关键词: 在线商人社区, 赋能, 社区融入, 社会交互

Abstract:     In recent decades, the number of B2B platforms connecting suppliers and buyers has dramatically increased. However, doing business online in general and on B2B platforms specifically is not without challenges. Unlike B2B transactions in the offline context, in which business partners become familiar through face-to-face contacts, online B2B transactions in the e-market tend to be carried out by dyads who have little experience cooperating. And sellers can hardly attract potential buyers with reputation accumulated in offline market. Therefore, greater demands were being placed on sellers′ capabilities of online marketing. As the micro-foundation of marketing capability, sales people and their skills of online marketing play key roles in the success of online business growth. However, due to the lack of both knowledge and experience in online marketing, it is difficult for enterprises, especially SMEs to train their sales people to sell effectively online.
   Online B2B communities consist of business entities that share information through an online setting. Although prior studies propose that social media facilitate the empowerment of individuals and groups, they mainly focused on the empowerment of the bottom of the society, disabled people, patients and employees. And studies on online B2B communities have mostly focused on how the host of community benefitted from the community. Under this circumstance, how sales people empowered to improve their marketing capabilities by participating in online B2B communities have rarely been investigated.
    This study tries to bridge this knowledge gap by exploring how sales people empowered to improve their marketing capabilities by participating in online B2B communities. Specifically, we consider the following research questions. (1) What are the essence and components of empowerment of sales people based on online B2B communities? (2) What are the antecedents of empowerment based on online B2B communities and how these antecedents influence empowerment of sales people? In this research, we adopt netnography method to obtain data from real online B2B communities through online observation and in-depth interviews, and conduct grounded analysis on qualitative data. 
    The results indicate that sales people are empowered through participation in online business communities, which help them to increase their sales performance. The empowerment of sales people includes improvements in job- related knowledge and skills, psychological state and control over work. The antecedents of community-based empowerment include the specialization and salience of message posted in the community, and the social presence of social interaction and social atmosphere in the community. And these antecedents as well as the incentive of community host influence the empowerment effect through the community members′ engagement with the community and other members.
    This study has several main theoretical contributions. First, it reveals the mechanism of the empowerment effect of business community on its members and contribute to the literature on B2B online communities. Second, this study uncovers the components, antecedents and realization of empowerment based on online B2B communities. In extant literature, the definition and components of empowerment varies according to the research context, and previous studies have mostly focused on the outcome of empowerment. We examine how community members′ efforts affect the realization of empowerment, thereby contributing to the literature on empowerment. Third, this study investigates the role of personal social interaction of business people. Prior studies have mainly focused on formal interactions between customers and suppliers in B2B relationships, we concentrate on informal social interactions among peer business people, thus extending the research on business networking and friendships. This study also provides managerial implications for both members and host of online communities.

Key words: online business community, empowerment, community engagement, social interaction