IBIMA Publishing Journal of Internet Social Networking & Virtual Communities http://www.ibimapublishing.com/journals/JISNVC/jisnvc.html Vol. 2015 (2015), Article ID 888628, 11 pages DOI: 10.5171/2015.888628 Research Article Perceived Quality of a Virtual Community and Its Components: An Exploratory Investigation Leila Othmani and Néji Bouslama University of Tunis El Manar, Faculty of Economics and, management of Tunis, Tunisia Correspondence should be addressed to: Leila Othmani; [email protected] Received date: 6 March 2014; Accepted date: 18 July 2014; Published date: 24 June 2015 Academic Editor: Carlos Rompante da Cunha Copyright © 2015. Leila Othmani and Néji Bouslama. Distributed under Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 Abstract The increasing use of the virtual communities encourages involvement in understanding its characteristics. The perceived quality of the website was a major concern of web marketer’s. Given the differences between the traditional websites and the virtual communities, also the speedy maturation of information engineering, mechanisms of perception of quality has also evolved. This research identifies the specificities of perceived quality of virtual communities. Through an exploratory qualitative study in two stages we were able to extract five dimensions. Keywords: virtual communities, perceived quality, social networking. Introduction mouth and potential (Bickart & Schindler, 2001) and also to know the market trends Virtual communities have become (Bickart & Schindler, 2001) or even to increasingly popular involving several increase traffic in an e-commerce site individuals of different cultures and (Bughin and Hagel, 2000). civilizations. The growing rise of the use of new information technology has eliminated It should be noted that previous studies on the distance between people (wind and virtual communities have focused on Mahaja, 2002). Virtual communities are understanding the nature of the considered as an essential component of participation and motivation of participants modern society, whether in the privacy of (Lee et al 2003. Ridings et al 2004. ). Thus, individuals or even in the activities of for this study we assume that a virtual organizations. community should be appreciated by the users for it to be beneficial. In the same context, "community manager" shall ensure Indeed, the rapid development of these the development of the quality of its communities has also influenced the community to improve the competitiveness behavior of users by allowing them to build of the company. To do this, it is important to a richer experience; companies can take know the dimensions of the quality of a advantage of virtual communities to virtual community. increase sales (Brown, Tilton and Woodside, 2002) to benefit from positive word -of- _____________ Cite this Article as : Leila Othmani and Néji Bouslama (2015), " Perceived Quality of a Virtual Community and Its Components: An Exploratory Investigation ," Journal of Internet Social Networking & Virtual Communities, Vol. 2015 (2015), Article ID 888628, DOI: 10.5171/2015. 888628 Journal of Internet Social Networking & Virtual Communities 2 Certainly, a good knowledge of the through electronic means such as an mechanisms of virtual communities is Internet network without physical presence crucial for the integration of members; their (Kardaras et al. 2003). motivation and engagement in discussions A virtual community is a new commercial (Maclaran and Catterall, 2002). means of communication for a company to interact with its customers connected (Hsiu- The objective of this study is to determine Fen, 2007). the dimensions of the quality of a virtual community. The Concept of Perceived Quality. : We also try to provide a guide to help Perceived quality can be defined as the administrators of a virtual community to customer's perception of the overall quality optimize the distinctive quality of their of a good or as the superiority of a product communities. or service on the trend of customer’s choice (Aaker, 2011). Perceived quality is thus a Definitions of Virtual Communities general and intangible sense and it is not necessarily based on the knowledge of the Admittedly, the study of virtual client on the mundane features. communities is a complex task since it is a multi- facet concept, multi hardly Giordano (2006) defines it as " all sensitive controllable factors (Michail. K 2004). The and sensory impressions, as well as clues term "virtual community" is defined as an that seduce and attract attention at first aggregation that emerges in cyberspace glance interpreted by the client as a promise when there is a combination of a sufficient of quality giving him confidence, and which number of members capable of performing satisfies him" (Giordano, 2006). discussions, share feelings enough to form webs of personal relationships (Rheingold, In addition, the perceived quality is a 1993). For their part, Fernback and subjective judgment constructed in the Thompson (1995) defined it as the set of mind of the user and it is him who virtual social relationships forged in determines its value where each dimension cyberspace through repeated contact of a product or service may have a different without spatio- temporal boundaries and perception of quality (Yu et al. 2005) symbolically delineated by topic of interest community. After these first definitions, When it comes to the perceived quality of a many authors have proposed other website, one can notice a lot of research definitions. According to Balasubramanian showing that the concept is and Mahajan (2001), a virtual community is multidimensional (Grose et al 1998. Vora , a cyberspace allowing communication and 1998; Ranganathan and Ganapathy , 2002; interaction of participants. Another sizeable Moustakis et al. 2004). The majority of defined by Lee et al (2003): a virtual these studies show that the perceived community is defined as a group of quality varies with the user’s expectations individuals or business partners who (Parasuraman et al, 1985. Gattorna and interact around a common interest where Walters, 1996). the interaction is partially or fully performed by electronic means. It is guided The Dimensions of the Perceived Quality by some protocols or a few standards. of a Website. : A more recent definition is that proposed by Describing and improving the quality of Mata and Quesada (2014). This definition electronic services have created a number considers the virtual communities as groups of approaches that must be measured in of persons who share for a common goals terms of different dimensions often and interests and interact and communicate considerably relative to each other. through the Internet. Also, a virtual community can be defined as a group of individuals who share knowledge _______________ Leila Othmani and Néji Bouslama (2015), Journal of Internet Social Networking & Virtual Communities, DOI: 10.5171/2015.888628 3 Journal of Internet Social Networking & Virtual Communities WebQualTM (2000) exploratory study is essential to develop the quality dimensions of a virtual community This scale is created by (Loiacono et al. ) as perceived by consumers, and to Perrien (2000), according to this scale of Al (1984), " qualitative approach sees the measurement, the quality of a website is composed of twelve dimensions which are: 1 Quality of information, interaction, trust, individual as a complex entity , difficult to response time, ease of use, design, quantify , that through his own experiences simplicity, clarity, innovation, creativity, will shape his environment with all the emotional aspect, the consistency of the subjectivity inherent in understanding and image, the completeness of the online interpreting the events as " exploratory service and utility relative. approach is generally a preamble to a quantitative research . " (Perrien et al., WebQual (2001) 1984) According to Barnes and Vidgen, the The methods used in the qualitative phase concept of perceived quality online was aimed to let the interviewees speak freely designed on the basis of the communication; on specific topics in order to obtain interactions and perceptions based on users maximum information. To obtain this (Barnes and Vidgen 2001). The concept of information necessary for marketing the quality perceived by the consumer line activities, three main types of collections are has three dimensions: the quality of available for qualitative research which are: information in the site, the quality of individual interviews (unstructured, semi - interaction and visual quality of the website. structured), projective tests (individual or group) and group meetings. SITEQUAL (2001) As part of this research, the methodology is The SITEQUAL was developed by Yoo and a qualitative study in two phases based on Donthu (2001) to measure the perception of two different types of collections: the quality perceived by consumers. • A group meeting According to this study; the concept of perceived quality has four dimensions. • A semi-structured individual interview These are: ease of use, availability of series information, the site appearance (color, creativity...) interactivity with consumers Discussion Groups and the timeliness of responses, and finally safety. Focus groups were used to provide data for the development of a conceptual model of ETAILQ (2003) website quality. Flick (1998) and Neuman (1997) suggested that focus groups are Wolfinbarger and Gilly (2003) consider that useful in exploratory research or to the perceived quality