Virtual internet communities and commercial success: individual and community-level theory grounded in the atypical case of TimeZone.com
研究了手表爱好者虚拟社区TimeZone.com，发现成员的线下交流、体验、对网站管理的感知价值、内容及集体知识与其在线交易正相关，并提出了社区特征与商业成功关系的组织层面命题。
One potentially powerful way of organizing in the new Internet world is through the medium of the virtual Internet community. An effectively managed virtual community provides economic gains to the community organizer and to its members. We attempt to build theory grounded in the study of TimeZone.com, a virtual Internet community devoted to wristwatch hobbyists and enthusiasts. We argue that a member’s off-site communication, experience, perceived value of site management, content, and collectively held knowledge are positively associated with a member’s e-based economic transactions within this virtual community. Building on our theorizing attempts at the individual level, we develop propositions at the organizational level that relate characteristics of virtual Internet communities (membership size, scalability, and level of site management) to commercial success.