Technical infrastructure for operating and governing virtual communities. It comprises facilities to integrate social software tools and to centralize the storage and provision of user created content.
Published in Chapter:
Assessing the Total Cost of Ownership of Virtual Communities: The Case of the Berlin Stock Exchange
Jan vom Brocke (University of Liechtenstein, Principality of Liechtenstein, Liechtenstein), Christian Sonnenberg (University of Liechtenstein, Principality of Liechtenstein, Liechtenstein), Christoph Lattemann (University of Potsdam, Germany), and Stefan Stieglitz (University of Potsdam, Germany)
Copyright: © 2010
|Pages: 21
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-384-5.ch040
Abstract
The usage of social software and virtual community platforms opens up opportunities to bridge the gap between customers and companies and to integrate customers into the value-added process. Ideas generated by members of a virtual community can be utilized to improve and to innovate a company’s value adding activities. However, the implementation and operation of virtual communities may have a considerable impact on financial performance measures of a company. Hence, to measure the profitability of a virtual community appropriately, means of efficiency calculations have to be employed. The objective of this chapter is, therefore, to develop a measurement framework to evaluate the financial performance of a virtual community. The focus is on calculating the total cost of ownership. After introducing a general measurement framework, a particular measurement system is derived from the framework and is subsequently applied to a real life example of the Berlin Stock Exchange.