Mind the Gap - Building Profitable Community Based Businesses on the Internet

Bernhard Krieger and Philipp Müller
Additional contact information
Philipp Müller: MERIT

No 12, Research Memorandum from Maastricht University, Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT)

Abstract: Building Internet communities will become a strategic tool both as a stand-alone model and as a supplement to sustain competitive advantage for "normal" businesses. Community based business models aim to profit from the value, which is created when Internet communities solve problems of collective action, by controlling access, aggregating data, or realizing side-payments. The current literature on community based business models refers to rational choices by individuals to explain why members join and leave Internet communities. However, such an approach cannot sufficiently conceptualize communities because communities are essentially imagined by their members. We offer metaphors to conceptualize the legitimation and reproduction of communities. In order to profit from the value that is generated by communities'' business, strategists must position it in its competitive environment. With the metaphorical approach we develop a framework to build profitable Internet communities.

Keywords: economics of technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://unu-merit.nl/publications/rmpdf/2001/rm2001-012.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:unm:umamer:2001012

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Memorandum from Maastricht University, Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Leonne Portz ().