Modeling Interactivity in a B2B Web-Based Community

Advances in information and communication technologies have given impetus to Web-based Community (WBC) as a business enabler in the virtual marketplace. A WBC is intentionally designed to promote human interaction and facilitates a customer-driven e-commerce. WBC becomes economically interesting with the increasing size of the community where members are active participants in promoting the aspirations of the community. One of the main problems associated with the increasing size of a WBC is determining the contributions of members in sustaining the community's interactivity. The use of database logs to track users activities in a WBC does not provide a clear picture of users' interactivity level in real time. In this paper, we design a B2B Web-based community interactivity life cycle to understand the dynamics of the community. We present an interactivity model that dynamically measures the contributions of members of the community, and also determines the community's interactivity level. We use simulation results to evaluate the model under various conditions.