Virtual communities - Tourism Marketing - page 522

Table 38.1 Criteria for typologies of virtual communities

Authors Criteria for typologies of virtual communities

Armstrong and Hagel (1995);
Krishnamurthy (2003)

Community's purpose (revenue generation, fulfil consumer needs
for fantasy, interaction or transaction)

Jones and Rafaeli (2000) Social tie strength and public versus private nature of membership/

interaction

Preece (2000); Stanoevska-
Slabeva (2002)

Supporting communication technology design (chat, bulletin
board system or user functional requirements)

Bagozzi and Dholakia (2002) Structure of interaction (small group or network)

Markus (2002) Orientation (social, professional and commercial; and relationship

building or entertainment communities)

Porter (2004) Who established the virtual community (member-initiated or

sponsored by organization) and relationship orientation (social or
professional for member initiated and commercial, non-profit and
government for organization-sponsored)

essential traits as physical communities and the substance that allows for common experience
and meaning among members. However, Bromberg (1996) warned that some online discussion
groups and chat rooms should only be considered as a means of communication among people
with common interests if they are lacking in the personal investment, intimacy and commitment
that characterize the ideal sense of community.
There is no single accepted defi nition of the virtual community. Inevitably, this is the same
for the typologies of VC. Existing typologies of virtual communities proposed by researchers
are based on various criteria as presented in Table 38.1 .
Porter (2004) claimed that the proposed typology is an improvement to existing typologies as
it recognizes that virtual communities can either be established by their members or sponsored
by organizations and that there is the dimension of the relationship orientation of those
communities. This particular dimension of who initiated the VC is crucial for researchers and
marketers if they aim to use virtual communities in fulfi lling business goals and establishing
stronger relationships with customers. For example, communities that were initiated by customers
independent of any company control or association are not necessarily advantageous to an
organization as pointed out by Catterall and Maclaran (2001). Examples of those communities
are Harley Davidson motorcycles, Saab Cars, MacIntosh computers and the Mini car (Schouten
and McAlexander 1995; Muniz and O'Guinn 1998; Pei-ya 2000). A strong brand community
organized by its members can be a threat as they can reject particular marketing activities and
changes to a product and multiply one unsatisfi ed customer to thousands in a nanosecond
(Muniz and O'Guinn 1998).
Another important aspect that fi rms should be familiar with about virtual communities is
their multiple functions to the users. As functions of VCs can fulfi l some needs of the members
in their online activities, this can provide insights to the users' motivations for joining the
community and most probably their continuous use of it. According to Wang et al . (2002), there
are three fundamental needs of the members in their online activities:

1 functional needs;
2 social needs; and
3 psychological needs.