Together we create value: An Netnographic study of Threadless online community

Abstract

<p>The purpose of this current study is to investigate the value co-creation process in an online community for crowdsourcing participants. Specifically, this study, through observation and analysis of one of the forums in Threadless, seeks to (a) identify discussion contents that create the social, intellectual, and cultural value in the community by applying Seraj's (2012) framework; and to (b) explore the information exchange patterns of these three types of content among the forum members. This study confirmed value creation in online communities proposed in Seraj's three-value framework (2012) and showed that the three values created in Threadless were often interrelated to each other. The interactions among the three types of value was often observed in the intellectual exchange process.</p>