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Qualitative Analysis of Online Communities to Support International Business Decisions

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Handbook of Strategic e-Business Management

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Abstract

Social, cultural, political and technological forces have significantly transformed the competitive landscape of the global economy. Amongst these forces, technology has arguably had the most rejuvenating impact on the way international businesses interact with each other and their customer base. End-users are making use of computer-mediated communications, newsgroups, chat rooms, email list servers, personal World Wide Web pages and other online formats at an unprecedented pace, and as they share ideas and obtain information about products and services, firms are extending their market research activities to these domains. These new tools, online communities, virtual communities and virtual worlds have emerged as a fascinating and useful pool of collective experience for international business. However, the utilization and analysis of this body of knowledge for international business decisions is still in its infancy. This paper analyzes the potential of these tools to inform international business decisions. We explain how to identify and access each of these communities, and how to convert the qualitative information available from online communities into a strategic input for the firm.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Netnography is different from (social) network analysis. The latter is fundamentally a quantitative analysis, which uses nodes and edges to gauge the strengths of connections between individual members of a group as well as determine the structure of the net (Carrington et al. 2005; Wasserman and Faust 1994).

  2. 2.

    WoW had a paid subscriber base of 12.1 million at the end of 2010 and holds more than 60 % of the global MMORPG market (2011).

  3. 3.

    EVE Online had 200,000 subscribers by the end of 2010 (Business Insights 2011).

  4. 4.

    Perfect World uses a ‘freemium’ business model, which means that use of the game is free but users are charged for items within the game.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Manchester, Manchester Business School, Booth Street West, Manchester, M15 6PB, UK

    Rudolf R. Sinkovics

  2. Vienna University of Economics and Business, Institute for International Marketing Management, Augasse 2-6, A-1090, Vienna, Austria

    Elfriede Penz

  3. University of Murcia, Campus de Espinardo, 30100, Murcia, Spain

    Francisco Jose Molina-Castillo

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  1. Rudolf R. Sinkovics
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  3. Francisco Jose Molina-Castillo
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Correspondence to Rudolf R. Sinkovics .

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  1. Department of Business Administration, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Francisco J. Martínez-López

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Sinkovics, R.R., Penz, E., Molina-Castillo, F.J. (2014). Qualitative Analysis of Online Communities to Support International Business Decisions. In: Martínez-López, F. (eds) Handbook of Strategic e-Business Management. Progress in IS. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39747-9_35

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