Customer.Community

The Internet is the world's largest marketplace and provides businesses with the ability to interact with their market in a much more direct and tailored way than ever before. Customer.Community takes a new look at online communities as a source of value for both customers and businesses; it shows how to build an online "customer community" that gives customers a reason to stay loyal. Drew Banks and Kim Daus explain exactly what the customer community is and then reveal the tenets that will make it strong: sustainability, size and scalability, social connectivity, and soul. The authors show how to "communitize" commerce, build a solid base of repeat customers, and create value for the customer, and they explain how to manage a site in a cost-effective way. Customer.Community will help cultivate a mind-set to leverage the collective, untapped power of your customer base.

Foreword: The Right Thing to Do (Scott Cook). Preface. Acknowledgments. Introduction: The Customer-Community. Is Commerce Antithetical to Online Community? Part One: Why Customer-Community? 1. The Business Case. How Customer-Communities Advance. Your Business Goals. 2. The Customer Case. E-Commerce Experiences That Span. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: Individual, Social, and Spiritual. Part Two: Customer-Community Basics. 3. Twelve Principles for Building Community. The Foundation for Strong Communities. 4. Customer-Community Profiles. Ten Types and Thirty-Five Examples of Customer-Communities and Their Defining Characteristics. 5. Growing Your Community. Overcoming the Inherent Challenges of Large-Scale Communities. 6. Understanding Community Bonds. Discovering the Intrinsic Bonds Within Your Customer Base. Part Three: Customer-Community and the Bottom Line. 7. Creating Value from Customer-Communities. Sixteen Bottom-Line Possibilities. 8. Organizational Issues and Roles. Aligning Strategy, Structure, Communication, and Leadership. 9. Before You Start. Ten Questions to Help You Think Through the Issues. Afterword: Turning Customer-Communities into Gold, Harry Potter Style (Michael Lowenstein). Notes. Index. The Authors.