Communities of Commerce: Building Internet Business Communities to Accelerate Growth, Minimize Risks and Increase Customer Loyalty (CommerceNet Press Series) Book

Connect and collaborate--in our Internet age, these two words have taken on a whole new meaning. What they refer to and describe, the essence of community, is the much-discussed and increasingly important subject that authors Stacey Bressler and Charles Grantham have set out to explore in depth in Communities of Commerce.Beginning with a look at the importance of community in our lives, Bressler and Grantham examine what exactly that notion has come to mean. They compare today's exploding pace of change with the revolution in knowledge expansion and exchange that stemmed from Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in the mid-15th century. More than simply enabling information to be shared by a greater number of people, the printing press led, ultimately, to a change in how humankind viewed itself. Even more profoundly (and much more rapidly), the Internet has not only increased and expanded our ability to connect with each other, it is entirely transforming our notions of time, space, relationships, and community. Believing that the "primary benefit of the Internet is that it gives people the ability to connect and be more closely related to others who share their purpose," the authors illustrate how companies can most effectively relate this benefit to their business models. They discuss the factors that are driving and pulling businesses toward online communities of commerce as well as the transformation this requires, and provide practical guidance on how to build and sustain effective communities. If organised better, this book could have been shorter and more hard-hitting; however, the authors have done a good job in using interesting (and refreshingly uncommon) case studies to demonstrate the practical importance of an otherwise nebulous concept. --S Ketchum, Amazon.comRead More