USEFULNESS OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITY

Virtual communities can be defined as a community of people with a common interest but not necessarily a common geographic location that interact over the Internet.

There are several benefits for all parties using Virtual communities’. The main benefit is that Virtual communities

Allows fast and inexpensive dissemination of knowledge and information between members whilst controlling information overload. Members receive far more information than they would typically be able to access conveniently and cost-effectively in the past. Member’s opinions and previous experiences are also disseminated throughout the entire community so benefiting all members

To Public; Virtual communities’ enable customers to exchange “word-of-mouth” experiences with each other, allowing other potential customers access to a critical evaluation of products or services they are interested in. Companies have recognized this and built on it using a feedback system with customer comments. The company benefits from satisfied customers’ comments to other members of the community. This gives customers the purchasing confidence and encourages return visits to the company. This feedback system works perfectly in Virtual communities rather than in the offline world. Every new member of a Virtual communities increases the value of the community to both the new and existing members. The more members a virtual community has, the more attractive it will become to future members therefore creating a self-feeding cycle. It is important to stress that the benefits of virtual communities are not related solely to financial transactions and commodities. They allow vital exchange of knowledge between experienced and inexperienced people that would otherwise be difficult to attain.

To Companies: Virtual communities’ effectiveness at bringing companies and customers together enables small producers to have a national marketing capability for the price of an online advertisement. The customer feedback obtained from Virtual communities is not only accurate and easy to obtain, it is extremely cost effective, with very little investment required. Companies could easily sponsor a Virtual community in their area of business and converse with members in there to raise their awareness of their products. These factors are all incredibly beneficial to Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) where it is vital that production mistakes are kept to a minimum.

To Individual Members: Virtual communities create benefits for users at an individual level by enabling them to complete their job faster, more effectively, cheaper or even more enjoyably. For example, an employee at a car manufacturer that works on the assembly line may have difficulty in one aspect of their job, but when they share this problem on the virtual community, other members can post suggestions to them for new ways of counteracting that problem.

Conclusively, Despite the benefits there are numerous challenges that stand to impede the success of each virtual community. There is a critical short-term problem for all virtual community pioneers, the time it takes to establish the critical mass of members. It is unlikely that the virtual community will show anything but a financial loss in its early years, and attempts to raise short-term income from the new virtual community.

By FOYA JOHN H.

BAPRM 42553