Study Of Corporate Virtual Community Marketing From The Perspective Of Value Co-creation

It has been the research focus in the field of economy and management as to who create the value of commodity and service. Conventional views have been that such value is solely created by businesses. But in2004, two strategists for the first time proposed the concept of value co-creation, leading people to realize that businesses is not the only value creator; consumers, through a range of interactions with businesses, are also consciously and unconsciously involved in value creation.As globalization goes further, coupled with all the more sophisticated internet technology, virtual community marketing has been widely adopted by enterprises. How the role of consumers can be possibly integrated into the whole mechanism of value creation to maximize commercial value of the virtual community is the emerging challenge facing businesses and is also the research topic yet to be investigated in the21st century. To lay a theoretical framework, the current dissertation reviews theories in relation to value creation and virtual community marketing; on that basis, concepts such as value co-creation and virtual community marketing are properly defined. Beyond that, motivations behind consumers’and businesses’ involvement in virtual community marketing are analyzed from multiple dimensions based upon the theory of mental accounts and social capital. The dissertation then goes further to look into the formation mechanism of value co-creation with reference to the input-output model and previous studies. On the empirical level, KLM is under scrutiny. By investigating a series of marketing strategies adopted by KLM on the social network and virtual community of its own, the current writer attempts to summarize the company’s successful experiences in crisis management, brand building, and client relationship management. In the end, suggestions which are generalized from the case study against the backdrop of virtual community marketing are offered to both businesses and governments. The dissertation holds that value co-creation has become core competitiveness for enterprises. Only by fully understanding consumers’preference and motivations can the businesses play a part to upgrade the virtual community marketing in terms of platform construction, team building and marketing strategy. On the part of the governments, they should help facilitate the virtual community marketing by providing enterprises with policy, capital, technology, education and publicity assistance.