VALUE-BALANCING AND ITS CONSEQUENCES IN ONLINE COMMUNITIES: A CASE STUDY

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VALUE-BALANCING AND ITS

CONSEQUENCES IN ONLINE

COMMUNITIES: A CASE

STUDY

Abstract: This research provides a contribution to the Stairway to Heaven model as proposed by Nijs (2014) and the value balance process. In this research, these two theories are merged in order to get more insights into the value balance process in online communities. From the results of this study can be

concluded that the value balance process can be influenced by the service provider in order to increase community member satisfaction. This obtained satisfaction leads to higher interaction. Despite this interesting fact, there is no sufficient evidence to conclude that higher member satisfaction leads to the

recruiting of new community members.

J.G.C. STUUT

22-06-2015

Table of Content

Introduction ... 3

Theoretical Background ... 7

Methodology ... 20

Results ... 24

Conclusions & Discussion ... 32

References ... 38

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Introduction

“Abandon the urge to simplify everything, to look for formulas and easy answers, and to begin to think multidimensionally, to glory in the mystery and paradoxes of life, not to be dismayed by the multitude of causes and consequences that are inherent in each experience -- to appreciate the fact that life is complex.” ― M. Scott Peck

Organizations are facing high levels of complexity nowadays due to the increased connectivity and interactivity enabled by the arrival of the Internet (Baumann & Siggelkow, 2013). Many organizations try to overcome this complexity by simplifying complex problems, accompanied with the risk of missing something important. This paper assumes that complexity should not be simplified, instead ‘appreciate the fact that life is complex’. Today’s complex world is explained by organizations being active in a more turbulent environment and a connected society. According to Nijs (2014), growing connectivity creates the context in which the logic of value co-creation is enabled in society and, as a consequence, all stakeholders of an organization can become participants in the value-creating process. Also, because of growing connectivity and interactivity, value creation can now be installed in an orientation of mutual interest and with an emergent perspective of co-creating value with participants for society at large (Ramirez, 1999). Nijs (2014) also argues that this shift in value creation is the emerging perspective of complexity science and enables a ‘non-linear open systems thinking’, from seeing consumers as passive destructors of value towards seeing, enabling and treating them as active participants in value creation is an essential shift in enterprise logic.

Prior service marketing literature attributes the service provider’s ability to influence customer value creation to co-creative interactions (Echeverri & Skålen 2011; Grönroos 2008; Prahalad & Ramaswamy 2004; Ramirez 1999). Prahalad & Ramaswamy (2004, p. 5) even claim that “the use of interaction as a basis for co-creation is at the crux of our emerging reality.” In this view, co-creation functions by activating operant resources (Vargo & Lusch 2006), though no studies have clearly defined the roles of the service provider and the customer or the nature, scope, and locus of this value co-creation process.

other stakeholders, are involved even more in comparison to the aforementioned co-creation of value. She argues that customers could also initiate a particular movement or feedback moment for the company. The customers can initiate a movement with other customers without the intervention of the company.

The research of Nijs (2014) addresses a new way of thinking, deriving from today’s complex world, about the importance of having an open system where stakeholders with a mutual interest, play an active role in value creation. In other words, in order to co-create value, organizations must start to enable co-creation with its stakeholders in a relevant and attractive way. In other words, value is co-created among providers and beneficiaries. Which means that some actors provide value and won’t be able to benefit from it. According to Ramaswamy & Gouillart (2010), ‘Stakeholders won’t wholeheartedly participate in customer co-creation unless it produces value for them, too’. This refers to the mutual interest in order to co-create value (Ramirez, 1999). For the actors involved, the value can also be psychological instead of economic (Ramaswamy & Gouillart, 2010). Therefore, value creation entails a process that increases the customer’s well-being, so that the user becomes better off in some respect (Grönroos 2008; Nordin & Kowalkowski 2010; Vargo et al. 2008). Echeverri & Skålen admit that the actions of a provider of service can also make the customer worse off, which implies that the value creation process can take a negative turn. Zeithaml, Parasuraman & Berry (1988) mention that customers are satisfied when the service meet or exceeds customer expectations. They define service quality as the extent to which a service meets or exceeds customer expectations (Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry, 1985, 1988). The quality as perceived by customers is an individual judgement based on what they feel service firms should offer compared to their actual perceptions of the performance of services as provided by firms.. Vargo & Lusch (2008) argue that firms can make value propositions to their customers. The provider of service thus can have a strategy to influence the perception and expectation of value of the customer in order to increase the satisfaction of the customer. This contributes to the academic and practical debate due to the fact that a complex dialogue, in an online community, is mouldable according to this paper, whereas complexity is seen as unpredictable and not mouldable. Therefore this paper could lead to interesting management implications.

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opportunities that arise of the new paradigm of co-creation of value with their customers. An online community refers to a group of people with common interests and shared goals, who use online communication technology as the basis of communication instead of face-to-face interactions (Wellman 1997; Lazar & Preece, 2002). They get together in a virtual social space where they receive and provide information, support, to learn or find company (Preece, 2002). This means shifting the managerial practices from maintaining control to designing the future with a self-organizing logic in an inspiring way (Nijs, 2014).

Research questions

These aforementioned papers identified the definition of value in a co-creating process of value. However, it remains unclear in the above literature how the co-creation of value in online communities can be effectively enabled and managed. This paper tries to provide a contribution to the academic literature by providing a more practical understanding of the value co-creating process in an online community. The goal of this research is to examine if the value balance process, as explained by Zeithaml et al. (1988), is also applicable to the theory of co-creation with customers (Ramirez, 1999; Nijs, 2014), particularly in online communities. Furthermore, this research tries to examine what the consequences are of this value balance process in online communities.

Setting up an online community is a way of co-creating value with customers, which is derived from the model of Nijs (2014) where she explains that a firm can achieve a strategic intent in 9 steps. In order to make it a self-organizing community the company does not have to intervene, instead, the members can initiate a movement together. Therefore, the community members need to do it themselves, which they will only do if it is valuable for them. As derived from the literature of Zeithaml et al. (1988), the service provider can initiate value propositions in order to influence the perceived value in a way that positive behavioral consequences arise. With that in mind the research question of this study is:

How can firms influence the internal value balance process of community members to positive behavioral consequences in a community, in order to make the community emerging?

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Theoretical Background

‘The Stairway to Heaven’

how every actor can be part of the new movement. The more new actions get positive feedback, the more the actor will reflect on his or her actions and the more eager the actor is to put new steps in the strategic direction. Collective action is found in the sixth step, where more people are willing to participate in the dialogue and the actions are further stabilized. The last two steps are the result of the previous steps. An emergent organization is established which lends itself to a complex and open context. Nijs (2014) concludes that it is typical for an emergent organization that many stakeholders are thinking with the organization about creating synergies, that make themselves more relevant.

This research focusses on step 4, the ‘action’ step from the stairway to heaven model. In order to co-create value with the members of a community, the members need to interact with each other and recruit new members in order to become self-organizing, they therefore need to take action.

Figure 1 - 'The Stairway to Heaven' as propesed by Nijs (2013)

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have most of the time a clear idea of what to expect about the group and they become more confident about achieving their goals with community membership. This assumes that people tend to join an online community when it produces value for them too. Sangwan (2005) suggests, from the ‘uses and gratifications’ framework that four types of benefits reflect the nature of benefits customers expect to derive from their participation in virtual customer environments. These four types are cognitive, social integrative, personal integrative and hedonic. Sangwan (2005) argues that that customer perceptions regarding the extent to which the virtual customer environment (VCE) offers these four benefits will shape their actual participation in these environments. Following Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2003), it is suggested that customer perceptions regarding the potential for deriving these four types of benefits will in turn be influenced by their actual interactions in the VCE. Results also show the impact of key interaction characteristics of VCEs on such perceived benefits and imply the need for firms to carefully design their VCEs to enhance customers' perceptions regarding potential benefits. Sangwan (2005) concludes: a successful virtual community will aim to fulfill its member’s needs and engage in preemptive actions to create value for host organization, where members will be active users and participants for sustaining success of the virtual community.

Shift in value creation

Traditional goods-centered dominant logic

Emerging service-centered dominant logic

Role of customer The customer is the recipient of goods. Marketers do things with customers; they segment them, penetrate them, distribute to them, and promote to them. The customer is an operand resource.

The customer is a coproducer of service. Marketing is a process of doing things in interaction with the customer. The customer is primarily an operant resource, only functioning occasionally as an operand resource.

Determination and meaning of value

Value is determined by the producer. It is embedded in the operand resource (goods) and is defined in terms of ‘exchange-value’.

Value is perceived and determined by the consumer on the basis of ‘value-in-use’. Value results from the beneficial application of operant resources sometimes transmitted through operand resources. Firms can only make value propositions.

Table 1 - The shift from a traditional goods-centered dominant logic to an emerging service-centered dominant logic (Vargo & Lusch, 2004)

Ramirez (1999) explains that the customer is a co-creator of value. Recent literature studied the importance and emergence of the co-creation of value (Vargo, Paul, Maglio & Akaka, 2008; Nijs, 2014; Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). In the traditional way of thinking about value creation, the consumers were ‘outside the firm’ (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004) and value is defined in terms of ‘exchange value’ (Vargo & Lusch, 2004). Value creation occurs inside the firm, and the consumers are seen as destroyers of value. In the research of Ramirez (1999), this process of value creation is defined as ‘sequential value creation’ in which the stakeholders, particularly consumers, play a passive role.

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According to Ramirez (1999), a new process of value creation has emerged, namely ‘simultaneous value creation’, in which stakeholders try to create value together because of mutual interest. Ramirez (1999) talks about the shift from a sequential mode of value creation where the organization creates value and the consumer destroys the value, to a simultaneous mode of value production where ‘initiators and participators’ create value together. This could be seen as a result of digital technologies where today’s environment is characterized by connectivity and interactivity. This increased connectivity and interactivity enables us to tap in our collective intelligence and creativity and enable co-inventions (Ramirez, 1999). Important to notice here is the definition of value. Instead of defining value as measured in monetary terms, in the co-production of value, value is co-invented, combined and reconciled and sometimes cannot be measured in monetary terms.

In other words, value is co-created among providers and beneficiaries. Which means that some actors provide value and won’t be able to benefit from it. According to Ramaswamy & Gouillart (2010), ‘Stakeholders won’t wholeheartedly participate in customer co-creation unless it produces value for them, too’. This refers to the mutual interest in order to co-create value (Ramirez, 1999). This is in line with the argument that people will join an online community if it produces value for them too. For those involved people in a community, the value can also be psychological instead of economic (Ramaswamy & Gouillart (2010). In other words, value is always uniquely and phenomenologically determined by the beneficiary (Vargo & Lusch, 2008). Grönroos (2000) states that value for customers is created throughout the relationship by the customer, partly in interactions between the customer and the supplier or service provider. Consequently, value emerges for customers and is perceived by them from the customers’ value-creating processes.

Value balance

Oliver (1980) has studied the process why customer get repurchase intentions. As a result of the study, the author developed the ‘Expectation – Confirmation Theory’, as can be seen in figure 2, which argues that the consumer assesses the perceived performance of a product or service by comparing the expectations before consumption and the perceptions about its performance after the consumption. If that is the case their expectation is confirmed. In other words, the consumer forms an expectation of a specific product or service prior to purchase. Then, there follows a period of consumption. In that period, the consumer forms a perception about the performance of the product or service. The consumer then assesses the perceived performance of the product or service by comparing the original expectation and determine the extent to which their expectation is confirmed. At least, the consumer forms a satisfaction or affect, based on their confirmation level and expectation on which the confirmation was based. The article of Oliver (1980) ends with the confirmed assumption that satisfied customers form a repurchase intention, while dissatisfied users discontinue its subsequent use.

The research of Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry (1985) shows that customer satisfaction arises out of the perceived service quality and admit that service quality is perceived differently among different customers. In addition, value is considered to be context-specific and dynamically changing (Kowalkowski, 2011). Service quality is defined as the extent to which a service meets or exceeds customer expectations (Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry, 1985, 1988). The quality that customers perceive is an individual judgment between what they feel service firms should offer and with their perceptions of the performance of firms providing the services. Therefore, perceived service quality is viewed as the degree and direction of discrepancy between consumers' perceptions and expectations. Based on a review

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of the literature, Flint et al. (2002) define customer perceived value as the difference between the perceived benefits received and the perceived and the perceived sacrifices made by the customer. In the new emerging service-centered dominant logic, customers are active participants in the value creating process, firms alone cannot determine the value itself (Vargo & Lusch, 2004). Instead, they offer value propositions that have the potential to co-create value with the customer (Vargo & Lusch, 2008).

Zeithaml, Berry & Parasuraman (1996) found in their research two levels of expectations. One level concerns the desired service, which the authors define as the level of service the customer hopes to receive and what the customer believes can and should be delivered. The other level of expectations is adequate service, which is the lowest level of service the customer will accept. In other words, adequate service is the minimum level of service a company can provide and still meets the basic needs of the customer. The area between the adequate service and desired service is called the ‘zone of tolerance’ (Zeithaml et al., 1996), where the firm is meeting customer expectations.

Before this research comes up with different propositions, a clear definition of the perceived value of the customer is needed. Chang & Dibb (2012) approach the notion of customer perceived value from four different viewpoints, each of them giving interesting insights.

Axiology

The axiology field is interested in people’s internal value systems known to impact upon perceptions, judgments and behaviors. From this point of view, Perry (1954) argues that value is entirely dependent on individuals’ personal judgements about what is experienced suggests

a rational process whereby people attribute value to an item before obtaining it by exchanging something else, for example, money.

Psychology

According to Patterson & Spreng (1997: p:421), ‘value is a cognitive-based construct which captures any benefit/sacrifice discrepancy in much the same way as disconfirmation does for variations between expectations and perceived performance’. An individual perception is, according to Wilkie (1994), a process of acquiring, sensing, selecting and organizing stimuli. Hence, the customer’s experiences relate to the value perceptions of the service provider (Kerin, Jain & Howard, 1992). Also, these value perceptions relate to the previous experience from the customer, which can influence the internal perceptions of value of the customer.

Economics

In economic theory, value consists of the trade-off between benefits and sacrifice, with customer perceived value regarded as a trade-off between relative quality and relative price (Gale, 1994; Monroe, 2003). This view has been criticized because it only accounts for the tangible benefits and sacrifices associated with the acquisition. Kotler (2000) offers a value equation whereby the less tangible benefits and sacrifices are accounted for. In his view, Value = Benefits (Functional benefits + emotional benefits) / Costs (Monetary costs + Time costs + Energy costs + Psychic costs).

Marketing

In the marketing literature, many scholars have pursued a clear definition of customer perceived value (Woodruff, 1997; Zeithaml, 1988). They have concluded that value can be conceptualized a as multi-dimensional construct. The functional dimensions and emotional dimensions are the most prevalent value dimensions described in the literature. The functional dimension is associated with the ratio price/value for money derived from the product. The emotional dimension is associated with feelings or affective qualities generated. Furthermore, in the marketing literature there is also a distinction made between hedonic and utilitarian value (Babin, Darden & Griffin, 1994; Gonzalez & Watts, 2007). Whereby hedonic value relates to the emotional dimension and the utilitarian value to the functional dimension.

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behaviorally based judgments, and is nestled in the consumption of the user or use experience. It is very difficult to conceptualize value creation and to give a clear answer on the question what value is, along with where, how, by whom, and when it is created (Voima et al., 2010). For example, when going on a vacation, a vacation can create different perceptions of value. The vacation itself can create value for one person, whereas someone else relates value to the possibility of meeting new people during the vacation. Another person can already experience value when dreaming about the vacation. To conclude, individuals have different sources of value (Heinonen et al., 2010).

In this research, the emphasis is on the non-monetary benefits that customers perceive. Online communities are often free and the value that community members get from participation in an community is most of the time non-monetary. Thereby this research assumes that value in an online community is a function of the interaction between subjects (Echeverri & Skålen, 2011), which means that perceived value is personal and contextual.

Woodall (2003) also investigated the ‘value for customer’ (VC). This term represents all similarly associated, demand-side notions of value. Woodall (2003) analyzed different relevant sources and identified five distinct VC notions.

- Net VC – a utilitarian balancing of benefits and sacrifices. - Marketing VC – concerned with product attributes alone. - Derived VC – outcome related.

- Sale VC – low price, or reduction of sacrifice.

- Rational VC – benefits expressed in units of exchange.

Moreover, the analysis of Woodall (2003) concluded that VC could be perceived in four different temporal forms.

- Ex ante VC – pre-purchase - Transaction VC – during purchase

- Ex-poste VC – post-purchase / consumption - Disposal VC – after use / experience

Because the definition of Woodall (2003) of Value for the customer (VC) is the most complete of all definition, this research makes use of this definition. Woodall (2003, p: 2) defines it as:

‘Value for the customer (VC) is any demand-side, personal perception of advantage arising

out of a customer’s association with an organization’s offering, and can occur as reduction in sacrifice; presence of benefit (perceived as either attributes or outcomes); the resultant of any weighed combination of sacrifice and benefit (determined and expressed either rationally or

intuitively); or an aggregation, over time, of any or all of these.’

In order to find out if the perceived customer value can be influenced by the service provider, Woodruff (1997) has developed a value-formation process and showed that this process includes three distinct sub-processes:

- The firm acts alone and facilitates the customer’s creation of value-in-use - The customer acts alone by integrating available resources in a process that is

close to the firm (Grönroos & Ravald, 2011). In other words, experiencing the resources and creating value-in-use for the customer itself.

- The firm and the customer act together in a merged, coordinated, dialogical and interactive process that creates value for both the customer and the firm. They co-create value (Grönroos, 2011)

The last sub-process is most comparable with the value creation in online communities. The value-formation process whereby the customer and the firm act together in order to co-create value (Grönroos, 2011) is in line with the theory of online communities.

Therefore, this research come up with the first proposition:

Proposition 1: The expected value and perceived value of the community member can be influenced by the service provider in online communities

Lapierre (1997) suggests that customer perceived value entails two stages in the judgement-forming process.

1. The creation of value during a transaction, when technical and functional quality, relational variables and image are the indicators used

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The perception of value of the customer can differ in different points at the interaction with the service provider. At first, a choice of a service provider is made. This choice is based on the value perception process involving expectations (Oliver, 1980). After that choice, an occasion occurs in which the service is consumed. A new value perception of the customer is triggered and the customer evaluates the use experience. These changes can be explained by self-perception theory (Bem, 1972), which states that individuals continually adjust their perceptions, and expectations as they acquire new information about the ‘focal behavior’, which is established by observing own behaviors compared with other’s behavior (Bhattacherjee, 2001). The adjusted perceptions then provide the basis for following behaviors. Therefore, this research assumes that this is also be the case in online communities. Once updated, post-consumption expectation, modified by the adjusted perceptions, replaces pre-consumption (initial) expectation in consumers’ cognitive memory as the basis for guiding following decision processes. The results of Bhattacherjee (2001) concludes that satisfaction is an additive function of modified expectation and confirmation. Therefore, this research assumes that expected value and perceived value of the community members can be influenced at different points in time:

Proposition 2: The expected value and perceived value of the community member can be influenced by the service provider at different points in time in online communities

Value propositions

According to the explained literature, service providers can positively influence the value balance process of the customer, but how can they do this? Vargo & Lusch (2004) have concluded in their research that firms can make value propositions. Ballantyne & Varey (2006: 334-335) define value propositions as ‘reciprocal promises of value, operating to and from suppliers and customers seeking an equitable exchange’. In other words, customers engage in a co-creating process with the supplier if they get something commensurate in return.

experience of the customer (Piercy, 1997; Buttle, 2000). This notion is nicely captured by Buttle (2000), as follows:

“The means of customer retention is via the development, communication and delivery of value propositions that meet or exceed customer expectations. Value propositions are those

multi-faceted bundles of product, service, price, communication, and interaction which customers experience in their relationship with a supplier. It is the customer’s perception of

the proposition that is important, not the supplier’s. A supplier may believe it has a service advantage; if the customer fails to agree, then this is not a source of value.”

Service providers cannot predict how each customer will perceive to the value propositions. Nevertheless, the service provider must still needs to determine whether a value proposition is likely to represent best potential value within their chosen marketplace.

Proposition 3: Value propositions can be used by the service provider to positively influence the expected value and perceived value of the community members.

Consequences of a positive perceived quality/value of the customer in an online community

From the psychology literature, Bagozzi (1992) developed a framework suggesting that consumers’ initial evaluations of value lead to emotional reactions which drive behavior. According to this view, behavioral intentions are the main determinants of consumer actions. Woodruff (1997) adopted the framework of Bagozzi (1992) of customer-perceived value and suggested that perceptions of good service quality enhance customer satisfaction and the value they attribute to the situation. Again, this positive assessment of service quality directly influences satisfaction. Furthermore, Heskett & Schlesinger (1994: 166) claim: ‘Value drives customer satisfaction’.

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weakened together with the accompanied loyalty. These behavioral intentions can predict whether the customers will remain or defect from the company (Zeithaml, Berry & Parasuraman, 1996).

Oliver (1980) says, an evaluation implies comparison of actual performance with some standards, and therefore leads to three possible outcomes of this evaluation. If the perceived value entails that performance is better than the standards, results in positive disconfirmation and as a consequence, leads to customer satisfaction. In turn, perceived performance worse than the standards creates negative disconfirmation and leads to customer dissatisfaction. According to the aforementioned expectation-confirmation theory, adopted by Oliver (1980), a high confirmation level leads to higher customer satisfaction (Figure 2). As a consequence of this obtained satisfaction, the probability that consumers intent to repurchase a product is increased. Furthermore, Anderson & Sullivan (1993, p. 160) state that satisfaction is being considered as the key to building and retaining a loyal base of long-term customers. They argue: ‘Investing in customer satisfaction is like taking out an insurance policy. If some temporary hardship befalls the firm, customers will be more likely to remain loyal’. However, in online communities, the members of a community do not buy products or do not have intentions to repurchase products. Instead, this research assumes, derived from the aforementioned theory, that a higher member satisfaction leads to more interaction in the community.

Proposition 4: Customer satisfaction enhances the recruitment of new members, and more active interaction in an online community

Deriving from all the propositions, the following conceptual model can be drawn.

Methodology

This paper tries to provide a contribution to the academic literature by providing a more practical and comprehensive understanding of the ‘Stairway to heaven’ model as proposed by Nijs (2014), focused on the value co-creating process in communities. Because this paper is providing a more practical and comprehensive understanding, the ‘theory development’ research process fits best with this research (Van Aken, Berends & van der Bij, 2012). In this research, two cases are being presented. The cases represent two online communities, initiated by a pension fund administrator, in this research called ‘PFA’.

The data of this theory development research will be collected primarily through primary data and also secondary data. This primary data will consist of semi-structured interviews with the two community managers of PFA and four active members of the community. The secondary data consists of written documents and plans of the two communities in the pre-startup phase and the time after the start-up phase. The written documents need to be interpreted. Therefore, the researcher can perform an interpretive analysis. According to Walsham (2006), interpretive analysis consists of capturing behaviors and relations within groups to understand groups and social systems.

Also, the online forums are a source of secondary data. The interaction and activity of the members of the community are measured with UCINET, which is a software program that allows the user to perform a social network analysis.

The last stage of this theory development process is the development of propositions that add value to the existing literature (van Aken, Berends & van der Bij, 2012).

Case descriptions

PFA is a pension fund administrator in the healthcare sector and this organization tries to enhance customer loyalty by creating communities. The main objective is to increase the number of clients by the referrals made by the existing clients.

Wijmantelzorgers.nl (Community A)

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the community are actively interacting with each other. However, the community itself is not growing in the number of members.

Fitwerkt24.nl (Community B)

Fitwerkt24.nl is created for people that work in the healthcare sector. These people tend to experience much stress from their work. Therefore PFA has set up a MOOC, which stands for a Massive Open Online Course. A MOOC is aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the Internet. The course includes a mindfulness-challenge, a 28 days during challenge where you need to perform activities of approximately 10 minutes every day. The objective of this challenge is to let the participants get to know new ways of coping with stress. The challenge is set up to facilitate a dialogue about vitality and among the participants. In contrast to the former community, many people signed up for the challenge, approximately 1.200 people. However, in the community there is not much interaction between the community members.

Interview community managers

The aim of these interviews is to collect primary data about the different concepts this research tries to investigate. During the interview, different questions will be asked in order to find out if influencing the perceived value of the member of the community has positive outcomes and what these positive outcomes are. According to the literature, if the perceived value is equal to the expected value, the customer is satisfied (Oliver, 1980; Zeithaml, 1988). According to the high interaction rate in the Mantelzorger community, the members seem to be satisfied, but the number of members of the community is not growing. According to the aforementioned theoretical framework, customer satisfaction leads to positive behavioral consequences which consists of the recruiting of new members due to telling others about the community and actively participate in communities. With the interview, this research tries to determine the cause(s) of this failure.

In the case of the other community, the Fitwerkt24-community, more members signed up for the community. However, these are not interacting with each other at all. With this interview, this research tries to determine the cause(s) of this failure.

Interview with community members

In order to investigate the value balance, satisfaction and loyalty of the members of the community, two members of each community are interviewed to investigate the aforementioned conceptual model in the view of the community member. In that way, two points of view are being analyzed, which is positive for the objectivity of this research.

Content analysis

The data are going to be analyzed with content analysis. The data consists of written documents about the goals, objectives, plans and preparations made by the management of the two communities, the content on the community web pages, the content that members post on the community web pages and content (newsletters, topics, etc.) that the community managers distribute among the community members. The analysis of this content is summative. A summative content analysis involves counting and comparisons, usually of keywords or content, followed by the interpretation of the underlying context (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005).

Intersubjective agreement

According to Van Aken et al. (2012), the aim of research is to strive for intersubjective agreement, Van Aken et al. (2012) define inter-subjective agreement as the consensus between the actors who deal with a research problem. In this case, the two communities deal with different problems, but there can be strived for intersubjective agreement by cross-referencing between the two cases. Thereby the most important quality criteria of research are controllability, reliability and validity (Yin, 1994)

Controllability

Controllability is a precondition for the evaluation of validity and reliability (Van Aken et al. 2012). In other words, the controllability in this research must be achieved in order to test this research on the reliability and validity check. In order to make this research controllable, every step is being documented and a detailed description of the way this research is conducted will be documented.

Reliability

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Researcher bias: The biases relating to the researcher will be eliminated by ensuring that the multiple interviews are done at the exact same way, and that the questions are not framed. Another measure to prevent researcher bias is the use of coding during the analysis of the interviews. Recording prevents the researcher from making subjective faults in the analysis. Furthermore, the interviews are held with two interviewers, the author of this paper and a colleague (S. Boskma). In that way subjective faults are also minimized because the objectivity of the interview is protected with more than one interviewer. Those subjective faults can also occur in the interpretive analysis of the written documents. To overcome this, the interpretive analysis is complemented with a social network analysis. In that way, the analysis is done from different viewpoints, which enhances the objectivity of this research. Instrument bias: The potential bias of instruments will be controlled by using multiple research instruments by doing not only interviews, but also collect written documentation and collect content from the websites of the online communities.

Respondent bias: The respondents bias will be controlled by asking more stakeholders in the value co-creating process in order to have a more objective view of the process. In order to ensure this, the community managers and the community members are being interviewed. Situation bias: the potential bias of the situation will be controlled by researching two different online communities that engage in a co-creating processes.

Validity

Results

In this section, an overview of the results from the research are given. The results are derived from the content analysis, consisting of forms of the plans, goals and evaluations of the communities made by the community management, the content of the posts of the community members interviews with the community managers and interviews with the community members. The two communities are first analyzed separately, and then they are cross referenced in order to strive for intersubjective agreement (Van Aken et al., 2012). These results will be stated with their matching proposition. The most important results regarding the research question will be stated in this section.

Wij Mantelzorgers-community

Figure 5 - Social Network Diagram (Wijmantelzorgers.nl)

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community manager is highly interactive with the community members. However, the community members are also interacting without intervention of the of the community manager.

Figure 6 - Social Network Diagram WijMantelzorgers-community including passive users

Fitwerkt24-community

Figure 7 - Social Network Diagram FItwerkt24-community

The second social network diagram is drawn with the information of the Fitwerkt24-community. Member #1 is the community manager of the Fitwerkt24-Fitwerkt24-community. Almost all lines are going through the community manager. There is little interaction between the members of the community and the members only reacting on the posts of the community manager. From the diagram can be derived that only a small number of members, 20 members out of the 619 total members, have interacted in the online community.

Proposition 1: The expected value and perceived value of the community member can be influenced by the service provider in online communities.

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This is in contrast with the Fitwerkt24-community, where the community manager only communicated the ‘Mindfulnesschallenge’, which is initially used as a tool to build a community about vitality. Therefore, the people that were approached to become a member of the Fitwerkt24-community, only expected to run through the 28 day during challenge. Both expectations of the community management and the community members is therefore not matched in the Fitwerkt24-community. When evaluating, the community manager of the Fitwerkt24-community admitted: ‘I would do it completely different the next time, because we have communicated the challenge and not the community’.

When comparing the two communities with each other, there are some main differences found. First, in the beginning stage of the Wij Mantelzorgers-community, the first members were invited to participate in an offline meeting with the community managers of wijmantelzorgers.nl to discuss the design and functionality of the website and to discuss the scope of offerings. From the interview with the two members of the Wij Mantelzorgers-community there can be concluded that the expected value of the members of this Mantelzorgers-community are matched in an early stage of the community. The management of the Wij Mantelzorgers-community contacted the people Because they were engaged in the development process, they had an influence on the decisions about design, functionality and the scope of the content on the community website.

Proposition 2: The perceived value of the community member can be influenced by the service provider at different points in time in online communities.

Figure 8 - Number of posts of Wij Mantelzorgers-community per week

In the above graph, the number of posts per week can be seen. After six weeks, the members of the community began to post, and interacting with each other. There are a few moments where the number of posts is highly increasing, in week 7, 10, 18 and 20, which indicate that the expected benefits of posting content in the online community is increased. The community manager of the Wij Mantelzorgers-community could not explain how these peaks have emerged.

What also can be derived from Figure 8 is that the number of posts over time is increased. Which shows that the community members post more content in the online community when more time is elapsed. This indicates that the value expectation and perception process is a time consuming process.

Proposition 3: Value propositions can be used by the service provider to positively influence the perceived value of the community members in an online community.

Value propositions initiated by the service provider can take many forms in an online community. This was also the case in the two communities, according to the two community managers. The next table sums up the different value propositions and the overarching method used in communicating their value propositions.

Value Propositions Method Communication

Wij

Mantelzorgers-community

Personal approach - Newsletter to individuals, - Individual phone calls - Introduction of new topics

-Offline: offline meetings arranged by the community manager.

- Special newsletter for new members

Fitwerkt24-community

Mass communication - Newsletter to individuals.

- MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) - Calendar that communicates every day’s assignment of the Mindfulnesschallenge - Introduction of new topics

- Only online interaction

Table 4 - Value Propositions initiated by community managers

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participation. This value proposition has led to 497 signups at the start of the Mindfulnesschallenge. However, this value proposition has not led to more interaction on the online forum. Therefore, the management tried to increase the expected benefits of posting on the forum, to get more members of the community to interact. The community manager says: ‘You can encourage people to interact on the forum. You can do that by approaching them personally. You can encourage them by giving them another status to involve them in a different manner by making them moderator or priority member. Besides that, what also works is give reviews on the comments of others. In that way, people that get positive reviews are also encouraged to post new comments. However, if you get negative reviews, than you will quit posting’.

Proposition 4: Community member satisfaction facilitates the recruitment of new members, and more active interaction in an online community.

Community member satisfaction

Community member A

Community member B Community

member C Personal satisfaction

level (1-10) 8,5 7,5 8,0

Provide an

explanation for this number

“I feel seen and heard, other members value my insights”

“I feel mutual equality” “Experiential learning, learning from the experiences of others”.

“Community provides information for informal carers. But this information is also taken over free by formal carers”.

“I have no insights in the goals of this project from PFA, I found that regrettable”.

“Versatile in the offer of topics”.

Does this satisfaction leads you to interact more in the

community?

“For sure, I respond easily and I am also curious to the

contribution of others”

“When I am participating in something, I will always do that as careful as possible, that has nothing to do with my satisfaction”

“Sometimes I post something,

sometimes I am being asked to do that”

Does this satisfaction leads you to asking others to become a member?

“Yes, I frequently post the community on social media”.

“I tell people in my

environment what I do in the community. But many of those people are no informal carer, so I am not encouraging them to be part of the

community”.

“No, to be honest I do not have the need to do that”

Table 5 - Member satisfaction explained by community members of the WijMantelzorgers-community

satisfaction however are diverging, which means that the members are perceiving the satisfaction differently.

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In the Fitwerkt24-community, the community manager admitted that they did not use any tools to measure the satisfaction. And with the absence of offline meetings with a group of community members, no informal assessments of the member satisfaction could be made. In the interview the community manager of the Fitwerkt24-community admits: ‘I do not think that the people felt part of a group. The community that is built around the Mindfulnesschallenge, has manifested in the offline workplace, or in groups of friends.’ The community manager also thinks that satisfied members are inclined to interact on the forum, but that there needs to be encouragement: ‘You need to keep them encouraging to interact. If we do not ask them, “can you react in this topic?”, I think that the community is going to die in the beginning because the people need to find their role in the community, they need to get familiar and it needs to get in their system. And that takes much time’. The community manager admits that the management tried to influence the interaction between the community members. That can be confirmed with the social network diagram of the Fitwerkt24-community, where the community manager is the ‘spider in the communication network’.

Furthermore she admits: ‘Members who are satisfied, are inclined to speak of the community in their personal environment. On the other hand, some members try to keep the community for themselves because they have their own spot in the community.’ This complements the arguments of the community manager of the Wij Mantelzorgers-community, because the informal caregiving is a personal, sensitive theme, the members of the community are not feeling safe in talking about the community in their direct environment. Furthermore, members of a community feel happy and safe with their own place in the community, that can also be a reason not to tell people in their own environment.

Conclusions & Discussion

This section consists of two parts. The first part will provide the conclusions about the proposed propositions as derived from the aforementioned results. In order to do this, the results are compared with existing literature. With the conclusions, an answer is given on the research question and provides some managerial implications. This research ends with the study’s limitations and directions for further research.

Conclusions

P1: The expected and perceived value of the community member can be influenced by the service provider in online communities.

According to the results of the interviews with both community members, the perceived value can be influenced by the service provider. According to the expectation-confirmation theory (Oliver, 1980) , the customer is satisfied when the expectation value is at least as high as the perceived value. The service provider of the online community can match their expectations with the expectations of the community members. When those expectations are made clear by the community members, the community manager knows what the expectations are and consequently can undertake actions to live up to those expectations. Furthermore, the service provider can establish a dialogue with the community members to shape the expectations of the community member.

Because of this influence, the community members had a sense of ownership at the start of the Wij Mantelzorgers-community. When community members experience a sense of ownership, they feel responsible for the well-being of the community and they also wish to grow and make an impact on the world.

Furthermore, expected value can also be increased otherwise. Because expected value is mostly dependable on the expected benefits that one believes it would return from participation in a community. From the interview there can be concluded that the service provider can increase the perception of value for the customer. The service provider has the ability to increase the benefits that a member of the community can perceive.

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From the existing literature can be concluded that perceptions of value can change over time (Flint, Woodruff & Gardial, 2002). According to Figure 8, there are a few moments where the number of posts is highly increasing. Expected benefits can therefore be increased at different points in time. People post on a forum because they believe the expected benefits will be greater than the costs of posting content on a forum. However, no clear evidence is found to conclude that this increase in the number of posts is the consequence of measures of the service provider.

P3: Value propositions can be used by the service provider to positively influence the expected value and perceived value of the community members in online communities.

Value propositions can be used in order to influence the member’s perceived value. The results show that many tools can be used in order to communicate a value proposition in an online community. This is in line with the definition of a value proposition of Buttle (2000) which states that: ‘Value propositions are those multi-faceted bundles of product, service, price, communication, and interaction which customers experience in their relationship with a supplier.’ In online communities, according to the results, this definition can be reduced. Value propositions in online communities can be defined as those multi-faceted bundles of service, communication and interaction which customers experience in their relationship with a service provider.

P4: Community member satisfaction facilitates the recruitment of new members, and more active interaction in an online community.

not growing in number of members but the content that is interacted between the community members is going to be discussed in greater depth.

Furthermore, the results of the interviews with the community members also indicate that the high interaction in the online community leads to higher member satisfaction. In that way, it could also indicate that there exists a reverse causality of member satisfaction and more interaction in online communities.

Further conclusions

The fundament to become a self-organizing community, is that the members of the community take action at first. Therefore, the members need to interact with each other and need to convince other people to become part of the movement. According to the social network diagram of the Wij Mantelzorgers–community, there can be derived that this community is self-organizing. The community manager of the Wij Mantelzorgers-community does not have to intervene in order to start a generative dialogue. In the Fitwerkt24-community, the community manager always starts a topic and a small part of the community members reacts on the introduced topic. Therefore, the community manager of the Fitwerkt24-community acts like a ‘spider’ in the communication web. In order to be self-organizing, the members need to initiate the topics themselves. The community manager can encourage or facilitate this, but should not act like the spider as described above.

Theoretical implications

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The statement of Kowalkowski (2011) that value is considered to be context-specific and dynamically changing is therefore complemented by this research. Also, there can be concluded that the perceptions of value of the community members may change over time (Flint, Woodruff & Gardial, 2002). From the theoretical framework section, it can be derived that the established rules, norms and beliefs tend to generate shared perceptions (Tripsas & Gavetti, 2000). From this research however, no evidence is found to assume that the perceptions of value of the community members are shared.

Managerial implications

- Do not become a ‘spider’. In order to make an online community self-organizing, the community manager, or the moderator should intervene as little as possible in the forum of the community. The management can however encourage the community members to interact. If the management knows what the members value, they can act upon it to make the members more interactive.

- Begin with a small group in order to match expectations. Stay consistent in communicating value propositions. In order to match expectations, a two-way dialogue between the community member and the service provider is recommended. Therefore it is more doable when beginning with a small group of community members in order to steer and match the expectations of the members. The adaptive tension engine will establish a ‘butterfly effect’ (Nijs, 2014) where the small community can become bigger as a consequence of more people joining the movement.

- Always give the first members an opportunity to engage in the development process and give them a sense of ownership. In order to become self-organizing, the service provider should lower their participation and engagement in the community to a minimum in order to establish a generative dialogue between the community members. When the community members experience a sense of ownership, they have the opportunity to start a dialogue of their own.

communicating value propositions. In that way, the expectations of the community members will not fluctuate and will not lead to disconfirmation.

-Higher member satisfaction and more interaction in the online community are self-reinforcing. In other words, if members are satisfied, they tend to interact more in the online community, and more interaction leads to a higher satisfaction of community members.

Limitations & directions for further research

Some limitations need to be addressed regarding this research. First, only two cases are analyzed, which makes the generalizability of this research limited. More research is needed in order to generalize the findings of this research. Also, the cases are restrained in terms of the sector where this research is conducted. The healthcare sector, in particular the informal caregiving, is a very personal and private subject and therefore people can be restrained to talk about their private situation in online communities.

Not all the data described in the data collection of the methodology section could be collected. The members of the Fitwerkt24-community did not respond to the questionnaire. Therefore, there is a lack of objectivity concerning the case of the Fitwerkt24-community because the only evidence is derived from the interview with the community manager of the Fitwerkt24-community and (too) limited content of the members on the online forum of the Fitwerkt24-community. Furthermore, the data collection primary exists of interviews with the community managers and community members, content of the community websites and formal document of the management of the communities. The analysis of this data consists mainly out of the interpretation of the researchers. Although the objectivity of the research is very important to preserve the reliability of this research and is accounted for in this study, quantitative studies about the value balance process of community members can help to overcome this in order to generalize the results of this research.

Further research

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community, and when are the community members more inclined to restrain from telling other about it in order to keep the community for itself?

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Appendices

Appendix A – Transcript interview community manager WijMantelzorgers

Transcript interview community manager Wij Mantelzorgers

S = interviewer C = interviewer

G = interviewee – community manager Wij Mantelzorgers S: Hoe is de community ontstaan (opgezet)?