Co-evolving E-tail and On-Line Communities: Conceptual Framework

Abstract

This paper explores the problem of designing a Web site that meets the needs of both an evolving community and an evolving business. It reports a case study of a business that introduced an e-tail site and an associated on-line community. The site development used an existing community-centered development method. The study found that participants had different motivations for visiting the site-some only wanted product information and purchase, some were seeking social support and information, others sought a more intense experience and greater social involvement. Failure to recognize the separate needs of these clusters resulted in not fully achieving business-and community-building goals. The analysis of the relationship between Web site design, cluster needs, and business goals offers a conceptual framework for co-evolving community and business.KEY WORDS AND PHRASES: Case study, e-business, e-commerce, e-tail, iterative design, on-line community.This paper applies an adaptation of the Preece framework for virtual community development to an e-tail scenario based on a case study of an on-line community associated with an e-tailing business [46]. On-line consumer communities built around a company can help build stronger brands, are sources of valuable insights into how customers use their products, and provide inexpensive mechanisms for developing customer relationships [22,23,39,41,53]. Researchers increasingly recognize that to achieve success, an on-line community linked to a business must satisfy social as well as commercial needs [3,7,8,14,35,63]. This brings dual challenges as the community and business co-evolve over time, and the underpinning of on-line systems must be dynamic to account for such changes.An "on-line community" can be defined in terms of a technology platform or as a "web of personal relationships" [37,50,56], but most researchers agree that on-line communities need more than just technology to flourish [49,55,56] and that individual users need encouragement to participate [4,9,31,33]. The need to plan for social interaction has increasingly been recognized and requires a clear understanding of the purpose of the on-line community, identification of the different types of people to be involved, and clear policies for governing the community [16,28,47,56]. Technology should not be The authors gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the UK Department of Trade and Industry for part-funding the project in the context of a Knowledge Transfer Program whose aim is to assist in the transfer of knowledge from universities to small businesses. Downloaded by [University of Exeter] at 23:43 03 August 2015 54 MACAULAY ET AL.

Social commerce—state-of-the-art and future research directions

“…The existing body of knowledge also includes numerous publications related to website design (15 %) (e.g., Arazy et al 2010;Ganley 2011;Gottschlich et al 2013;Li and Buchthal 2012;Macaulay et al 2007;Mackenzie et al 2009;Noh et al 2013;Shi et al 2013;Wang et al 2007;Yue and Jiang 2013;Zhang and Liu 2013;Zhu et al 2010). Social shopping websites (82 %), presentation sites (12 %), and virtual worlds (6 %) were the social media platform types primarily investigated.…”

“…Further publications investigate the effect of interactive social shopping features on website usage or purchase behavior (e.g., Jahng et al 2007;Macaulay et al 2007;Noh et al 2013;Olbrich and Holsing 2011;Wakefield et al 2010;Zhang and Liu 2013). For instance, Olbrich and Holsing (2011) found that the use of tags positively influences click-out behavior to the actual shop to purchase the product, while the use of lists and styles is negatively correlated with click-out behavior.…”

A Design Theory for IT Supporting Online Communities

“…Such theories give explicit prescriptions on how to design and develop an artifact, whether it is a technological product or a managerial intervention [8]. An example of theory in this domain has been provided by Preece who advocates an iterative community-centered development approach to web site design because communities and their needs evolve over time, and web site design must in turn evolve [16] [25]. This model has been extended by Gregor and Jones [7] who have proposed a new "anatomical skeleton" for IS design theories, based on eight components which encompasses four issues identified in the Walls et al…”

“…Moreover, IT systems features available to online community members must be appropriate to the task at hand and must satisfy their needs in terms of ease of use [16]. Therefore the community supporting platform is a critical success factor for community building as well as economic and social aspects.…”

“…As an example, some authors maintain that "sociability" other than usability is a design criteria to ensure that technology can support social interaction [24]. Furthermore, a few studies concentrates on the development process for this type of IT systems through case studies [16][31].…”