THE ROLE PLAYED BY COMMUNITY IN THE RELATIONSHIP FIRM-CUSTOMER: THE ONLINE EXPERT INVESTMENT COMMUNITIES

Abstract

The present study starts from several evolutionary dynamics of post-modern society developed in the sociological and psychosociological literature, concerning the role of individual as a part of social groups. The paper aims at analyzing the investor online community, a particular kind of community in which investors/members communicate and build relationships between them and with the firm. From a literature review, it emerges that these relationships could have as main purpose the exchange (such as the consumer and the firm are business partners) or show a communal goal (such as that between family members and friends). The expert investment communities are analysed thanks to a theoretical framework that shows different categories of community members. The role of communities seems particularly significant as regards as “attractiveness”, which is about mutual compatibility between the company and the consumer/investor. Companies need to know how to communicate with these communities in order to get valuable feedback. For this reason, the paper focuses on the main implications of the investment relations management, considering the fact that they are strongly influenced by the increasing importance of interpersonal communication in web 2.0. Moreover, the paper suggests that firms could manage investor empowerment thanks to social web and communities. Consequently, they have to understand: how these online worlds work, how the investors use them, and how their employment could help them to put financial decision into practice. Besides, thanks to social web, firms could manage a financial communication more targeted and efficient. Actually, firm exploitation of communities not only have to result in changing communication channel, but it could create contents for a new kind of users.