Caroline Wiertz

Social Capital Production in a Virtual P3 Community

The purpose of this study is to examine the relational norms that determine social capital—an intangible resource embedded in and accumulated through a specific social structure. The social structure examined in this study is a virtual community created through text‐based conversations oriented toward peer‐to‐peer problem solving (P3). Empirical results support the conceptualization of social capital as an index composed of the normative influences of voluntarism, reciprocity, and social trust. Membership length was found to moderate the virtual P3 community experience. Qualitative analysis of the community dialogue provides additional support for the characterization of virtual P3 activity as community based.

Beyond the Call of Duty: Why Customers Contribute to Firm-hosted Commercial Online Communities

Firm-hosted commercial online communities, in which customers interact to solve each others service problems, represent a fascinating context to study the motivations of collective action in the form of knowledge contribution to the community. We extend a model of social capital based on Wasko and Faraj (2005) to incorporate and contrast the direct impact of commitment to both the online community and the host firm, as well as reciprocity, on quality and quantity of knowledge contribution. In addition, we examine the moderating influence of three individual attributes that are particularly relevant to the firm-hosted community context: perceived informational value, sportsmanship, and online interaction propensity. We empirically test our framework using self-reported and objective data from 203 members of a firm-hosted technical support community. In addition to several interesting moderating effects, we find that a customers online interaction propensity, commitment to the community, and the informational value s/he perceives in the community are the strongest drivers of knowledge contribution.

Communal Service Delivery: How Customers Benefit From Participation in Firm-Hosted Virtual P3 Communities

Firm-hosted virtual peer-to-peer problem solving (P3) communities offer a low-cost, credible, and effective means of delivering education and ongoing assistance services to customers of complex, frequently evolving products. Building upon the social constructivist view on learning and drawing from literature on the firm-customer relationship in services marketing, we distinguish between functional and social benefits received by P3 community participants and study the central role of learning in influencing these benefit perceptions. The proposed model is tested on data gathered from 2,299 active members of a P3 community hosted by a global online auction firm, and the framework’s generalizability is demonstrated using a sample of 204 members of a global business-to-business (B2B) software firm’s P3 community. Based on the results, specific recommendations are provided to marketers interested in implementing service support programs via customer communities, and future research opportunities are explored.