to help others voluntarily—even strangers. What explains members’ willingness to help others with whom they have weak relational ties?

Common identity theory suggests that people can feel a sense of attach-ment to an entire community and feel a sense of shared purpose with com-munity members, even in the absence of personal relationships with individual members.28 In such circumstances, members often help others out of a sense of duty to the community as a whole.29 Thus, members’ intrinsic need to help oth-ers, as well as social capital–based trust that often emerges among community members, motivates them to contribute high-quality information to any mem-ber of the community.30

By enabling members to interact while solving problems, firms can make social identification (an intrinsic need) salient to members of P3 communities,31 particularly when such interactive support takes place in the form of storytell-ing. Storytelling represents problem solving in situ32 and, in P3 communities, not only fulfils social identification needs for both the information giver and the receiver, but also contributes to a shared understanding of tacit, community-based knowledge that would be inaccessible in other commonly used reposito-ries of explicit community-based knowledge (e.g., “frequently asked questions” pre-posted by a community sponsor). The ability to access a story-based reposi-tory of dynamic community wisdom often leads an information seeker to greater insight into his or her specific circumstance than would be possible from static, explicit information commonly posted by a sponsor.33

Intuit, provider of personal financial management products and services such as Quicken and TurboTax, sponsors P3 communities in which such mem-ber-to-member interaction, storytelling, and, ultimately, problem solving take place. Within its community, members often ask a specific question, in the form of a personal story or situation. For example, a Live Quicken community mem-ber (online screen name: “BBPhrog”) contextualized his or her question using the self-titled sections “Problem & Background” and “Question”:



Problem & Background: From 1% to 3% of my transactions do not download. I have used Quicken with my Windows based PCs for many years. I am now using Q2011 Home & Business. With older versions of Quicken, (pre-2010), there were relatively frequent download communications failures or errors, but when the downloads were successful, it was very rare that a transaction was missed. I am now finding that one or two transactions a month, of all types, but most frequently deposits, are missed. So, if I don’t reconcile for several months, I typi-cally find three to five transactions that were never downloaded. I have seen this most consistently with Chase bank and credit card accounts and with Schwab bank accounts. I have not examined the other accounts with the same detail, but expect I might see it elsewhere too (other brokerage, credit card, and bank accounts). I have not seen it with American Express credit card accounts or Van-guard accounts, but I don’t have as many transactions in those accounts. Other than missing mostly deposits, there does not seem to be any obvious pattern. The missing transactions are not “matching” with older transactions. They simply don’t download. They are in the Financial Institution’s records, but never make it to Quicken. They occur when I enter transactions manually, and then look to match downloads with the pre-entered transactions, or when I do not enter them manually and rely on the system to keep my register up to date.

Question: Is there any approach I can use to “reset” or adjust my download pro-cess and/or configuration settings that would be expected to provide a more consistent, reliable download of transactions? I see hundreds of messages with similar problems. So this is obviously not just me. Is Quicken working to resolve this issue (probably a combination of many different issues)? I find this lack of reliability a troubling downgrade to a program that is supposed to be improving with time. I guess I should be happy. With all of the different institutions, with many disparate systems and databases, it is amazing that it works at all. But when finances are concerned, a 1% error rate is not acceptable. So what is supposed to relieve me of clerical burden is now increasing the burden, by requiring me to check manually for what the system misses. Not good.

Thank you to any and all with information on a solution to this problem.

When a member’s problem is solved, he or she might never interact with or receive help from those particular members again; however, despite the lack of deep, personal connections between people, many members are motivated to help others solve problems because of their shared identity (e.g., identity as a Quicken user) with the community as a whole.

Cultivating connections among P3 community members not only evokes a member’s general sense of shared identity with community members, but also creates opportunities for personal bonding between individual community mem-bers.34 Thus, a sponsor can encourage participation through content creation by helping members express personal identities that facilitate individual relation-ship building. The growing number of people using social networking websites to create and share personal profiles presents a unique and significant opportu-nity to enrich personal bonding within virtual communities using similar profil-ing features.

For example, Reader’s Digest Association (RDA) sponsors the largest vir-tual community of cooking enthusiasts, allrecipes.com. As a sponsor, the firm



facilitates relationship building among its members by encouraging them to cre-ate a personal cook’s profile (e.g., biographical information, current photo, inter-ests/hobbies) and to identify “Cooks I Like” (fellow members of the community). Such profile-based bonding not only cultivates connections among community members, but also motivates members to contribute content that others might find useful or interesting.35 In that community, Paula, an expert cook from Olive Branch, Mississippi, shares her favorite recipes (with photos), family cooking traditions, and favorite cooks.

Furthermore, sponsors that encourage members to form small groups that focus on specific interests offer so-called fractal depth within a virtual com-munity.36 In doing so, they foster engagement through participation that is motivated by members’ interests in learning and sharing information about their experiences related to a particular topic. These small, niche-oriented groups are conceptually similar to Fournier and Lee’s notion of a “sewing circle” and enable members to differentiate socially according to their unique interests.37 Small-group formation facilitates relational bonding among members and, in turn, motivates them to contribute content that helps others with whom they iden-tify uniquely. For example, RDA enables members of the allrecipes.com com-munity to affiliate with fellow cooks located in a particular geographic region of the world, and it cultivates regional connections and identification by intro-ducing each location-based group with a profile of regional cooking traditions. The description that introduces cooks from the Southern European region is as follows:

Southern Europe straddles the Mediterranean Sea from Portugal to Greece. What American cooks call the Mediterranean Diet (and Southern Europeans just call dinner) centers around fresh fruits and vegetables, limited amounts of meat, abundant seafood, olive oil as the primary cooking fat, and wine enjoyed in mod-eration. The Mediterranean diet is considered among the healthiest in the world. In the 16th century, the Spanish and Portuguese were instrumental in exchang-ing foods all over the world, inspiring not only the development of their own cuisines, but also the cuisines of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The ubiquitous tomato, the corn that makes polenta and Portuguese corn bread, the hot chiles that make the Portuguese seasoning oil piri-piri, the potatoes in Spanish tortillas or Italian gnocchi, these ingredients originated in the New World. Over time, they were seamlessly incorporated into regional European cuisines

Jones Soda Company (Jones Soda) took a different approach to creating fractal depth. Rather than focus on creating subgroups within its community, this multimillion-dollar manufacturer of premium soda discovered that its com-munity members already were connected with members of other virtual com-munities that focused on interests other than Jones Soda. So, the firm decided to cultivate those valued, preexisting, cross-community relationships. For example, through a formal partnership, the firm encouraged members of the Dark Horse Comics community to create custom bottle labels that reflect their interests in specific comic characters (e.g., The Goon, Emily the Strange), but to do so while visiting the Jones Soda community.



“Subcommunities sustain the overall community. When we link our community to relevant subcommunities we sustain engagement via freshness and customiza-tion of content to our members’ preferences. . . . When a customer buys a 12-pack of custom-labeled soda, they drink 9 and save 3. This solidifies their membership in a nostalgia-based collectors’ subcommunity within the larger Jones Soda com-munity.”—Joth Ricci, former president and CEO, Jones Soda Co.

Since linking with the Dark Horse Comics subcommunity, Jones Soda has partnered with other relevant subcommunities, such as the Dungeons & Drag-ons community, for which it produced a limited edition custom label.

Although many firms often find themselves managing communities of communities, few are proactively linking subcommunities. This linking can play an important role in the customer engagement process. The value of linking sub-communities goes beyond simply encouraging participation and cultivating con-nections, as the sponsor of the allrecipes.com community suggested:

“Expanding channels for members to contribute to the community goes beyond interaction and chat in that some of these additional channels for member contri-bution will provide different types of validation for the member.”—Michael Gratz, former director, Marketing Intelligence Group, RDA

By acknowledging the importance of these pre-established relational con-nections and harnessing shared interests appropriately across the subcommuni-ties, a sponsor can advance the engagement process by fulfilling members’ needs to validate their social identity. Ultimately, as Jones Soda’s recent connection with the Dungeons & Dragons subcommunity reveals, appropriately leveraging subcommunities can create new avenues for value creation through innovative product/service offerings that emerge as a direct result of cultivating connections across relevant subcommunities.

The power of linking subcommunities to cultivate connections applies not only to cross-brand/cross-firm communities, but also to cross-channel communi-cations within a single firm-sponsored community. Take communities that meet both online and offline, for example. Face-to-face interaction (i.e., offline com-munication) promotes participation in the virtual community environment.

Why does cross-channel interaction encourage participation beyond efforts to do so in a single channel? First, social presence theory suggests that expanding the domain of interaction across offline and online spaces deepens relational ties between members and ignites their desire to continue offline con-versations within the virtual community. Indeed, rich, face-to-face interaction increases the salience of relational ties and emotional bonding among mem-bers.38 Second, facilitating offline member interaction motivates members to contribute high-quality content and to abstain from free-riding behavior. Free riding occurs when virtual community members try to benefit from the contri-butions of members without returning valuable contributions to the community. Because relational ties are strengthened among members who interact both online and offline, members are motivated to help others with whom they are relationally connected and, in turn, these members choose to meet their needs



for relationship, status, and/or influence within the community by sharing expertise rather than merely free riding on the contributions of others.39

Technology Review has learned the power of integrating online and offline interaction among community members. The firm sponsors annual, geographically based, physically co-located conferences in which technology and business leaders gather to discuss new technologies. At the conclusion of the conferences, the firm often invites attendees to continue conference-based discussions within its community (e.g., blogs). Adding to the breadth of relation-ship building among members, the firm also allows members to contribute job postings for technology professionals in a dedicated “Career Resources” area of the community.

Create Enjoyable Experiences for Members

Research shows that when people experience flow—a psychological state of having fun as well as feeling absorbed, gratified, and in control over one’s experience—they develop favorable attitudes toward the firm that provides such an experience. This is especially true when the experience is highly relevant to a member’s interests.40 In a virtual community, then, an enjoyable, flow-based experience is one that is perceived as gratifying both utilitarian (e.g., learning) and hedonic (e.g., fun, adventure) needs.

For example, RDA’s allrecipes.com community provides a variety of enjoyable experiences to engage its broad-based membership. Under the “Fun and Games” section, the firm offers the DinnerSpinner—a free application that allows members to access the community with an iPhone product. For an iPhone user, controlling interaction with the allrecipies.com community through the use of a preferred access device creates an enjoyable experience and moti-vates increased interaction and participation. Recently, the firm developed a similar application to integrate the iPad product with its community.

Likewise, Technology Review recently decided to redesign its community around tech-savvy members’ needs for interaction through the iPad. In a recent press release, the company announced that it would integrate the iPad plat-form, along with the existing platforms (e.g., iPhone, iPad Touch, and Android-enabled devices), to help its “dynamic online community” take advantage of the interactive features of its blog- and video-based community content.

A sponsor also can offer a flow-based, enjoyable experience simply by giv-ing members the ability to customize their experiences within the community. For example, allrecipes.com members who prefer to focus on the storage and exchange of recipes can take advantage of free membership to the community and avoid the cost and complexity associated with a “Supporting Membership.” The latter is a paid, subscription-based membership level that offers tech-savvy members, presumably with greater needs for self-expression, the ability to add graphics to printed recipes, customize recipes, create a personal blog, and cre-ate a custom URL on which they can display a detailed “Cook’s Profile.” Such customization helps members meet their needs not only for enjoyment, but also



for learning and self-expression, both of which motivate participation in virtual communities.41

Stage 3: Motivate Cooperation

The third stage of the engagement process focuses on the role of a spon-sor in motivating cooperation from its members (see Figure 2), which enables members not only to meet specific needs (e.g., status, influence), but also to co-create value with the community sponsor. To clarify, in the first two stages of the framework, intrinsic and extrinsic factors motivate consumers to participate in virtual communities to meet their own needs. In Stage 3, firms can extrinsi-cally motivate consumers to meet their needs and, at the same time, intertwine these needs with their desire to create value for themselves and for the commu-nity sponsor. The stakes of doing so are high in terms of a firm’s efforts to engage customers.

Our research suggests that members are motivated to cooperate with a sponsoring firm when they believe that the sponsor has attempted to embed and empower them through the community. What do we mean by embed and empower?

In a group setting, an embedded member feels such a high sense of attachment and fit with the group that he or she would perceive leaving the group as triggering negative emotions.42 Previous research shows that in a vir-tual community, sponsors often attempt to embed members by giving them exclusive access to certain information and privileges that nonmembers can-not enjoy, which in turn leads members to exhibit engagement behaviors, such as willingness to cooperate in new product development and stay loyal to the firm.43 These efforts not only help members fulfill a need for status, but also increase their perceived emotional risk of defecting from the community. At the extreme, embedded members consider themselves organizational insid-ers and often speak as “quasi employees” of the sponsoring firm. They feel a responsibility to help the community survive by taking proactive steps to sustain community culture and govern community activities. For example, they often communicate the culture of the community to newcomers by sharing commu-nity-based stories since newcomers find it difficult to access such tacit informa-tion that is embedded in the fabric of the community experience.44 They also often accept leadership positions, as appointed by the community members. As one community member stated:

“[The community sponsor] never censored my comments. Sometimes I did not say very positive things about them and it was fine. The only thing that was cen-sored was profanity and vulgarity but that too was only done by our self-elected community monitors.”—anonymous member of an online community sponsored by a technology firm

Thus, embedded members offer support and advice regarding not only products and service offerings, but also community policies and practices.45

Finally, people who are embedded in organizations possess the compas-sionate sensibilities of an insider and the judicious mind-set of an outsider,



which in combination create conditions that are ripe for successful community-based innovation. Participating in such efforts helps both members and the com-munity sponsors. Members fulfill a need for belongingness, status, and influence within the community, and sponsors get a vital link to the external environment that bolsters their sense-making, problem-solving, coproduction, and innovation capabilities via the community.46

Even if a sponsor is successful in fostering a sense of embeddedness among members, it still must transform them into empowered members if it hopes to motivate sustained levels of engagement through cooperation. Embed-ded members feel a sense of obligation to support a community sponsor that provides them value, but empowered members believe that their acts of support have real influence with the sponsor. So, while embeddedness is about one’s moral obligation to the community,47 empowerment is about enacting one’s duty successfully to create outcomes that help the community sponsor and, at the same time, reinforce the meaning of the community to members. Further-more, empowered members are gratified not only by the opportunity to have an impact, but also by their sense of freedom and access to sponsor-provided resources that enable them to make an impact.48

Community sponsors can create the supportive conditions necessary to help members feel a sense of empowerment by giving them the ability to: con-nect with and actively influence the firm by participating in decision-making processes; and connect with and collaborate among other members, making contributions as they see fit. This democratic approach to empowerment, in which consumers believe that they have a voice and a chance to shape their marketplace options, tends to occur in the context of information-rich, virtual environments, in which firm-controlled design elements can influence the empowerment of consumers.49 Indeed, by sharing ideas, opinions, and decision-making input with the firm, as well as being unencumbered by policies that impede cooperative behaviors, empowered members are motivated and free to co-create value with the sponsoring firm.50

Our findings suggest that three efforts are effective in motivating coopera-tion through a sponsor’s efforts that embed and empower virtual community members: mobilizing member leaders, inspiring ideas from members, and polling members for strategic insights. We provide examples of how each of these efforts motivates cooperation, thereby fostering and sustaining engagement, by helping members fulfill a variety of psychological and social needs.

Mobilize Member Leaders

Giving members status and the opportunity to influence company poli-cies and practices is at the core of Jones Soda’s successful business strategy. More than a decade ago, management decided to convert customers into brand ambassadors by letting them recreate the brand for themselves. As part of this effort, the firm chose six to eight teenagers to compose the Jones Youth Advi-sory Board (JYAB) to serve as advisors to the Jones Soda board of directors. Members of the JYAB have extensive profiles posted in the community.



Embeddedness and empowerment are reflected clearly in comments of the JYAB members. When asked why they joined the JYAB, two members said the following, as posted on the community website:

“By accepting this opportunity, I wish to develop the future of the company. I want to shape the future of Jones in a method that will promote the further development and expansion of the company.”

“[I want to] slay the proverbial dragon and help figure out how to best tweak Jones Soda’s current marketing and outreach strategies to better reach young people.”

In its early years, the JYAB met periodically with directors at Jones Soda to provide input into the firm’s marketing and consumer outreach practices. Later on, this group of über-brand ambassadors extended both its reach and impact on Jones Soda and fellow community members. Rather than merely post static profiles in the community and periodically meet face-to-face with the board of directors, the JYAB increased the breadth and depth of its engagement with the board and the community at large by leveraging real-time, interactive technologies that facilitate dynamic communication and collaborative processes, such as social networking, crowdsourcing, and idea generation, within the com-munity. By mobilizing this group, management recognized the interconnect-edness of the levers required to foster engagement by motivating cooperation among community members.

Embeddedness and empowerment at Jones Soda extends beyond the JYAB and touches all community members. For example, every member is invited to create an “under-the-cap” fortune quotation or to “create your own label” by submitting a photo, both of which could be featured on bottles actually produced by the firm. Since the program was launched almost a decade ago, the firm has received more than one million photos, which reflects that customers value the ability to personalize the brand.51

“Our ambassadors are engaged and it shows because they take the time to send a photo and send us pre-orders for custom labels that they wanted to reveal to their friends at special occasions.”—Joth Ricci, former president and CEO, Jones Soda Co.

The simple act of designing a label, even if only for others’ consumption, or recommending an under-the-cap quotation provides a venue for community members to influence the firm and its offerings.

Inspire Ideas from Members

“Got an idea?” This is the central question that drives engagement among members of Starbucks’s virtual community. In March 2008, the premier roaster and retailer of specialty coffee launched a virtual community that represents embeddedness and empowerment at its best. In the popular My Starbucks Idea community, members are invited to share their ideas, and Starbucks employees introduce themselves to members by offering extensive personal profiles. Dur-ing one of our visits to the community, we were introduced to Megan (online



screen name: “sbx_mdro”), one of many Starbucks Idea Partners. She provided the following profile that provides both professional and personal preference information:

sbx_mdro Megan works with food scientists on the Research & Development team designing and developing our food and beverages at Starbucks. She also works with bakeries to bake up tasty treats and supports consumer testing to get feed-back on our products. Favorite Food: Petite Vanilla Bean Scone to go with her usual non-fat, no whip, light foam Mocha

Megan and other Starbucks employees post photos as they introduce themselves and, in an effort to empower members, provide updates on ideas submitted by community members. On March 19, 2009, an employee (online screen name: “sbx_bean”) posted the following:

sbx_bean My Starbucks Idea celebrates its one-year anniversary today. You have shared over 70,000 ideas. In the first year 94 ideas have been put into action and 25 of those have launched including—Instant Coffee, Venti Travel Cup, and Bring Back Tea Lattes. Your ideas have inspired us to think of relevant and creative ways to enhance our Rewards programs—including free Wi-Fi and a birthday beverage. Since we launched 12 months ago the site has added some new features like the ability to vote down an idea and consolidate repeat ideas—ideas that you submit-ted early on. Currently there are 56 ideas under review and 10 are coming soon. Look for launch announcements later this spring. Some exciting things are on the way in the Starbucks Card, Food, and Other Experience Ideas categories. [My Starbucks Idea] is about a community collaborating and telling us which ideas are important to you. Thanks for keeping the community vibrant and ideas brew-ing. Keep the ideas coming. What idea should we launch next? Tell us. It could happen.

Starbucks empowers employees by enabling them to develop relation-ships with consumers through blogs, which in turn can empower customers. Some of these employee-customer relationships grow over time; for example, sbx_bean has posted several follow-ups to communicate with customers.

Dell’s IdeaStorm area of its virtual community is another example of embeddedness and empowerment in action. From the leading banner posted in the community, “IdeaStorm: Dream It. Share It. Make an Impact,” to the promi-nent invitations to view the ideas of others, post one’s own ideas about Dell products and services, vote on the quality of ideas, and see how the commu-nity’s ideas have been put into action, it is obvious that Dell wants to empower its members by motivating them to make an impact by offering valuable ideas. In addition, management makes the following statement on Dell’s community website (under the “About IdeaStorm” tab), to reinforce the firm’s intentions in sponsoring the community:

IdeaStorm was created to give a direct voice to our customers and an avenue to have online “brainstorm” sessions to allow you the customer to share ideas and collaborate with one another and Dell. Our goal through IdeaStorm is to hear what new products or services you’d like to see Dell develop. We hope this site fosters a candid and robust conversation about your ideas.



Dell empowers members by keeping them informed of the status of each idea under submission (e.g., reviewed, in progress, partially implemented, implemented) and offering “IdeaStorm Updates” to keep the community informed about recent changes that reflect members’ suggestions. It also fulfills the status needs of members by highlighting the 20 “Top Idea Contributors” and posting key statistics such as the number of ideas submitted or implemented.

Yet empowerment is not only about a firm’s efforts toward its customers. Real empowerment is reflected when members feel a sense of empowerment— a psychological feeling that results from the efforts of an organization toward its members.52 When such an outcome occurs, it can help to retain valuable com-munity members. Indeed, we interviewed a member of a community sponsored by technology firm who stated the following:

“The only reason I have stayed in this community so long is that the firm makes me feel I belong here and my input matters.”—anonymous member of an online community sponsored by a technology firm

To create engagement through empowerment, it is critical that commu-nity sponsors recognize members’ contributions and assure members that their voices have been heard and appreciated.53 What happens when care is not taken to embed and empower members appropriately? Members begin to feel ignored, angry, and disempowered. Rather than add value through advocacy of the firm, they often become a “Madvocate”—a consumer who engages in negative word of mouth about a firm with which he or she previously had a strong and loyal relationship.54 For example, on March 30, 2011, when one member (online screen name: “winoffice”) believed that the most popular idea at the Dell IdeaSt-orm community had not been heard, he or she posted a complaint that was promoted by more than 300 fellow members:

“It’s quite clear that Dell hasn’t got the message of the most frequently posted ideas here (implementation of USB 3.0, staying away from 16:9 aspect ratios).”

“Dell, the idea, as before, is that you’re not really ‘acknowledging’ our ideas. That needs to change, for your own benefit.”

Thus, giving top contributors special status and informing every member who contributes whether and how his or her idea might be acted on by man-agement encourages them to return to the community, participate, and engage. However, in terms of inspiring ideas from community members, “One lesson is clear, hell hath no fury like a champion scorned.”55

Poll a Panel of Members

Virtual research communities, or online panels, have become increasingly popular and successful, mostly because sponsors of these communities embed and empower members by giving them exclusive opportunities to participate in important research they conduct. These invitation-only memberships often are extended to a sponsor’s most loyal customers. By communicating exactly how they have used member feedback to improve firm results and deliver increased



value back to customers, sponsors foster trust with and empower members. As one executive we interviewed suggested:

“If you have trust and a strong relationship with members, you can move away from a mercenary, pay-per-complete model [of survey rewards] and you can deliver a reward every so often, which lowers our overall costs”—Jason Archam-bault, former director, Consumer Insights, Red Lobster

The importance of trust was corroborated during an interview held with a member of a different community, who shared the following insights:

“I am happy to provide feedback and act as an advocate for [the community spon-sor]. I have participated in many online focus groups and surveys. I am loyal to this company because of what they do in the online community. My wife would never do it, as she does not trust them. Trust is big thing for her. I trust them so I do all these things. I am happy to do it.”—anonymous member of an online com-munity sponsored by an auto manufacturer

Trust is important, but managers at fast-food restaurant Chick-fil-A also identified that giving customers a sense of status is a critical ingredient to moti-vate cooperation. The company invited a small subset of customers to join its Champions Panel. The name itself—Champions—gives special status to members of this invitation-only community. As one of the firm’s executives described:

“Champions are the most enthusiastic customers of the chain and the outcomes we’re focused on are getting fast, thoughtful and useful information . . . and building an emotional connection with them.”—Kelly Hunter, senior marketing analyst, Customer Insights, Chick-fil-A

Because the Champions panel represents some of Chick-fil-A’s most loyal customers, management has confidence in the quality of their feedback. So far, the Champions panel has delivered actionable results. Management involved these members in the development and testing of new menu boards and, from their feedback, rolled out reconfigured, redesigned menu boards. The menu board’s success has led the firm to ask the panel to participate in other projects focused on creating new products and developing new advertising campaigns.

Likewise, Red Lobster restaurant sponsors a VIP panel composed of its most enthusiastic customers, and the results have been successful. With the help of the VIPs, the firm’s executives conducted a study to determine which of sev-eral preparation styles would be most appealing to guests. The wood-fire grilled style was the overwhelmingly popular choice among the VIPs. On the basis of their recommendations, management installed wood grills in each restaurant, and this preparation style was added to the firm’s core menu. To date, the wood-fire grilled offering represents the largest systematic menu change in Red Lobster history. Through this type of effort and involvement, VIPs understand that their voices are heard by management and that they can significantly influence the nature of Red Lobster’s business.

Remarkably, few sponsors offer only cash incentives to motivate members to participate in community-based research projects. As one sponsor suggested:



“We avoid cash incentives and instead give our Champions branded merchandise that is appropriate or gift cards.”—Kelly Hunter, senior marketing analyst, Cus-tomer Insights, Chick-fil-A

Research shows that cash incentives are the least effective incentive to motivate participation in virtual research communities.56 For deeply embedded members, payment might be considered insulting and akin to paying a family member for much-needed and appreciated advice. Instead, sponsors create a sense of belonging and exclusivity—by offering specialty, branded, and exclusive “thank-you” gifts to members. As another executive suggested:

“Community members should feel that they were one of only very few who were invited to be a part of the community. One way to help build exclusivity is to deliver exclusive, branded trinkets as rewards.”—Jason Archambault, former director, Consumer Insights, Red Lobster

Exclusivity is inextricably tied to the sense of embeddedness and empow-erment that sponsors often create by helping members fulfill their needs to socially identify with the brand and be recognized for the impact of their contri-butions. As one executive suggested:

“People coming to the community have a reason to be there. Recognizing this and feeding it is very important. . . . We strive to maintain the bonds to the brand that members have by keeping as many community activities branded as possible. . . . In my experience, anything providing a sense of positive recognition is worth pursuing. We always look for new ways for community members to make a con-tribution and achieve a sense of recognition.”—Michael Gratz, former director, Marketing Intelligence Group, RDA

What happens when firms’ efforts to embed and empower members by focusing on member exclusivity backfire? As one member of an online commu-nity indicated:

“I left [the community]. . . . The sponsor of my community was making me feel that I should be obliged that they allow me to be part of the community. . . . [The community sponsor] said that we have to be ‘qualified’ to join and stay in the community. It was like they will fire me if I do not ‘qualify.’”—anonymous mem-ber of an online community sponsored by a consumer packaged goods firm

assessing the Value of engagement in Virtual Communities

Fostering and sustaining engagement among community members takes considerable effort. So, a manager who wants to gain internal support for a virtual community initiative must make a clear connection between member engagement and the value the firm expects to achieve from the investment.57 Some engagement behaviors create short-term financial benefits, such as repeat purchasing and cross-buying, and others create value for firms in the future, such as a customer’s willingness to: participate in referral programs; influ-ence new or existing customers in a way that reduces defections or increases share of wallet; and offer feedback to a community sponsor on the design and



development of new products or services. 58 Indeed, while many researchers have explored the financial value of managing customer relationships, oth-ers have recognized that emotional and behavioral manifestations of customer engagement should not be overlooked.59 As one community sponsor noted:

“We’re not looking for a direct financial outcome from this community; . . . we are trying to build positive customer relationships. This is why even though our Champions have let us know that they would like to have the option of having Chick-fil-A on Sundays, our closure on Sundays reflects values they agree with and those values are the foundations of our relationships with them.”—Kelly Hunter, senior marketing analyst, Customer Insights, Chick-fil-A

Consistent with this line of reasoning, we find three major, intercon-nected sources of value that emerge through member engagement in virtual communities: participatory, relational, and financial.

Participatory value is the benefit associated with a sponsor’s efforts to promote participation in a virtual community, and it forms a platform for both relational and financial value. Consistent with our framework, assessing partici-patory value requires that a manager identify and track metrics associated with encouraging content creation, cultivating connections, and creating entertain-ing experiences. For example, tracking metrics that enable the creation of an interaction profile for each member (or summary metrics across the member-ship base) would indicate whether a sponsor has created a sufficient platform for achieving sustained levels of engagement. Such an interaction profile should include member-level metrics, such as the frequency and duration of each visit to the community and the frequency of a member’s efforts to contribute, receive, and/or discuss information. In addition, the percentage of members who create personal profiles or the size of members’ personal social networks within the community could signal whether a sponsor has cultivated connections suf-ficiently among members.60 As one community sponsor indicated, participatory value and financial value are interconnected:

“The success of our community is homegrown. Our success is organic. Authentic. We’ve invested no marketing for it. We offer no personal cash incentives. We see the success in 90,000 loyal members, 800,000 unique monthly visits, repeat visi-tors and increased monthly page views per visit. All of this helps drive more ad impressions and click-through rates that drive additional revenue.”—Kathleen Kennedy, chief strategy officer, Technology Review

Relational value is the benefit associated with efforts to motivate coopera-tion from virtual community members, which leads to sustained levels of mem-ber engagement. In other words, a manager should assess whether community members are willing to go beyond merely participating in the community and, because of feelings of embeddedness and empowerment, cooperate and co-create value with the sponsoring firm. Research shows that efforts to embed and empower members foster trust, satisfaction, and relational benefits to firms, such as consumer willingness to collaborate in developing new products and services, spread positive word of mouth about a sponsoring firm, and give opinion-based feedback to firms.61 These behaviors represent acts of reciprocity on the part of



members who are grateful for the efforts that a sponsor has put forth to help them fulfill their needs within the community.

Managers should track two types of measures of relational value. First, a manager should track measures associated directly with embeddedness and empowerment, such as members’ willingness to take on leadership roles in the community (e.g., Jones Soda’s JYAB), participate in marketing research projects (e.g., Chick-fil-A’s Champions Panel, Red Lobster’s VIP Panel), and voluntarily contribute ideas to help improve the firm’s offerings. Many industry sources indicate that customers submitted more than 75,000 ideas to My Starbucks Idea within the first six months of the firm’s launch of its virtual community.

Second, given the importance of attitudes in driving cooperative behav-ior, managers should regularly assess members’ self-reported attitudes toward their firm—namely, trust and satisfaction. Such attitudes often are based on the actions of the firm, acting as a community sponsor. For example, Dell invites members to offer feedback on how it should prioritize future improvements to the community website in areas such as website navigation, user interface, con-tent, and aesthetic appeal of the community environment.

Ultimately, participatory and relational values pave the way for firms to extract financial value from a virtual community. A major source of financial value is the sale of products, content, and advertising placements, as well as the so-called synergistic value associated with cost reductions facilitated by the efforts of participating members.62 We find that firms are creating financial value from each of these revenue streams.

“Our online communities contribute to incremental ad sales revenues and which enhances the value of the brand.”—Michael Gratz, former director, Marketing Intelligence Group, RDA

Consistent with the notion of linking the financial value of a virtual com-munity with brand value, Jones Soda drives members to an area labeled “My Jones Store.” From this web page, a community member can buy beverages as well as clothing, candy, and accessories that range from shoelaces to calendars—all bearing the Jones Soda brand logos and trademarks.

Technology Review’s virtual community extracts financial value not only from subscription-related revenue, but also from efforts to encourage members to make other types of purchases:

“Our community is leveraged for up-selling and cross-selling capabilities. For example, we enable members to register for future tech-related conferences and offer them products such as conference-related videos. It’s a targeted effort that often leads not only to revenue growth, but also cost savings.”—Kathleen Ken-nedy, chief strategy officer, Technology Review

In this way, financial value can be expanded when a sponsor has fostered sufficient levels of member engagement, because members seek opportunities to transact with trusted sponsors that have delivered needs-fulfilling experiences consistently. Indeed, trust is essential to driving value from customers through virtual communities.63 Without it, members could interpret attempts to extract



revenue from the community as opportunistic behavior on the part of the sponsor.

“Our community members know that we are trying to drive ad revenue, but we walk a fine line on this as we carefully manage our conversational tone when interacting with them. It’s a constant dance, needing constant adjustment. We don’t want to disturb the trusting relationship that community members have with our brand.”—(Michael Gratz, former director, Marketing Intelligence Group, RDA

RDA provides an example of how participatory and relational values serve as a platform for financial value in firm-sponsored virtual communities. First, the participatory value of reader contributions gives rise to financial value by reducing editorial costs. Second, providing an opportunity for members to exchange personal and inspirational stories cultivates member-to-member con-nections and bonds members with RDA, as members reciprocate the firm’s effort to facilitate such need-fulfilling experiences. These efforts not only drive rela-tional value, such as a member’s willingness to participate in firm-sponsored sur-veys, but also create financial value by motivating members to renew magazine subscriptions because of their enhanced attachment to RDA.

In addition, RDA creates financial value from its virtual communities through relationships with external stakeholders—namely, advertisers that are interested in reaching out to members of RDA’s virtual community. For example, RDA’s community members participated in a study that helped RDA reveal the most effective elements of an ad created by an automobile manufacturer. The results of the test were so successful that the auto manufacturer went on to complete a five-month integrated advertising campaign, and RDA was able to generate additional advertising revenue when the manufacturer decided to place ads across various RDA website properties. The relational value evidenced by the willingness of community members to cooperate in such a study enabled RDA to create financial value (i.e., ad revenue) and ultimately helped RDA build a prof-itable, ongoing relationship with its advertising partner. In addition, RDA was able to help its partner increase the efficiency and effectiveness of its advertising campaigns. Conducting the test study outside RDA’s virtual community environ-ment (e.g., through a traditional online research panel), with an equivalent sam-ple size, would have required a significantly higher investment. Instead, RDA’s community members cooperated in the study without requiring individual-level compensation.

Contributions

Managers know engagement when they see it: when members partici-pate and cooperate within the virtual community and go the extra mile to cre-ate value for themselves and for the firm. Our framework serves as a blueprint to guide managers on how to make engagement happen—namely, by under-standing consumer motivations for participation, promoting participation, and motivating cooperation. Within these broad directives, we specify efforts that



community sponsors can take to contribute to the goal of fostering and sustain-ing engagement.

Rather than supplant existing theory regarding the drivers of customer engagement in virtual communities, our findings complement and extend this theory. As suggested previously, we chose to leverage the richness of qualita-tive data to understand the complexities of the customer engagement process in virtual communities, which in turn enabled us to compare our findings with those of previous research and create a deeper theoretical platform to be used as a basis for future research of this important phenomenon. In this way, our theoretical contributions lie in the realm of theory building—situated between grounded theory and large-scale theory-testing on a research-orientation con-tinuum.

Consistent with the theory-building nature of our research effort, from a theoretical perspective, our framework makes two major contributions. First, although previous researchers have discussed the concept of engagement, most conceptualized engagement by focusing on only one of the two important sets of antecedent variables: intrinsic motivations or extrinsic factors (e.g., a commu-nity sponsor’s efforts). People might be intrinsically motivated to engage, but our framework reveals how the judicious, targeted efforts of a community sponsor work to encourage members to act in ways that create greater value for them-selves and for the firm. Our framework not only acknowledges the importance of both sets of antecedents of customer engagement in virtual communities—closing a theoretical gap in existing literature—but also illuminates the symbi-otic nature of these sets of variables. In doing so, our findings encourage future researchers to refine our work by undertaking large-scale studies that provide robust theoretical explanations of how these two sets of antecedent variables might interact to influence customer engagement in virtual communities.

Second, although other researchers have explored the importance of embeddedness in virtual communities, we contend that both embeddedness and empowerment are essential to driving cooperative, engaging behavior from community members. We conceptualize embeddedness as resulting in a willing-ness to act in value-creating ways toward a community sponsor. Importantly, via our framework, we also suggest that empowerment leads members to act effec-tively on their willingness to create value. In other words, our framework sug-gests that embeddedness is a necessary but insufficient condition to bring about cooperation-based engagement. Although empowerment is not a new concept, our framework gives credence to its importance and relevance as it is adapted to the virtual community domain. This theoretical contribution is important espe-cially because virtual communities are emerging as a social media platform of great interest for both academicians and practitioners. Future researchers should explore further the dual roles of embeddedness and empowerment on the cus-tomer engagement process.

From a managerial perspective, although countless pages of the business press are filled with general “best practices” for successfully managing a virtual



community, we go beyond merely describing high-level steps in the engagement process. We offer a cogent set of actionable behaviors, in a theoretically and empirically based framework, to guide managers in achieving customer engage-ment. Therefore, we offer a framework that is both academically sound and practically relevant. We avoid offering simplistic advice and, instead, help man-agers understand the “whys” behind the “whats” of our recommendations. Our research objective was exploratory, rather than confirmatory; thus, although our framework might not specify every sponsor effort that might engage consumers in a virtual community, we identify theoretically based, empirically grounded, and substantively useful efforts for managers to consider.

Our findings should be useful to firms operating in a variety of indus-tries, including retailing, consumer packaged goods, health care, financial ser-vices, hospitality, and media/information services. Many of these firms already have invested in establishing processes to help identify, understand, and deliver customer needs at the core of engagement. The best-of-breed exhibit a high level of interaction orientation that facilitates the gathering, sharing, and use of customer intelligence within the firm for the benefit of both the firm and the community.64 Thus, our framework is a natural extension of the strategic and operational goals of customer-centric firms that want to create value from inter-active relationships with customers.

Firms with strong technology resources, which compete in high-tech product markets, also are well positioned to leverage our ideas. These firms often have mature processes for gathering, sharing, and using market-based informa-tion to support high levels of innovation in both the products and services they market and the way they leverage technology to build relationships with cus-tomers. Given the technical savvy of employees at such firms, managers in the high-tech industry will understand readily the importance of leveraging technol-ogy-based marketing strategies to foster and sustain customer engagement.

Although customer-initiated virtual communities can emerge organically, our findings suggest that engagement in firm-sponsored virtual communities will not. Our framework is built on the concept of “guided organic growth” and suggests that engagement must be carefully cultivated by a sponsor that under-stands the needs of its community members.65 Over time, by facilitating such member needs, a community sponsor builds trust with and creates value for its members.

We also urge managers to consider the various potential forms of value and the interconnectedness of the value propositions as they plan community-based initiatives and attempt to gain support from a variety of stakeholders. Managers need to “bring the right people together, provide an infrastructure in which communities can thrive, and measure the communities’ value in nontra-ditional ways. These tasks of cultivation aren’t easy, but the harvest they yield makes them well worth the effort.”66 Using our framework as a guidepost, man-agers should be better prepared to create rather than destroy value for commu-nity sponsors.



aPPeNdix 1 Methodology

During a six-year period, we employed a multimethod approach to collect and analyze quantitative and qualitative data to achieve our research objective. Data collection occurred in two phases, with each phase focused on a primary objective. In Phase 1, our objective was to identify the primary efforts of a spon-soring firm that foster engagement through a virtual community, from a con-sumer perspective. In Phase 2, our objective was to understand the phenomenon from a managerial perspective. Taken together, the findings enabled us to gain deep insights into both consumers’ and managers’ perspectives of engagement in virtual communities.

Although findings from Phase 1 guided the design of our data collection in Phase 2, in this article, we report our findings only from Phase 2, which pri-marily drove the development of the engagement framework we present. Thus, we briefly describe the details of the methodology deployed in Phase 1 and pro-vide robust details regarding the methodology used in Phase 2.

Phase 1In Phase 1, we examined the extent to which a community sponsor’s

efforts influence consumers’ willingness to act in ways that signify behavioral engagement. We collected quantitative, survey-based data from more than 650 members of 60 different firm-sponsored communities. Findings from this phase enabled us to achieve external validity of a theoretical model that explains the drivers of customer engagement behavior through virtual communities, includ-ing a willingness to share personal information, cooperate in new product devel-opment, and become loyal to a community sponsor. Our analysis revealed that a sponsor’s efforts to provide access to quality content, encourage consumer-to-consumer interaction, and foster member embeddedness were essential to build trust with members and, in turn, motivate them to act in value-creating ways toward their community sponsor. These findings prompted us to initiate a sec-ond phase of data collection.

Phase 2Objectives—In Phase 2, we aimed to gain deeper insight into the process

of customer engagement and gain such insight from the perspective of managers whose firms serve as community sponsors, rather than from the perspective of consumers who we surveyed in Phase 1. Although many scholars have exam-ined virtual communities from a consumer perspective, few have done so from a managerial perspective. Thus, we believed that an exploratory, insight-driven approach to understanding the engagement process, from the managerial per-spective, was appropriate and most contributory to previous scholarly work. Therefore, our intention in conducting this study is to provide a platform for future confirmatory research that might test the generalizability and all inclu-siveness of the framework.

Specifically, in Phase 2, our objectives were to explore which efforts of a community sponsor might motivate engagement among community members



and how such efforts might both provide value to members and facilitate value creation through customer engagement behavior for the community sponsor. As such, we wanted to ask and answer the descriptive “what” and “how” questions rather than the confirmatory “whether” and “to what extent” types of questions explored in Phase 1. Thus, we used qualitative methods and data in Phase 2, in stark contrast with the quantitative methods and data used in Phase 1.

Sampling Plan—Our sampling frame and data collection methods aligned with our overall exploratory, rather than confirmatory, research objectives. Specifically, we examined a purposive sample of eight virtual communities, sponsored by firms with moderate to strong brand awareness, which is consis-tent with the types of firms around which brand communities typically form (see Table A1). We selected a purposive sample of virtual community sponsors, based on differences in industry, industry category, and type of offering.67

In addition, we developed our purposive sample to reflect firms/commu-nities that are exemplary of sponsor efforts that foster and sustain engagement among members. The majority of the communities and/or the sponsoring firms

Company(Community Name, if different from company name) industry

industry Category(Media vs. Nonmedia)

type of Offering(Product vs. Service)

Brand awareness

Jones soda Co. (Jones Soda Online Community)

Consumer Packaged Goods

Nonmedia Product Moderate

Reader’s digest Association (allrecipes.com)

Publishing Media Product strong

Technology Review (TR Community, including blogs and video sharing)

Publishing Media Product Moderate

dell (Dell Community, which includes support forums, blogs and IdeaStorm)

Consumer Electronics (Hardware)

Nonmedia Product strong

Intuit (Live Quicken)

Consumer Electronics (Software)

Nonmedia Product strong

starbucks (My Starbucks Idea)

Food & beverage (Casual Fast Food)

Nonmedia service strong

Chick-fil-A (Champions Panel)

Food & beverage (Casual Fast Food)


Red Lobster (VIP Panel)

Food & beverage (Casual Dining)


taBle a1.



that constitute our sample have received awards/recognition for their commu-nity design, functionality, and so forth.

The diversity of our sample enabled us to achieve internal validity of vari-ous elements of our framework, which is appropriate given that our research goals in Phase 2 were interpretive, contextual, and process oriented in nature.68

Data Collection and Analysis—We used four methods and sources of data to provide insights that we triangulated with the data obtained from execu-tive interviews. First, we conducted semi-structured interviews with executives and managers at firms that manage virtual communities for customers. Second, because interview data are best supplemented by observations conducted in a naturalistic setting,69 we used a naturalistic observation method to understand member and sponsor behavior within a variety of virtual communities, includ-ing communities sponsored by well-known firms, such as Dell, Starbucks, and Intuit. Third, we analyzed secondary data obtained from a variety of professional and academic sources; such additional literature often can provide support for a constructed interpretation of qualitative data that interview subjects cannot usu-ally provide.70 Fourth, as a final validity check, we interviewed actual members of virtual communities by asking open-ended questions that we content-ana-lyzed using methods consistent with those suggested by qualitative researchers in sociology and marketing.

Validity Checks of Executive Interview Data—Validity obtained through semi-structured interviews is a common concern among researchers, and we took three key steps, as recommended by previous researchers, to assess and/or reduce threats to validity. First, we iteratively triangulated data obtained through different data, researchers, and methods.71 Second, we used member checks (i.e., follow-up interviews) as a validity check, and contextualization strategy is recommended during data collection through interviews.72 Third, we attempted to identify negative cases in two ways. Given the outcomes of multiple validity checks outlined previously, we find evidence that lends support to the internal validity of the framework.

aPPeNdix 2 executive interview Protocol

1. Can you provide a specific example of a successful virtual community that you manage on behalf of your firm? Please give the name of the firm and the product and/or brand focus of the community.

a) What are the various outcomes (financial and nonfinancial) by which you measure success of this virtual community?

b) Have your efforts related to content, interaction, and/or embedded-ness influenced successful outcomes in this virtual community?

c) What other factors do you think might drive success in your virtual community?

2. What specific efforts do you undertake in order to increase embeddedness among the members of your virtual community? Can you provide robust



examples of how the presence of embeddedness has resulted in your abil-ity to reach successful outcomes in this virtual community?

3. Have you experienced the failure of a virtual community?

a) Please give the name of the firm and the product and/or brand focus of the community.

b) What specific factors do you feel led to the failure of your community?

c) Do you feel that the lack of embeddedness contributed to the failure of the virtual community?

d) What other factors do you think contributed to the failure of the virtual community?

Notes

1. Kelly Hlavinka and Jim Sullivan, “Urban Legends: Word-of-Mouth Myths, Madvocates and Champions,” Colloquy (March 2011), pp. 1-14.

2. Patrick Barwise and Seán Meehan, “The One Thing You Must Get Right When Building a Brand,” Harvard Business Review, 88/12 (December 2010): 80-84.

3. Sean Corcoran, “Benchmarking Social Marketing Plans for 2011,”Forrester Research Report, October 14, 2010, accessed October 17, 2010, available at <www.forrester.com/rb/Research>.

4. Barwise and Meehan, op. cit.; J. Ricci, interview with authors, September 18, 2009. 5. Gartner Inc., “Gartner Says More Than 60 Percent of Fortune 1000 Companies With a Web

Site Will Connect to or Host a Form of Online Community by 2010,” press release, October 2, 2008, accessed October 19, 2010, available at <www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=770914>.

6. Deloitte Development LLC, “2009 Tribalization of Business Study Highlights Flipbook,” Slide 21, October 5, 2009, accessed April 22, 2011, available at <www.deloitte.com/us/2009tribalizationstudy>.

7. Etienne Wenger, “Knowledge Management as a Doughnut: Shaping Your Knowledge Strat-egy Through Communities of Practice,” Ivey Business Journal, 68/3 (January/February 2004): 1-8.

8. René Algesheimer, Utpal M. Dholakia, and Andreas Herrmann, “The Social Influence of Brand Community: Evidence from European Car Clubs,” Journal of Marketing, 69/3 (July 2005): 19-34; James H. McAlexander, John W. Schouten, and Harold F. Koenig, “Build-ing Brand Community,” Journal of Marketing, 66/1 (January 2002): 38-54; Albert M. Muniz Jr. and Thomas O’Guinn, “Brand Community,” Journal of Consumer Research, 27/4 (March 2001): 412-432.

9. Richard P. Bagozzi and Utpal M. Dholakia, “Antecedents and Purchase Consequences of Customer Participation in Small Group Brand Communities,” International Journal of Research in Marketing, 23/1 (March 2006): 45-61.

10. Constance E. Porter and Naveen Donthu, “Cultivating Trust and Harvesting Value in Virtual Communities,” Management Science, 54/1 (January 2008): 113-128.

11. John Dimmick, Yan Chen, and Zhan Li, “Competition Between the Internet and Traditional News Media: The Gratification-Opportunities Niche Dimension,” Journal of Media Econom-ics, 17/1 (2004): 19-33; Andrew J. Flanagin and Miriam J. Metzger, “Internet Use in the Contemporary Media Environment,” Human Communication Research, 27/1 (January 2001): 153-81; Hanjun Ko, Chang-Hoan Cho, and Marilyn S. Roberts, “Internet Uses and Gratifica-tions,” Journal of Advertising, 34/2 (Summer 2005): 57-70; Richard P. Bagozzi and Utpal M. Dholakia, “Intentional Social Action in Virtual Communities,” Journal of Interactive Marketing, 16/2 (Spring 2002): 2-21.

12. Algesheimer, Dholakia, and Herrmann, op. cit.; Jenny van Doorn, Katherine N. Lemon, Vikas Mittal, Stephan Nass, Doreén Pick, Peter Pirner, and Peter C. Verhoef, “Customer Engagement Behavior: Theoretical Foundations and Research Directions,” Journal of Service Research, 13/3 (August 2010): 253-266.



13. Rob Cross, Tim Laseter, Andrew Parker, and Guillermo Velasquez, “Using Social Network Analysis to Improve Communities of Practice,” California Management Review, 49/1 (Fall 2006): 32-60; Jonathon R.B. Halbesleben and Anthony R. Wheeler, “The Relative Roles of Engagement and Embeddedness in Predicting Job Performance and Intention to Leave,” Work & Stress, 22/3 (September 2008): 242-256; Adrian F. Payne, Kaj Storbacka, and Pennie Frow, “Managing the Co-Creation of Value,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 36/1 (Spring 2008): 83-96.

14. Sarah Rottman Epps, “What Engagement Means for Media Companies,” Forrester Research Report, citing Jeffrey Graham, March 2, 2009, accessed April 22, 2011, available at <www.dynamiclogic.com/na/research/whitepapers/docs/Forrester_March2009.pdf>.

15. Halbesleben and Wheeler, op. cit.; Van Doorn, Lemon, Mittal, Nass, Pick, Pirner, and Ver-hoef, op. cit.

16. Algesheimer, Dholakia, and Herrmann, op. cit.; Van Doorn, Lemon, Mittal, Nass, Pick, Pirner, and Verhoef, op. cit.

17. Muniz and O’Guinn, op. cit.18. Bagozzi and Dholakia (2006), op. cit.19. Eleonora Di Maria and Vladi Finotto, “Communities of Consumption and Made in Italy,”

Industry and Innovation, 15/2 (2008): 179-197.20. Bagozzi and Dholakia (2006), op. cit.; Atreyi Kankanhalli, Bernard C.Y. Tan, and Kwok-Kee

Wei, “Contributing Knowledge to Electronic Knowledge Repositories: An Empirical Investi-gation,” MIS Quarterly, 29/1 (March 2005): 113-143; Muniz and O’Guinn, op. cit.

21. Bagozzi and Dholakia (2006), op. cit.; Bagozzi and Dholakia (2002), op. cit.; Johann Füller, Gregor Jawecki, and Hans Mühlbacher, “Innovation Creation by Online Basketball Commu-nities,” Journal of Business Research, 60/1 (January 2007): 60-71; Kankanhalli, Tan, and Wei, op. cit.

22. Utpal M. Dholakia, Richard P. Bagozzi, and Lisa K. Pearo, “A Social Influence Model of Con-sumer Participation in Network- and Small-Group-Based Virtual Communities,” International Journal of Research in Marketing, 21/3 (September 2004): 241-63; Robert V. Kozinets, “The Field Behind the Screen: Using Netnography for Marketing Research in Online Communi-ties,” Journal of Marketing Research, 39/1 (February 2002): 61-72; Satish Nambisan and Rob-ert A. Baron, “Virtual Customer Environments: Testing a Model of Voluntary Participation in Value Co-Creation Activities,” Journal of Product Innovation Management, 26/4 (July 2009): 388-406.

23. Stephen L. Vargo and Robert F. Lusch, “Service-Dominant Logic: Continuing the Evolution,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 36/1 (Spring 2008): 1-10.

24. Kankanhalli, Tan, and Wei, op. cit.25. Patrick J. Bateman, Peter H. Gray, and Brian S. Butler, “The Impact of Community Commit-

ment on Participation in Online Communities,” Information Systems Research (forthcoming 2011); Adam M. Grant, “Relational Job Design and the Motivation to Make a Prosocial Dif-ference,” Academy of Management Review, 32/2 (April 2007): 393-417; Nambisan and Baron, op. cit.

26. Kankanhalli, Tan, and Wei, op. cit.; Porter and Donthu, op. cit.; Wenger, op. cit.27. Charla Mathwick, Caroline Wiertz, and Ko De Ruyter, “Social Capital Production in a Virtual

P3 Community,” Journal of Consumer Research, 34/6 (April 2008): 832-849.28. Roy F. Baumeister and Kristin Sommer, “What Do Men Want? Gender Differences and Two

Spheres of Belongingness: Comment on Cross and Madson,” Psychological Bulletin, 122/1 (1997): 38-44; Yuqing Ren, Robert E. Kraut, and Sara Kiesler, “Applying Common Identity and Bond Theory to Design of Online Communities,” Organizational Studies, 28/3 (2007): 377-408.

29. Utpal M. Dholakia, Vera Blazevic, Caroline Wiertz, and René Algesheimer, “Communal Ser-vice Delivery: How Customers Benefit from Participation in Firm-Hosted Virtual P3 Commu-nities,” Journal of Service Research, 12/2 (2009): 208-226; Mathwick, Wiertz, and De Ruyter, op. cit.; Muniz and O’Guinn, op. cit.

30. Kankanhalli, Tan, and Wei, op. cit.; Muniz and O’Guinn, op. cit.31. Algesheimer, Dholakia, and Herrmann, op. cit.32. Wenger, op. cit.33. John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, “Organizational Learning and Communities-of-Practice:

Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation,” Organization Science, 2/1 (February 1991): 40-57.



34. Baumeister and Sommer, op. cit.; Dholakia, Blazevic, Wiertz, and Algesheimer, op. cit.; Ren, Kraut, and Kiesler, op. cit.

35. Meng Ma and Ritu Agarwal, “Through a Glass Darkly: Information Technology Design, Identity Verification, and Knowledge Contribution in Online Communities,” Information Systems Research, 18/1 (March 2007): 42-67.

36. John Hagel, “Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities,” Journal of Inter-active Marketing, 13/1 (Winter 1999): 55-65.

37. Susan Fournier and Laura Lee, “Getting Brand Communities Right,” Harvard Business Review, 87/4 (April 2009): 105-111.

38. John Short, Ederyn Williams, and Bruce Christie, The Social Psychology of Telecommunication (London: John Wiley & Sons, 1976).

39. Uwe Matzat, “Reducing Problems of Sociability in Online Communities: Integrating Online Communication with Offline Interaction,” American Behavioral Scientist, 53/8 (2010): 1170-1193; Nambisan and Baron, op. cit.

40. Charla Mathwick and Edward Rigdon, “Play, Flow, and the Online Search Experience,” Journal of Consumer Research, 31/2 (September 2004): 324-32; Liz C. Wang, Julie Baker, Judy A. Wagner, and Kirk Wakefield, “Can a Retail Web Site Be Social?” Journal of Marketing, 71/3 (July 2007): 143-157.

41. Algesheimer, Dholakia, and Herrmann, op. cit.; Hope Jensen Schau and Mary C. Gilly, “We Are What We Post? Self-Presentation in Personal Web Space,” Journal of Consumer Research, 30/3 (December 2003): 385-404.

42. Craig D. Crossley, Rebecca J. Bennett, Steve M. Jex, and Jennifer L. Burnfield, “Develop-ment of a Global Measure of Job Embeddedness and Integration into a Traditional Model of Voluntary Turnover,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 92/4 (July 2007): 1031-1042; Rajdeep Grewal and Rebecca J. Slotegraaf, “Embeddedness of Organizational Capabilities,” Decision Sciences, 38/3 (August 2007): 451-488; Halbesleben and Wheeler, op. cit.; Carlos M. Mallol, Brooks C. Holtom, and Thomas W. Lee, “Job Embeddedness in a Culturally Diverse Environ-ment,” Journal of Business & Psychology, 22/1 (Fall 2007): 35-44.

43. Porter and Donthu, op. cit.44. Manju K. Ahuja and John E. Galvin, “Socialization in Virtual Groups,” Journal of Manage-

ment, 29/2 (April 2003): 161-185; Brown and Duguid, op. cit.45. Bateman, Gray, and Butler, op. cit.; Dholakia, Blazevic, Wiertz, and Algesheimer, op. cit.46. Brown and Duguid, op. cit.; Richard L. Daft and Karl. E. Weick, “Toward a Model of Organi-

zations as Interpretation Systems,” Academy of Management Review, 9/2 (April 1984): 284-295; Wenger, op. cit.; Etienne C. Wenger and William M. Snyder, “Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier,” Harvard Business Review, 78/1 (January/February 2000): 139-145.

47. Muniz and O’Guinn, op. cit.48. Gretchen M. Spreitzer, “Psychological Empowerment in the Workplace: Dimensions, Mea-

surement and Validation,” Academy of Management Journal, 38/5 (October 1995): 1442-1465.49. Tina Harrison, Kathryn Waite, and Gary L. Hunter, “The Internet, Information and Empow-

erment,” European Journal of Marketing, 40/9-10 (2006): 972-993.50. Michael Ahearne, John Mathieu, and Adam Rapp, “To Empower or Not Empower Your

Sales Force? An Empirical Examination of the Influence of Leadership Empowerment Behavior on Customer Satisfaction and Performance,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 90/5 (2005): 945-955; Girish Ramani and V. Kumar, “Interaction Orientation and Firm Perfor-mance,” Journal of Marketing, 72/1 (January 2008): 27-45; Xiaomeng Zhang and Kathryn M. Bartol, “Linking Empowering Leadership and Employee Creativity: The Influence of Psycho-logical Empowerment, Intrinsic Motivation, and Creative Process Engagement,” Academy of Management Journal, 53/1 (February 2010): 107-128.

51. Hope Jensen Schau, Albert M. Muñiz Jr., and Eric J. Arnould, “How Brand Community Practices Create Value,” Journal of Marketing, 73/5 (September 2009): 30-51.

52. Ahearne, Mathieu, and Rapp, op. cit.; Ramani and Kumar, op. cit.; Spreitzer, op. cit.; Zhang and Bartol, op. cit.

53. Lars Bo Jeppesen and Lars Frederiksen, “Why Do Users Contribute to Firm-Hosted User Communities? The Case of Computer-Controlled Music Instruments,” Organization Science, 17/1 (January/February 2006): 45-63; Wenger, op. cit.

54. Hlavinka and Sullivan, op. cit.55. Hlavinka and Sullivan, op. cit.56. Terry Daugherty, Wei-Na Lee, Harsha Gangadharbatla, Kihan Kim, and Sounthaly Outha-

vong, “Organizational Virtual Communities: Exploring Motivations Behind Online Panel



Participation,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, accessed April 22, 2011, available at <http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue4/daugherty.html>.

57. Cross, Laseter, Parker, and Velasquez, op. cit.58. V. Kumar, Lerzan Aksoy, Bas Donkers, Rajkumar Venkatesan, Thorsten Wiesel, and

Sebastian Tillmanns, “Undervalued or Overvalued Customers: Capturing Total Customer Engagement Value,” Journal of Service Research, 13/3 (August 2010): 297-310; S. Nambisan, “Designing Virtual Customer Environments for New Product Development: Toward a The-ory,” Academy of Management Review, 27/3 (July 2002): 392-413.

59. Van Doorn, Lemon, Mittal, Nass, Pick, Pirner, and Verhoef, op. cit.; Peter C. Verhoef, Werner J. Reinartz, and Manfred Krafft, “Customer Engagement as a New Perspective in Customer Management,” Journal of Service Research, 13/3 (August 2010): 247-252.

60. Kristine de Valck, Gerrit H. Bruggen, and Berend Wierenga, “Virtual Communities: A Mar-keting Perspective,” Decision Support Systems, 47/3 (June 2009): 185-203; Kumar, Aksoy, Donkers, Venkatesan, Wiesel, and Tillmanns, op. cit.

61. Ramani and Kumar, op. cit.; Porter and Donthu, op. cit.62. Arthur G. Armstrong and John Hagel III, “Real Profits from Virtual Communities,” The

McKinsey Quarterly, 3 (1995): 127-141.63. Porter and Donthu, op. cit.64. Ramani and Kumar, op. cit.65. Hagel, op. cit.66. Wenger and Snyder, op. cit.67. Muniz and O’Guinn, op. cit.; John W. Schouten and James H. McAlexander, “Subcultures of

Consumption: An Ethnography of the New Bikers,” Journal of Consumer Research, 22/1 (June 1995): 43-61.

68. Joseph Maxwell, “Designing a Qualitative Study,” in L. Bickman and D. Rog, eds., Handbook of Applied Social Research Methods (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998).

69. Maxwell, op. cit., pp. 69-100; Melanie Wallendorf and Russell W. Belk, “Assessing Trustwor-thiness in Naturalistic Consumer Research,” Interpretive Consumer Research, Association for Consumer Research, 1989, pp. 69-84.

70. Russell W. Belk, Melanie Wallendorf, John F. Sherry Jr., Morris Holbrook, and Scott Roberts, “Collectors and Collecting,” in Michael Houston, ed., Advances in Consumer Research, vol. 15 (Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, 1988); Russell W. Belk, “Art Versus Science as Ways of Generating Knowledge About Materialism,” in Richard Lutz and David Brinberg, eds., Methodological Perspectives in Consumer Research (New York, NY: Springer Verlag, 1986); Melanie Wallendorf, “Consumption Symbolism in Women’s Private Spaces: Findings from Fiction, Photos and Fact,” presentation made at Popular Culture Association meetings, New Orleans, LA, March 1988.

71. Maxwell, op. cit.; Russell Belk, Melanie Wallendorf, and John Sherry, “The Sacred and the Profane in Consumer Behavior: Theodicy on the Odyssey,” Journal of Consumer Research, 16/1 (June 1989): 1-38.

72. Elizabeth C. Hirschman, “Humanistic Inquiry in Marketing Research: Philosophy, Method, and Criteria,” Journal of Marketing Research, 23/3 (August 1986): 237-249.

article 6

Documents