Community Participation Boosts Online Spending 54%
Both active community "enthusiasts" and the quieter "lurkers" upped their spending on eBay Germany once they became involved in the site's customer communities, researchers Rene Algesheimer and Paul Dholakia reported in their November 2006 Harvard Business Review article, titled "Do Customer Communities Pay Off?" For their study, a randomly selected portion of eBay Germany customers were invited to participate in eBay's customer communities (those not invited served as the control group).
Research findings:
* Online-community participants bid twice as often on eBay as members of the control group, won up to 25% more auctions, and paid prices that were as much as 24% higher.
* Enthusiasts listed up to four times as many items for sale and earned up to six times as much in monthly sales revenues as control users.
* Compared to the control group, nearly 10 times as many lurkers (56.1%) and enthusiasts (54.1%) started selling after they joined/participated in customer communities.
* Increased buying and selling activity of community members generated approximately 56% more sales for the duration of the research.
