here - ERIM - Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

A validation Study of House of Quality key performance indicators
2.3 Virtual Communities
This part of the theoretical review will discuss the subject of virtual communities. The way this
section is organized is adopted from the description of virtual communities by De Valck (2005).
Section 2.4.1 will discuss the concept of (virtual) communities and provides a definition. Section 2.4.2
will describe different types of virtual communities and section 2.4.3 will discuss the role of virtual
communities in marketing, particularly their potential effectiveness in stimulating participation
patterns of members (De Valck, 2005).
2.3.1 Concept of virtual communities
As a result of the development of the internet, nowadays it is easy for people to get in contact with
people from all over the world. The internet makes it possible to form direct interactions with people
who are geographically dispersed, have different backgrounds and live in different time-zones. This
offers people the possibility to interact with others about a common topic of interest or a common
problem.
When computer networks link people as well as machines, they become social networks, also called
computer supported social networks (CSSN’s) (Wellman et al 1996). A specific type of a CSSN is the
virtual community. Traditionally the term community is linked to a geographic place like a
neighborhood where people live together (Wellman and Gulia 1999b). Today, a community is no
longer limited to the physical place it occupies in society, but is regarded as a set of relationships
where people interact socially for mutual benefit (Wellman 1997). The term “virtual” indicates that
primary interactions are electronic or enabled by technology (Ridings 2004). This brings us to the
main difference between communities in the traditional environment and virtual communities: the
common space of a virtual community is the cyberspace. Go & Fenema (2003) emphasize that within
the virtual environment social spaces and mind spaces are formed. “People are articulating their
mind space by means of information technology, and direct one to one interactions are mediated
(“co-presence”)” (Go & Fenema 2003, p 9).
The concept of virtual communities finds it origin in the development of the internet and exists for
almost a quarter of a century (Reingold 2000, Ridings 2004). One of the first definitions of virtual
communities was made by Howard Reingold. He describes virtual communities as “a collective of
geographically distributed individuals bound by a common interest exploiting Internet technologies
to enable communication” (Reingold 1993). Ridings et al (2002, p 273) define virtual communities as
“groups of people with common interests and practices that communicate regularly and for some
duration in an organized way over the Internet through a common location or mechanism”.
26