Joon Koh

Knowledge sharing in virtual communities: an e-business perspective

Abstract Thanks to availability of the Internet, virtual communities are proliferating at an unprecedented rate. In-depth understanding of virtual community dynamics can help us to address critical organizational and information systems issues such as communities-of-practice, virtual collaboration, and knowledge management. In this article, we develop a virtual community activity framework, integrating community knowledge sharing activity into business activities in the form of an e-business model. We examine how the level of community knowledge sharing activity leads to virtual community outcomes and whether such community outcomes are related to loyalty toward the virtual community service provider. Based on a field survey of 77 virtual communities currently operating in Freechal.com , one of Koreas largest Internet community service providers, we found that the level of community knowledge sharing activity is related to virtual community outcomes and such outcomes are significantly associated with loyalty to the virtual community service provider. These results imply that the level of community knowledge sharing activity may be a proper proxy for the state of health of a virtual community. Implications of the findings and future virtual community research directions are discussed.

Sense of Virtual Community: A Conceptual Framework and Empirical Validation

The sense of virtual community is a principal construct in virtual community research. Therefore understanding it in depth is important for studies of communities-of-practice, virtual collaboration, virtual organization, and other critical organizational and information systems issues. This article conceptualizes and operationalizes the sense of virtual community, and validates several of its antecedents. An analysis of 172 members of 44 virtual communities found that the sense of virtual community is affected by the enthusiasm of the communitys leaders, off-line activities available to members, and enjoyability. These characteristics had a stronger impact for members of virtual communities that originated on-line than for those in communities that originated off-line. The implications of the findings and future research directions are discussed.

The Influence of On-Line Brand Community Characteristics on Community Commitment and Brand Loyalty

The relationship between on-line communities and on-line brands is investigated by examining how on-line brand communitys characteristics affect community commitment and brand loyalty-in particular, how the hosting type of an on-line brand community affects the relationships between characteristics and community commitment. A survey of 250 respondents revealed that their community commitment was significantly influenced by their community interaction and the rewards for their activities, but not by information quality and system quality. The analysis shows that the hosting type of a community has a significant moderating effect and that community commitment increases brand loyalty. Interpretations and implications of the findings, as well as future research directions, are discussed.

Investigating the intention to purchase digital items in social networking communities: A customer value perspective

Some social networking community service providers have earned revenue by selling digital items to their community members. We examined SNC member decisions to purchase digital items based on customer value theory. Six factors were extracted from three dimensions of customer value: functional, social, and emotional value. Our findings indicated that the effects of value on member purchase intentions were significant in terms of the emotional and social dimensions. Our results should help SNC providers by improving their sales of digital items.

Individual, social, and organizational contexts for active knowledge sharing in communities of practice

Firms that have implemented knowledge management initiatives are now interested in nurturing voluntary knowledge sharing organizations, called communities of practice (CoPs). Adopting the Triandis model on attitude formation, we identified and validated a set of organizational factors that was anticipated to have effects on knowledge sharing by CoP members such as perceived consequences, affect, social factors and facilitating conditions. One hundred and seventy-nine members from 70 CoPs of a large multinational electronics firm participated in this survey. Based on the PLS analysis, perceived consequences, affect, social factors, and facilitating conditions were found to significantly affect knowledge sharing in CoPs.

The Influence of Online Brand Community Characteristics on Community Commitment and Brand Loyalty

Online community activities are becoming widespread thanks to the expansion of Internet use and the development of information technology. We highlight the importance of online brand, and investigate the relationship between an online community and the online brand. This study examines how online brand community characteristics affect community commitment and brand loyalty and, in particular, how the type of online brand community affects the relationships between the characteristics and community commitment. A survey of 250 respondents revealed that both interaction and reward for the activities significantly influenced the community commitment, while the community commitment was affected by neither information quality nor system quality. The results of analysis also showed that the hosting type of a community has a significant moderating effect and that the community commitment increases brand loyalty. Interpretations and implications of the findings, as well as future research directions, are discussed

Determinants of continuous usage intention in web analytics services

Abstract Web analytics services (WAS) have emerged as a rapidly growing business sector in the context of inter-firm internet transactions. WAS are also, from the client firm’s perspective, considered a form of IT outsourcing. In this paper, we identify factors that may affect the continuous usage intention of a firm that has utilized WAS, and validate empirically the relationships between the identified factors. Using the responses from 152 firms, the results of our regression analysis demonstrated that the client firm’s continuous usage intention was influenced by both satisfaction with the WAS provider and dependence on the WAS provider. In the research model developed and described herein, only information quality among the several quality factors was significantly associated with client firm satisfaction. Relative value, switching cost, service usage period, and satisfaction were all significantly associated with dependence. Furthermore, switching experience moderated the effects of system quality and empathy on satisfaction. A discussion of the study’s implications and some future research directions are also provided.

A contingent approach on knowledge portal design for R&D teams: Relative importance of knowledge portal functionalities

Many research and development (R&D) organizations and teams currently use a specialized knowledge portal (KP) for research collaboration and knowledge management. However, R&D organizations adopt whole portal functionalities without considering their R&D team or the teams task characteristics. The motivation of this study comes from this typical lack of consideration. This study proposes that the degree of importance of specific KP functionalities may be affected by the particular context in which R&D teams handle knowledge. The objectives of this research are to identify functionalities that are relatively important of KPs based on the specific team and the teams task characteristics. This research attempts to provide implications that can be used to design and implement KPs for R&D teams. Based on a field survey with 142 researchers in government-sponsored research organizations in Korea, we found that researchers perceive communication, collaboration, and connection functionalities as being important when their team sizes are large or their team members are distributed. Also, the coordination functionality is more important when the research type relates to commercialization projects than when the team is involved in basic level research projects. We discuss interpretations of the results and implications on KP design.

The Continuous Service Usage Intention in the Web Analytics Services

The World Wide Web (WWW) has continued to grow at very rapid speed in both the sheer volume of traffic and size, complexity of web sites. Web analytics industry also has been growing rapidly. Web analytics is to analyze web log files to discover accessing patterns of web pages. In our work described in this paper, we identify factors which can affect the continuous usage intention of a firm using services in Web Analytics service and empirically validate the relationships between the identified factors. For this purpose, we analyze 174 Korea firms. The analysis results show that the satisfaction is significantly associated with service quality and switching cost and the service usage period is not significantly associated with continuous service usage intention. We measure service quality using SERVQUAL. It turn out that two dimensions of SERVQUAL, reliability and empathy are significantly associated with satisfaction, but another dimension of SERVQUAL, responsibility, is not. Finally, satisfaction is significantly associated with continuous service usage intention.

CONVERGENCE IN INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT) USING PATENT ANALYSIS

Since the 1990s, information and communication technology (ICT) has been perceived as the critical technology for economic development, and the ICT industry itself has been growing exceptionally fast. Moreover, technology convergence in ICT has received particular attention. ICT innovations diffuse into existing products and thus come to form a new integral part of the goods. This is an exploratory research to examine technology convergence of the supply side as a firm level in the ICT sector using International Patent Classification (IPC) of 43,636 sample patents from 1995 to 2008. This study finds a degree of merger and relationships between different technology domains through the association rule mining of patent co-classification. This type of analysis helps companies to take strategies under the environment of technological trajectory change.