Economics of Virtual Communities: The Case of the Berlin Stock Exchange

vom Brocke J; Sonnenberg C; Lattemann C; Stieglitz S

Abstract
The use of social software and virtual community platforms in particular promises to offer opportunities for customer integration into a company's value adding activities. Therefore, ideas and innovations generated by members of a virtual community can be analyzed and used in order to enhance the quality of products and services. However, evaluating economic consequences associated with the set-up, operation and maintenance of virtual communities on a quantitative basis has widely been neglected in social network research. Accordingly, no framework for valuation of web 2.0 applications has been established as yet. Thus, the objective of this paper is therefore to develop a measurement framework for the financial performance of a virtual community platform reflecting specific economic conditions relevant to a certain situation. The measurement framework is then applied to a real life example of the Berlin Stock Exchange.

Keywords
Virtual community; financial performance; measurement framework; capital budgeting; total costs of ownership; social software