Active participation in business-to-business online communities: a conceptual framework

Abstract

Online communities (OCs) have been studied for the past several decades by many scholars from different disciplines and backgrounds. It is found that the success of an OC largely depends on its members’ participation and contribution behaviour. While significant research has examined the factors affecting participation in various OC types ranging from online communities of practice to online social networking sites, little research has focused on Business-to-Business (B2B) OCs. Hence, the primarily aim of this paper is to provide some understanding of the most important factors affecting active participation in B2B OCs. Towards achieving this goal, this study proposed a theoretical framework underpinned by two well-known theories: Social Exchange Theory (SET) and Uses and Gratification theory (U&G). This study contributes to the OC literature by defining and classifying online business communities and proposes a theoretical model to address active participation in B2B OC. This is a theoretical study and its application has not been tested on a particular community, the next step therefore is to conduct future studies to empirically test the framework with B2B OCs members.