Online Communities and Firm Advantages
研究企业参与在线社区如何带来信息、影响力和团结等利益，从而获得竞争优势，并探讨相关的企业策略和属性。
Online communities are an increasingly relevant yet relatively underexamined stakeholder group for firms. I argue that firms may garner distinct competitive advantages from engaging with online communities. Drawing on social capital theory and stakeholder theory, I examine the benefits, tactics, and firm attributes that underlie a positive relationship between firm engagement in an online community and firm performance. In so doing, I develop a theory pertaining to online community advantage, which both accounts for the information, influence, and solidarity benefits that flow to firms from firm engagement in an online community and highlights the firm tactics and attributes associated with the generation of such benefits.