Study On The Influence Of Company's Official Virtual Community User's Role Changing

With the internet technology applied widely and many companies competing fiercely, more and more companies have realized that it's very important to use the internet to develop the market and promote. They began to attract the customers' attention by setting up their official website. But many companies, even some famous companies, only have a formalism website. They don't promote their business by virtual communities. Thus, this paper explored the company's official virtual community deeply and done some empirical researches to provide companies with some advice of online marketing.Previous studies viewed the consumer decision-making cognition as a dynamic process, and then explained and explored it. According to the theory of the category of virtual community user, this study divided the company's official virtual community users into four static roles (the user who logs in actively, active participator, direct contributor, indirect contributor). And it used these four roles to denote the dynamic process of consumer decision-making cognition. The aim is to make this process can be measured by some observable indexes and transform the study of the consumer decision-making cognition process into the study of user's role changing. Meanwhile, previous studies of online consumer behavior only focused on purchase and its influence factors. But this study explored the company official virtual community user's role changing and its influence factors based on using static user roles to denote the dynamic process of consumer decision-making cognition. Thus, the research range can be extended from a single action of purchasing to multiple dimensions of online consumer decision-making cognition behavior. And the study will be systematic and comprehensive.According to the structure of study, firstly, the author summarized the related literatures about virtual community and online consumer behavior to pick out company official virtual community user's roles and its influence factors. And then, the author constructed a hypothetical model by using the theory of consumer decision-making cognition and the theory of consumer affection and consumer behavior. The author also done a survey by a questionnaire and analyzed the questionnaire data by SPSS and Excel to correct the hypothetical model.The study result indicates that the company's official virtual community properties-incentive, website design, technology, online interaction, standardization-affect its user's roles through user's affection factors (pleasure and trust). And the factors of incentive and online interaction also affect the role of active participator directly. What's more, this study also finds the relationship of company official virtual community user's roles changing, which means that only active participator can be transformed into direct contributor and the other roles must be transformed into direct contributor through the active participator. The company should encourage users to eventually become a direct contributor to make profits. Therefore, the company should incent users to transform into direct contributor continuously. This can increase the chance of transforming other roles into contributor. Meanwhile, this study also indicates that most of company's official virtual communities attach more importance on website design and technology at present, but incentive system, online interaction and standardization need to be improved. And most of users like interacting by BBS. At last, the author provides some online marketing advice for company according to the analysis result.According to combination of theoretical and empirical research and using qualitative and quantitative analysis, this study may help companies improve their own official virtual communities efficiently.