Looking ahead, we often hear people/marketers/academics even Economists saying 'Welcome to the age of Socioeconomic!' If that doesn't ring any bell, think Facebook! We are now in an era that are socially interconnected in the densely spun web that connects everyone together. We have the power to develop meaningful relationships with businesses, and spread the good, bad and even the ugly about a business to everyone we know. People, not business, has once regain the bargaining power.
The crux of the Virtual Community is to leverage on internet power to recreate that special community that will have people coming together with similar interest to interact and generate meaningful relationships with the business. They will have the power to influence more people and exponentially grow with the business. Therefore it is worthy to invest some time to look into what is Virtual community and its function in Marketing:
I will talk about virtual community in 3 portions: on societal perspective of virtual community & Attributes of virtual community & my thoughts as follow:
Analysis of Virtual Community
Societal perception of virtual community:
In order to evaluate the usefulness of virtual community, we must first look into how society perceive and transit into the virtual community medium. According to social and philosophical literature with regards to virtual community, there are 3 forms of studies by theorists, but ultimately drew similar conclusions.
The first theorist, Howard Rheingold, sees virtual community as a separate entity as physical community in his book ‘The Virtual Community: Homestanding on the Electronic Frontier’. Users are ‘withdrawn’ from everyday Life to enter into a ‘strange’ world where new kind of relationship and mode of communication are entered into. Rheingold thinks internet is ‘a new space’. However, he acknowledges that virtual community is a progression which is a new platform where people come together.
The second theorist, Manuel Castells, sees the virtuality as a complementary factor in actual life. This means that technology serves as a complementary channel for users with similar goals and interest together using technology. He based his argument on the fact that the ubiquity dimension of technology allows the breaking of traditional proximity. Distance and geography are no longer a determining factor of community. The level of experience of virtual community is now seen as a level of reality, not removed from it. However, he argues the fact that virtual community only caters for ‘thin’ community, which mean that relationship among users are not strong, and that they are together only due to common interest. This is unlike physical community which has ‘thick’ relationship built on personal bonding and close relationship.
The third theorist, Craig Calhoun, sees internet as producing communities of similarities more than strengthening local networks of diverse people from all over the world in one platform. Virtual community does not necessarily create new social and political realities; but they strengthen already existing ones, linking people with similar taste.
No matter which theory people subscribe to, it can be seen that virtual community offers a ‘thin’ community in terms of building relationship based on common interest for users all over the world in a common platform. Virtual community can also be seen as a complimentary channels for community building effort, be it as a new platform, or augmenting what has already exist in real life. For more information about the 3 theorist above, they can be found in ‘Delanty, Gerard (2003), Community. New York: Routledge (pp. 167-185)
Attributes of a virtual community;
A community in definition is defined as virtual users coming together in a shared space with the concept of common interests and goals. According to the definition alone, it is a social community where people come together with a common purpose. The fundamental basis of the existence of communities allows businesses to tap into community to leverage it as a form of marketing technique. A study in 2004 shows that the fundamental of virtual community is a summary of the attributes of ‘5-Ps of virtual community’ (C.E Porter, 2004).
Purpose – Users in a specific community come together as they share similar interests, therefore their purpose of coming together is specific.
Place – Virtual Community have the ability to break the traditional spatial space-time continuum and creates a ‘place’ in the virtual medium to bring everyone from different geographical space and time together as a community in virtual medium.
Platform- The nature of virtual world allows for a platform that caters for free exchange of information and interactions among variables and does not impose any restrictions.
Population (Pattern of Communication) – This refers to the pattern of interaction among members of the community and their social ties.
Profit Model – The purpose of them coming together allows for profit generation. (C.E Porter, 2004).
Therefore, businesses can leverage on the benefits that community can provide, such as the following:
‘Increase sales, Positive word-of-mouse, A precise target market, increase traffic of people with common interest, building of brands, Better social presence and support’ (C.E. Porter, 2004). Therefore, a community will have the potential to leverage on social presence to achieve marketing effects. This is aligned with the eMarketing concept like viral marketing and also emails marketing when members receive email from the community administrator for marketing subject.
My thoughts
I totally agree with the conclusion i inferred from theorist. Virtual community is seen as a complimentary channels for community building effort, be it as a new platform, or augmenting what has already exist in real life. This can be further enhanced by Ray Oldenburg (1982) in his theory of ‘third place’. Virtual community provides an informal public place where communication and chats takes place with common interest and goals. It is all about breaking off the fundamental perception of community: Proximity, and bring people from all over the world a space to come together as one in the form of community.
Therefore, according to my research for major assignment, brand community has the highest potential for marketing. Community is arguably one of the best marketing techniques in Second Life as they made full use of what virtual medium can offer (their characteristics like active participation, immersive environment, richness of media etc), and it augments the characteristics by meeting both intrinsic and extrinsic factors of users in virtual medium. One of the main attribute would be sharing a cultural reference of their interest in a social group. This is aligned with the study done by Jennifer Martin, Vili Lehdonvirta and Constance Elise Porter as described in my research.
When business set up a brand community, users joined in the community as they see a shared common goal and interests. They ‘reach out to the community’ instead of the business reaching out to them. They can be seen as a ready market for businesses to exploit. The users are receptive to the offerings made by the businesses through active participation in a rich platform, immersing in a medium that they joined to satisfy their intrinsic needs, as well as meeting the extrinsic needs of social belonging to a community that share their goals and interest. Brand community technique can be seen as a central form of marketing technique in Virtual Island
