Valuing User Contribution on Virtual Brand Community
Li Zhihong1, Tang Hongting*, 1, Qin Rui1, Zhao Jiawei2
1 School of Business Administration, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China
2 School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA, 92093
Abstract
Companies are increasingly taking advantage of contributions of users’ behavior on communities. Their contributions are then transformed into references as well as guidelines of user management. This paper categorizes the user contribution value into user-contributed content value evaluated by a weighted-knowledge super-network approach and a user interaction value evaluated by weighted social network analysis. The paper uses a data set that originated from the Xiaomi Forum and finds that users in the virtual brand community fall into four categories: valuable users, knowledgeable users, social users and regular users. Finally, this paper draws conclusions on how companies can increase user value through user classification management and user incentive measures.
Keywords: Social network, User contribution value, Virtual brand community, Weighted knowledge super-network.
Article Information
Article History:
Received Date: 03/11/2015
Revision Received Date: 26/5/2016
Acceptance Date: 26/05/2016
Electronic publication date: 26/07/2016
Collection year: 2016
© Zhihong; et al.; Licensee Bentham Open.
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC 4.0) (
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode), which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
* Address corresponding to this author at the School of Business Administration, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China; Tel: +8618814098152; Email: bmhttang@mail.scut.edu.cn
Open Peer Review Details |
Manuscript submitted on 03-11-2015 |
Original Manuscript |
Valuing User Contribution on Virtual Brand Community |