1
Purpose – people who are going through the same process or trying to achieve a particular
objective. Examples include those researching cars, such as Autotrader (
www.autotrader.
co.uk
), or stocks online, such as the Motley Fool (
www.motleyfool.co.uk
). Price or prod-
uct comparison services such as MySimon, Shopsmart and Kelkoo serve this community.
2
Position. Communities set up specifically for people who are in a certain circumstance,
such as having a health disorder or being at a certain stage of life. Examples are teenage
chat site Dobedo (
www.dobedo.co.uk
), Cennet (
www.cennet.co.uk
) offering ‘New hori-
zons for the over 50s’,
www.babycenter.com
and
www.parentcentre.com
for parents, and
the Pet Channel (
www.thepetchannel.com
).
3
Interest. This community is for people who share an interest or passion such as sport
(
www.football365.com
), music (
www.pepsi.com
), leisure (
www.walkingworld.com
) or
any other interest (
www.deja.com
).
4
Profession. These are important for companies promoting B2B services.
These B2B vertical portals can be thought of as ‘trade papers on steroids’. In fact, in many
cases they have been created by publishers of trade papers, for example Emap Business
Communications has created Construction Plus for the construction industry. Each has
industry and company news and jobs, as expected, but they also offer online storefronts and
auctions for buyers and sellers and community features such as discussion topics. Of course,
the trade papers such as Emap’s Construction Weekly are responding by creating their own
portals.
Today social networks provide a low- cost method for companies to create a community.
You will notice that most of these examples of community are intermediary sites that are
independent of a particular manufacturer or retailer. A key question to ask before embark-
ing on a community- building programme is: ‘Can customer interests be best served through a
company- independent community?’
If the answer to this question is ‘yes’, then it may be best to form a community that is
a brand variant, differentiated from its parent. For example, Boots the Chemist created
Handbag.com as a community for its female customers. Another and less costly alternative
is to promote your products through sponsorship or co-branding on an independent com-
munity site or portal or to get involved in the community discussions.
Alternatively, companies can create their own forums although successful examples are
relatively rare since there is a fear that a brand may be damaged if customers criticise prod-
ucts, so some moderation is required. Honda UK (
www.honda.co.uk/car
) provide a good
example of a community created by their brand on their site. Rather than having a separate
community section, the community is integrated within the context of each car as ‘second
opinions’ menu options. Interestingly, some negative comments are permitted to make the
discussion more meaningful.
A potential problem with a company- hosted forum is that it may be unable to get suffi-
cient people to contribute to a company- hosted community. But initial recruitment of con-
tributors and moderation has been used to grow the forum by software services company
SAP, which has successfully created several niche communities to support its business with
over 1 million software engineers, partners and business people (
www.sap.com/community
).
Contributions are rewarded through donations to international aid charities.
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424
Part 2 Strategy and applications
What tactics can organisations use to foster community? Parker (2000) suggests
eight questions organisations should ask when considering how to create a customer
community:
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