CRM, Embeddedness and Online Communities

  

I love it when the lessons learned in the trenches are supported by the rigour of the professional researchers!

Conducting research for the real world is the charter of the Marketing Science Institute;

“Founded in 1961, the Marketing Science Institute is a learning organization dedicated to bridging the gap between marketing science theory and business practice. MSI currently brings together executives from approximately 70 sponsoring corporations with leading researchers from over 100 universities worldwide.”

Not exactly a blog, but I recommend you bookmark their publication site and keep an eye on what 70 of the best marketing organisations think is worth researching in the marketing arena.

Case in point. “CRM in Virtual Communities”, work by Porter & Donthu published late last year.

Fascinating.  And you are right, I am one of the “tweedy strategy guys” mentioned on our home page.

They tested the idea that the value of a branded virtual community, (value to the sponsor), depends on the sponsor’s ability to cultivate the trust of the members.

Sponsors attempt to do this by;

• providing access to quality content
• fostering member embeddedness – defined as helping customers perceive themselves as insiders
• encouraging member interaction with the sponsor about trust and beliefs.

 As examples, during the study the researchers referred to communities run by Dell, Palm, HP, REI, Ford, Samsung etc.

Which one of these activities is best at fostering trust do you think?

Arguably the grandmother of branded communities is P&G’s Vocalpoint (originally Tremor), where customers actively collaborate with P&G product managers to develop/select product features. Pfizer has had a similar ‘panel’ and some of Legos most successful product launches ever were shaped by the active involvement of a large virtual community.

I think branded community practitioners would say that ‘embeddedness’ is the winner, at least based on these money making examples.

The research findings back this; ‘…efforts to provide quality content and to foster member embeddedness do indeed have positive effects on customer beliefs about a sponsor; in fact, fostering member embeddedness has a stronger effect on customer beliefs than does providing quality content.’

And to put a cherry on top of this meatball sundae; ‘…trust increases customer’s willingness to share personal information, to be loyal to the company, and to cooperate in new product development. Overall, their findings underscore the importance of using technology, such as virtual communities, to manage relationships with consumers.’

Could not have said it better. And they have the numbers to back it up!

 ’How to create embeddedness’ looks like a good subject for future posts.