Consequences of consumer interactions in virtual community

Social networking has become the main online platform not only to Generation Y cohorts, but also to other Internet user groups including Generation X and Baby Boomers. This not only affecting the way Internet users conducts their daily life; it also affects marketers (online and offline) in terms of their marketing practices. Especially to online marketers, this should be seen as a huge opportunity to revamp and revisit their marketing strategies in line with the changes that is happening. This research looks into the consequences of consumers' participation in online communities or specifically in product-specific online forums. It investigates whether the participation in online community could influence consumers' consumption-related behaviors such as spreading online and offline word of mouth. An online survey was conducted on 289 users of online communities adopting convenience sampling technique. Six independent variables were regressed against online and offline word of mouth behavior. Results show that perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, social influence and group norms positively affects online word of mouth behavior whereas online perceived usefulness and group norms affect the offline word of mouth behavior.