Understanding the Evolution of the Web and Brand Communities

Extract

[...] The author then identifies four types of member activity in online brand communities. The first type of members is made up of tourists. It is made up of members who do not tend to create strong social links within the community, and who have only a limited interest in the content of the community and the brand. The second type is made up of members who refer to members who tend to create and maintain close social links within the community. [...]

[...] This can be disconcerting, to the point of wondering if we are really in contact with the person or with their messaging tool. The types of contact and the types of links have become numerous enough that we end up questioning the distinction between a contact and a link. Furthermore, the choice of link to use to communicate with a contact has become just as complex as the choice of contact to use to communicate information to a final contact. [...]

[...] Web 1.0 was static and somewhat unidirectional, focused on the dissemination of information. It is characterized by product-oriented sites that require little user intervention. The first e-commerce sites date back to this era. Companies could provide catalogs or brochures to present their products online, and in response, interested people could read them and contact the companies. In reality, catalogs and brochures were similar to advertisements in newspapers and magazines, and most e-commerce site owners used shopping cart applications in various forms, including the shopping cart. [...]

[...] The authors finally give the definition of what they mean by social media. According to them, social media is a group of Internet-based applications that rely on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content. In addition, beyond the enormous popularity of these sites, the originality is real if one considers that the main axis of analysis consists in understanding the evolution of an expression culture leading to a great visibility of individuals through the production of digital traces and its exploitation (O'Reilly and Batelle. [...]

[...] For businesses, benefits are often measured by looking at net result, but the situation from the customer's point of view is very different and more complex. Gwinner et al. (1998) found three main benefits of the customer-business relationship from the customer's point of view. These three benefits are: 'trust relationship', 'social relationships' and 'special treatment'. The benefits of trust are related to the psychological benefits and mean that when a relationship is established between the customer and a brand, organization, service, or product, the customer feels trust and anxiety is reduced (Gwinner et al.1998). [...]