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[8] 2002 e-business-strategies-for-virtual-organizations

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Creating <strong>virtual</strong> cultures <strong>for</strong> global online communities<br />

1000 items and attracted more than 2 million visitors (Hong<br />

Kong Trade Development Centre 1999).<br />

In the second half of 1999 it expanded its product line<br />

significantly and invested heavily in advertising in the US<br />

market to build up its brand name there. Its aim was to build a<br />

pop-culture community around its website. It already published<br />

a weekly magazine on toys, comics and movies at its site, and<br />

launched an auction market <strong>for</strong> collectible toys/action figures in<br />

quarter three of 1999.<br />

By November 1999 the site had become one of the web’s premier<br />

action entertainment portals with over 65 000 toys, action<br />

figures, video games and anime titles in stock, daily entertainment<br />

news and original episodic anime.<br />

According to NCompassLabs:<br />

Actionace.com is raising the online experience to a new level –<br />

combining original content, a passionate community and e-commerce<br />

to create an all-inclusive action entertainment experience. (NCompass-<br />

Labs 1999)<br />

In the second quarter of 2000 ActionAce launched its new<br />

‘NeoGlyphix’ service which provided:<br />

exciting webisodic animated shows that play through your PC or MAC<br />

on Netscape and Explorer, using the Macromedia Flash plug-in.<br />

They plan to introduce online gaming in the summer of 2000 so<br />

that <strong>virtual</strong> community members can game together over the<br />

Internet.<br />

When one visits the ActionAce portal, and the services that lie<br />

behind, it creates an experience more like visiting a club than a<br />

retail outlet.<br />

11.9 Global communities<br />

The increasingly widespread use of the Internet means that<br />

corporations can no longer ‘control’ the in<strong>for</strong>mation and<br />

knowledge available to their customers as was shown by the<br />

Pentium fiasco. Instead corporations should be leveraging the<br />

knowledge their customers possess in order to co-create value<br />

<strong>for</strong> the wider community as well as the organization.<br />

The ICT required to do this is now readily available. Whether or<br />

not companies will make use of this technology to create their<br />

own customer communities remains to be seen.<br />

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