A Study of Factors Affecting User’s Participation, Experience and Stickiness on the Online Community Websites

Abstract

With the introduction of dynamic interactive tool of communication, the Internet Technology, both societal and commerce based interactions and activities have shifted from physical to virtual space. Several online community websites have emerged to take advantage of this opportunistic technological tool creating complex competitive scenario. Few of them are able to survive and engage their members for longer period of time by creating a unique value proposition during every interactive stage between the online member and community website. Therefore, this study will focus on the process of value created during every step of interaction resulting in higher level of member participation. A review of literature based upon the online community and its major components suggest that the process of value creation is a step-by-step process where member participation is the foremost step of initiation, influenced by individual’s need, online behaviour and social group attraction. Similarly, member’s experience and stickiness with the community website, along with technological skill and trust are identified as the major influencing variables of entire value process of online community. These variables occur in a chronological order and their interaction affects the entire value proposition created in terms of networking and recognition. Similarly, concept of stickiness was studied in terms of time spent, while member’s association was ignored. Also, the literature review of the online community reflects minimal attention towards the concept in terms of its importance in creating online value for the users. The concept is mainly studied in combination with trust or is followed by trust. There exists a lack of clear indication of the usefulness of online stickiness in the entire value creation and its relationship with user’s trust. Technological skill is mainly studied from the provider’s point-of-view to provide comfortable online environment, while individual’s technological skills acquired based on their educational profile background is been ignored. However, no framework is yet provided that integrate these factors in a sequential manner and examine their inter-relationship. Based upon the gaps identified from the literature, three principal research questions of this descriptive study are: 1. How value process flow in the online community among the members? 2. Does individual’s technological skill affect the value flow in the online environment? 3. Does individual’s trust for the community website affect the value flow in the online environment? The survey method will be used to collect the data from the target population, i.e. professional students, using the combination of both probability and non-probability method. The universities and colleges of main cities of Gujarat will be targeted and responses will be collected by personal interview (based on structured questionnaire) method. The data will be analyzed to determine the categorical differences and thereby inter-relationship will be examined using the multivariate technique. This study attempts to contribute to the literature on online community and dynamics of user behavior in the virtual world. The study provides a framework for the online managers to create unique value proposition of networking and recognition for the online users and thereby maintaining the flow of community website. The framework proposes a sustainable strategy for the online community in the digital landscape.