Communities of Commerce: Building Internet Business Communities to Accelerate Growth, Minimize Risk, and Increase Customer Loyalty

Communities of commerce are the primary drivers of online business today, and this groundbreaking book provides the first complete overview of the phenomenon. The authors demonstrate why the best communities, including Salon, Yahoo Finance, and iVillage, are working so well, and how managers and executives can get in on this future economic wave. Based on the authors' study, Communities of Commerce features: How commerce communities came to be and what influenced their success Advice on how business leaders can design, develop, and execute a business strategy Case studies of what works and what doesn't It has always been human nature for us to bond with others sharing common goals and problems and thus create communities. This is proving to be especially true in the realm of online business.

Everything you need to know about online business communities and how to profit from them

"If you want a sweeping analysis of what underlies the new economy, read this book. Its prose is accessible; its coverage is sweeping."

­­John Seely Brown, Chief Scientist at Xerox, author of The Social Life of Information

"Bressler and Grandtham got it! Communities of Commerce is a well-written guide to success in the Internet-run new economy...This book is a must read for anyone struggling with shifting from bricks and mortar to a new business model; or for those start-ups who have a great idea but don't know how to make money or build a brand."

­­Blair LaCorte, Senior Vice President, VerticalNet

The Internet is home to countless communities of every stripe. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that, if not for the insatiable human need to bond with others who share our interests and goals, there would be no Internet, no World Wide Web, and no e-commerce. So, it isn't any wonder that today's most successful, fastest-growing e-businesses are those that have developed sophisticated strategies for fully exploiting the Internet's unprecedented power to connect people and resources without regard to space and time. Combining timeless principles of community, such as collaboration, involvement, and resource sharing, with powerful new Web marketing, communications, and data warehousing technologies, these "communities of commerce" are much more than simply online shopping malls, as some skeptics claim; they represent a revolutionary new form of business entity supremely well adapted to a volatile, hyper competitive global economy.

In Communities of Commerce, experts Stacey Bressler and Charles Grantham offer us our first detailed look at communities of commerce and how they are transforming the nature of competition both on and off the Internet. They explore the forces that precipitated the emergence of communities of commerce, and explain why businesses that follow the community of commerce business model­­including Cisco, Yahoo!, Amazon.com, iVillage, VerticalNet, Lands End, MarthaStewart.com , and other top e-shops­­succeed so spectacularly where so many online businesses fail. Most importantly, they show you how a well-designed community of commerce strategy can help your company to achieve record growth and profits, while significantly cutting operating costs and minimizing risks.

Drawing on their extensive first-hand experience as well as interviews conducted with managers at several top e-businesses, Bressler and Grantham develop a rigorous community of commerce business model and provide a complete blueprint for designing, developing, assessing, and managing communities of commerce. With the help of numerous case studies that vividly illustrate what works and what doesn't, they describe the range of structural, cultural, and business processes entailed in adapting the community of commerce paradigm, and they provide practical pointers on such key issues as choosing partners for utmost strategic advantage; collaborating to build brands and customer loyalty; integrating product or service development; collaborative supply chain management; and much more.

The first guide to understanding and taking advantage of one of the primary drivers of online business today, Communities of Commerce is must reading for savvy managers who understand that in the years ahead, every business will be an e-business.