Understanding factors of disengagement within a virtual community: an exploratory study

Abstract

Social media intelligence is a strategic knowledge source for decision and performance for firms, knowledge from customers, products and the market. From both information systems (IS) and marketing perspectives, an important issue is the understanding of the main factors that lead to disengagement of members in social media platforms or virtual communities. If engagement has been well studied, disengagement has been almost ignored. A literature review shows that so far only two studies have examined disengagement in a virtual community context. Given that such a major aspect of online firms’ success has so far been ignored, the following question is posed: what are the factors of disengagement within a virtual community? In order to answer the research question, we conducted a survey-based empirical study on actual members of virtual communities. We used component-based Partial Least Squares (PLS) method to analyse the 268 answers. Our results show that a lack of individual valorisation and affection influences disengagement within virtual communities. We also identified that a lack of links between the brand and the community members influences disengagement.