Exploring sustained participation in firm-hosted communities in China: the effects of social capital and active degree

Investigating Sustained Participation in Open Design Community in China: The Antecedents of User Loyalty

“…A three-step method is conducted to implement the open design projects [3]: First, Xiaomi launched ODCs (i.e., Xiaomi Forum and MIUI Forum) to establish and strengthen relationships with customers. The operators have put great efforts (e.g., respond to their complaints properly, solve users' problems effectively, organize offline events) into developing stable relationships with users; and they try to transform users into fans of the brand [21]. Since the brand advocators can only use the spare time to participate in the online activities (some of the users just spend 30 min to an hour per day to interact with other members and contribute information in the ODC), Xiaomi needs a large number of fans to launch their innovation projects.…”

“…In order to reduce capital outlay, risk, and develop commercially valuable products, more and more companies launched their own online platforms to implement open innovation strategy [21]. There are two main options for enterprises to involve users in NPD projects: They may initiate an innovation contest platform or they can launch a firm-hosted open design community (ODC) [22].…”

“…The latter is developed based on online community, which encourages members to contribute contents and interact with others; within such communities, companies disclose the design-related issues they face via posts, and motivate external experts or users to contribute (via post text, images, and videos in forum) to solve these predefined design challenges [22,[25][26][27]. For instance, P and G and LEGO have initiated online innovation contest platforms to acquire new designs/ideas; and Local Motors, Sony, and Ducati have launched ODCs to settle technical problems [21,22]. Nevertheless, a great number of enterprises did not create value from those ODCs [21].…”

“…For instance, P and G and LEGO have initiated online innovation contest platforms to acquire new designs/ideas; and Local Motors, Sony, and Ducati have launched ODCs to settle technical problems [21,22]. Nevertheless, a great number of enterprises did not create value from those ODCs [21]. Scholars suggested that the lack of individuals' sustained participation was the key reason for this result [28].…”

“…Xiaomi is a mobile Internet company focused on designing and manufacturing smartphones; it was founded in 2010 and has a market value of more than $30 billion today. The ODC (i.e., Xiaomi Forum) is one of the core competitiveness of Xiaomi Corporation, the forum has around 45 million registered users and over 65 percent of them are members with high degree of loyalty; Figure 1 shows the user interface of Xiaomi Forum [21]. With a legion of brand advocators (i.e., brand fans), Xiaomi gains plenty of valuable ideas and designs, which assist it to design cost-effective products [30,31].…”