Home Articles Abstract
Research Article

Internet Community Service and E-Value Creation Strategy: A Structural Equation Model Analysis

Kim, Gyesu

Published: January 2005 · Vol. 34 No. 4 · pp. 1101-1123
Full Text

Abstract

Recently, the personal mini-homepage market has experienced rapid growth as a relationship-strengthening tool similar in nature to offline networks. Sites lacking competitiveness face the harsh reality of being driven out of the market. In the scale-free network world, the laws of growth and preferential attachment apply. The emergence of mini-homepages and blogs has exerted significant influence on politics, society, and corporate management, among other areas. Companies providing internet community services are currently focusing on strengthening competitiveness through differentiated service offerings. Accordingly, this study sought to verify, through a causal analysis model, the relationships among service quality factors, e-loyalty, and e-value creation elements in internet communities (personal mini-homepages), a topic of great interest in the information age of the 21st century. Based on an analysis of a sample of 148 respondents, the results showed that customer service and service assortment, as service quality factors of personal homepages, had a positive effect on e-loyalty, whereas requirement fulfillment and ease of use were not statistically significant. An increase in e-loyalty was found to have a positive effect on both word-of-mouth and willingness to pay. Additionally, service assortment was found to have a direct and significant effect on word-of-mouth.
Keywords: e-가치창출미니홈피선호적 연결성장인과분석모형