| Summary: | 碩士 === 開南管理學院 === 資訊及電子商務學系 === 94 === The key to success for virtual community website such as Yahoo, PCHome and MSN is to continuously creating new features to attract more members to participate in their online services. Further, as the number of members grows, the value of their service grows and this in turn attracts even more people to join. These types of website then make profit by charging a small fee for the heavy users who wish to sign up for the premium services not available to normal users.
In this competitive market where there are countless virtual community website providing almost identical services, the only way to survival is to be innovative in terms of service features in order to stand out from the rest of the crowd. By constantly providing new and unique services not available at any other websites, this ensures existing customers will always return for their needs and at the same time, attract new users to join. According to the economic principle of cost benefit, keeping existing customers are more important and profitable than attracting new customers.
The purpose of this study is to explore how the users’ trust and independence on those virtual community website would reflect on their attitudinal responses and behavioral intentions.
The community owners should evaluate the value of the website platform from the customers’ point of view, and analyze the customer switching cost. Then, they can use the advantage of brand image to provide the sustainable service to the existing customers, and develop their own market position.
In this paper, we will investigate how these perceived attitudes of the number of virtual communities related to behavioral intention to continuously participants of the virtual community. According to the TAM theory, we propose the following six propositions:
1. Perceived cohesiveness is positively related to the use of the website platform.
2. Perceived playfulness is positively related to the use of the website platform.
3. The attitude is positively related to the continuous participation in the virtual community.
4. Perceived cohesiveness is positively related of user's intention for continuing use.
5. Perceived playfulness is positively related of user's continuing use behavior.
6. User's continuing use behavior is positively related of user’s loyalty.
We combine Mayer’s ”An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust” to propose the following four propositions:
1. Platform trust is positively related of user's loyalty.
2. Interpersonal trust is positively related of user's loyalty.
3. Interpersonal trust is positively related of user's contact behavior.
4. User’s perceived risk is positively related of user's contact behavior.
In this research，we propose the following two propositions:
1. Perceived cohesiveness is positively related of user's contact behavior.
2. Perceived playfulness is positively related of user's contact behavior.
The methodology of this research is to conduct a series of online questionnaire, and we targets the users of a virtual community called “Youth Want website on Love elementary school”. This platform is specially designed for teenagers, and it provides personal web space, integrated blog station, diary and message exchange for people who want to make friends through the Internet. By observing the behavior and taking notes of the members’ perspectives, we will then investigate how the perception affect users’ intention in continuous participation, and try to find the best business model for running such website.
The result shows that the perceived cohesiveness playfulness positively relate to the attitude of using the platform, and the more positive attitude in using the platform, the more willingness of the members to continuously participate in the virtual community. Platform trust and interpersonal trust contributes greatly to user's loyalty. Interpersonal trust positively relate of user's contact behavior and user’s perceived risk negatively relate of user's contact behavior
The result also confirms the previous propositions.
We thus suggest that the community owners should focus more on enhancing perceived cohesiveness and perceived playfulness while providing quality service. On the one hand, they should work hard on serving existing members. On the other hand, he should also try to attract new members to join in. In this way, they could enlarge the scope of the virtual community and become a profitable business. We confirm trust and perceived risk are the important factors that affect user's contact behavior.
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