Toward an Integrated Framework for Assessing Website Performance: Depending on Presence of Virtual Community

Abstract

As the Internet establishes and reinforces connections between people, the virtual community is becoming a feasible business model. We believe that both customers and the vendors organizing the virtual community benefit from it. Despite the explosive growth of virtual communities on the Internet, empirical research has focused on studying the issues related to characteristics of the virtual community. The objective of this study is to enhance understanding about virtual communities as an e-business model that integrates interactivity of virtual community and quality of web systems and to empirically validate their effect on the performance of websites. This study intends to answer the following questions: 1) How does website quality affect website performance?, 2) Does interactivity in virtual community affect performance of website?, 3) How do online vendors successfully manage their virtual communities as a business model?