Resumen
Business use of virtual communities (VCs) is a contemporary and fast-growing internet phenomenon. Web 2.0 technologies enable easy creation, management, and measurement of VCs using extgernal or proprietary hosted platforms. Some marketers, however, may be violating several hallmarks of sound goal, customer and outcome centric strategies. Perhaps this is due to a near void in academic business literature regarding VC-centric goal and assessment methods. We address these issues and provide basic explanations of VCs, their management, and VC-centric goals and metrics for interested marketers, other business disciplines, academics and practitioners who otherwise may not be familiar with this area. Netnography-based social representation reserach as an assessment metric is also emphasized.