by Gregorius Agung Wicaksana^[1], Kent Business School, University of Kent; Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia

 

Abstract

An e-marketplace is a virtual marketplace on the internet where people can do business. This kind of website is commonly called e-commerce. E-marketplaces could enable e-commerce companies to create online communities that connect users to do specific transactions (Hagel and Armstrong, 1997: 49). This article aims to study how e-marketplaces can be established in developing countries, particularly in Indonesia, which is the biggest archipelagic country in the world and is populated by 245 million people. One of the most popular websites in Indonesia is Kaskus.co.id. It began with an internet forum and then became an online community that makes users feel a built-in sense of ownership. As time went by, Kaskus reshaped the business model into an e-commerce company and now has become the biggest e-marketplace in Indonesia. This research uses several instruments; WebQual 2.0 (Barnes and Vidgen, 2001) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 according to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendations to analyse the website's interface, performance and accessibility. Relating to the e-commerce business point of view, this research uses Value Creation model in E-business and NICE design themes methodology (Amit and Zott, 2001, 2010).

Keywords: Online forum, Online community, Virtual reputation, C2C, market, e-marketplace

Introduction

Adityarani (2011) stated that nowadays, internet trends in Indonesia are triggered by community movement. Starting in 1998, the previous Indonesian government regime initiated political changes that resulted in new reformed governance; this allowed people to speak and express their ideas freely (Adityarani, 2011). According to MarkPlus Insight (2012), the total number of internet users in Indonesia in the third quarter of 2012 reached 61.08 million. This is an increase of more than 10% compared to 2011. With a total population of the 248 million people, the penetration of internet users in Indonesia has reached 23.5%.

The internet has become one of the most popular ways for people to express their ideas. From rural areas to small cities, internet users in Indonesia not only use this medium as a portal to the wider community but also to look up events, trends and happenings in big cities such as Jakarta. Users browse from internet cafes or smart phones. They can get more information and stay connected through online community forums such as Kaskus.

Kaskus, the forum, is now growing. It is a large online base for Indonesians where they can share almost anything within the internet community. It has become the social commerce platform with a strong local flavour (Adityarani, 2011). Anyone can join this forum as long as they are over 13 years of age. As with other forum websites, Kaskus offers the users a variety of information. The forum offers hobbies and interests, solutions to everyday problems, news and gossip, advertising, social events, and much more. There is also an additional feature that allows users to connect and share with other regions as well (Christaldi, 2011).

The name is an abbreviation for 'Kasak Kusuk' which means 'gossip' in Indonesian slang. The site was founded by three Indonesian students, Andrew Darwis, Budi Dharmawan, and Ronald Stephanus on 6 November 2000, while they were students at the University of Seattle, USA. It began as a news portal which translated English news into Bahasa Indonesia. Then in 2008, the founding trio decided to return to Indonesia and set up a legal company, Darta Media Indonesia Ltd. The focus was then to develop Kaskus. In 2010, Kaskus signed a partnership with Global Digital Prima. This company is owned by Djarum Group, Indonesia's second largest clove cigarette maker. The investment was used to expand Kaskus, particularly its infrastructure. Since then, it has grown to become the largest online community forum in Indonesia. In 2012 there were 4.5 million registered users on Kaskus (Kaskus, 2012). The website's content is predominantly local and it accommodates 400 segmented communities; 98% of its users are Indonesian (Adityarani, 2011).

The objectives of this article are to find answers to the following questions:

1. How can Kaskus design its website environment so that it can attract internet users and generate a new youth culture successfully in Indonesia?
2. How can Kaskus maintain its users so they become loyal members?
3. How can Kaskus prepare itself to be the next biggest e-marketplace in Indonesia?

This article ends with a conclusion and makes recommendations for further studies.

 

Research Methodology

The sequence of method in this research is divided into three sections. First, a method for assessing the quality of websites is introduced. Thereafter follows a section of research focusing on how to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities. Finally, a section of research focusing on value creation in e-business where the business model of Kaskus is presented.

WebQual 2.0

The WebQual instrument was first developed early in 1998 and has evolved via a process of iterative refinement in various domains (Barnes and Vidgen, 2003: 298). Previous applications of WebQual include UK business school websites, internet bookshops, online auction sites, a government site, a knowledge-sharing website, and news websites. The method turns qualitative website users' assessments into quantitative metrics which are useful for management decision-making (Barnes and Vidgen, 2002: 114). The WebQual approach is more focused to interface design. Therefore, this approach criticised as being unable to fully capture the service quality delivered through Kaskus website (Chang et al., 2011: 347).

In the context of WebQual 2.0, website users were asked to rate the Kaskus website against each of a range of qualities using a 1 to 5 scale on which the anchor for 1 was 'strongly disagree' and for 5 'strongly agree'. Users were also asked to rate each of the qualities for importance where 'least important' was 1 and 'most important' was 5, which helps gain understanding about which qualities are considered by the user to be most important in any given situation. The qualities in WebQual 2.0 are designed to be subjective; for example, to conduct tests of WebQual instrument's reliability (Barnes and Vidgen, 2003: 298).

WCAG 2.0

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) were developed through the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) process collectively with individuals and organisations around the world. The goal is to evaluate a single shared standard for web content accessibility that meets the needs of individuals, organisations, and governments internationally. Accessibility involves a wide range of disabilities, including physical, visual, cognitive, auditory, learning, language, speech, and neurological disabilities. Following these guidelines will also often make the Web content more usable to users in general (Caldwell et al., 2008).

Value Creation Model in E-Business

Amit and Zott (2001) introduced a model that has been created from an analysis in an e-business context. The model includes four dimensions of value creation in e-business: novelty, lock-in, complementarities, and efficiency. The main reason for this choice is that Kaskus's initial idea behind the development of the internet-based service was coherent with the value dimensions in Value Creation Model in E-Business.

 

Results and Analysis

WebQual 2.0 and WCAG 2.0

In this research, a benchmark of WebQual 2.0 application is based on three UK-based internet bookshops which were assessed by Barnes and Vidgen using WebQual 2.0 in 2001. Due to time constraints, this could not be achieved within the limitations of the present study, but future research designs are explicitly aimed at expanding the number of respondents instead of basing judgements on the author's subjective opinion.

The aim is not to model all the relationships, which would be too complicated and time-consuming, but rather to understand the strong relationships in order to guide organisations as to the areas where lacking resources should be overcome.

No	Description	Importance	Rating of Kaskus
1	Has an attractive appearance	5	4
2	Has an appropriate style of design for site type	5	4
3	Creates an audio-visual experience	3	4
4	Can be depended on to provide whatever is promised	5	5
5	Provides information which is free from error	5	2
6	Provides up-to-date information	5	5
7	Gives a time of delivery for products or services	5	4
8	Has fast navigation to information	5	5
9	Gives a professional and competent image	4	1
10	Can process transactions competently	5	5
11	Is easy to find and to return to	5	5
12	Is easy to find your way around	5	5
13	Has things where you expect to find them	5	4
14	Is a site with a good reputation	5	5
15	Guarantees services or products offered	4	5
16	Feels safe to complete transactions	5	5
17	Gives confidence that it will deliver products or services	5	4
18	Makes it easy to give feedback or contact the organisation	4	1
19	Provides information content that is easy to understand	5	4
20	Provides information at an appropriate level of detail	5	4
21	Communicates information in an appropriate formal	4	3
22	Provides content tailored to the individual	5	5
23	Can customise products or prices	4	5
24	Conveys a sense of community appropriate to the user	5	5

Table 1: WebQual 2.0 Table (Adapted from Barnes and Vidgen, 2001: 16)

Based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, Kaskus maintains an AA domain level.

Kaskus can be categorised as a relatively user-friendly website. It provides buttons and link controls that give a short description of each function. This is essential, as some pages require a user verification process. This feature is used for checking that it is being accessed by the people it is designed to serve, rather than by robot computer programmes. It aims to reduce spamming activities. The Kaskus website uses the CAPTCHA programme. This software was developed by programmers at Carnegie Mellon University in 2000, and requires users to type a word that appears to come from scanned books. Users who cannot read the visual challenge can hear a set of words to be entered through clicking on the audio button.

Currently, Kaskus provides hot keys, which makes user browsing easier. Kaskus also provides guidelines to help users understand its layout and navigation features; users can also find content through an integrated search engine with pre-formatted parameters, such as title, name, content, location, date, and price. This feature is very useful, particularly for trading forums. Users can also find their current location on a web page through a 'bread crumb' feature.

Almost all of Kaskus's pages use the Indonesian language, although it uses English for a few main features. Users who do not know the Indonesian language will have problems when they are accessing the website. In the Kaskus forums themselves, users are generally familiar with the use of vernacular phrases and jargon that are acceptable among users. For minimising the asymmetric information, Kaskus provides a special page in order to archive the unusual words and emoticons which are most frequently used. For new users unfamiliar with Kaskus's language, there is a help centre page. This allows them to participate in the forum with ease.

Currently, Kaskus's website is compatible with well known web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari. Unfortunately, the website is unstable if being accessed from an international internet server. It cannot load the web page completely, meaning that some links on Kaskus do not work and sometimes its appearance is messy. In November 2012, Kaskus developed new mobile application for iOS, Android, and Blackberry operating systems (Karimuddin, 2012). Nowadays, users can read and post in the Kaskus forum via Smartphone. Kaskus adopted a new API (Application Programming Interface) to build these mobile applications. This API is claimed to be faster than the previous Kaskus mobile application. One of the most useful features is its integrated system. Users can upload their pictures directly from Smartphone into Kaskus's forum page. Users who do not have Smartphones with those operating systems, can still access Kaskus via the mobile web version.

 

Key Recommendations

According to the WebQual 2.0 assessment, reliability and accessibility analysis, there are some key recommendations for Kaskus's improvement. First of all, the visitor who has not logged in on Kaskus will deal with Kaskus's colourful home page. It is quite entertaining and good looking because there is lots of image content. Consequently, it will lag for a moment. Alternatively, Kaskus can solve this problem with the use of low resolution images rather than a high resolution image.

The home page will direct the visitor into two main forums: lounge forum and trading forum. Users who have not completed the profile data will get a notification that appears like a pop-up message on their profile dashboard every login. Unfortunately, this notification cannot be disabled and there is no kind of 'Later' button on this pop-up message. Therefore it is a little bit annoying and does not feel comfortable.

Every time a user logs in to Kaskus, they will get a live posting profile page. This page's contents are the newest thread or newest posting from user's friends or favourite seller to whom they are subscribed. Unconsciously, this page encourages users to make friends, as many as they can, because they will feel awkward if their live posting profile page is blank.

On the home page, users can still move from lounge forum into the trading forum or otherwise through the sidebar above the page. In the lounge forum, users can find Hot Thread and the other categorical forums. In the trading forum, users will find category product list and hot review. This forum will be an e-marketplace; hence Kaskus is encouraging users to complete their profile data. The user who has completed the profile data will get privileges to sell products in Kaskus's e-marketplace (Miftachul, 2012).

The guidelines on the Kaskus Help Centre are only in text format. In order to be accessible for blind and partially sighted people, Kaskus should provide audio support for all of the guidelines; it would also be useful if every text on Kaskus's button or link could be accessible in an audio version. It would be very helpful, particularly for dyslexic people, if Kaskus could provide supporting pictures alongside the guidelines. Kaskus should design its features for affecting the achievement of the goals. This framework could promote relationships and sociability among users (Macaulay et al., 2007: 71).

Kaskus should build the website in a more understandable language and rules format, as is applied in the forum. This would help members of communities feel at home (Lechner and Hummel, 2002: 52). Although English is used for some common links, Kaskus's web page uses the Indonesian language as its default, as most of the users are from Indonesia. If Kaskus want to expand its market scope, it should be available in many different language settings.

Another issue is minor typo errors on Kaskus's website. Kaskus should fix this. It is a minor enhancement, but it will make Kaskus free from errors and more understandable, particularly for new users. Kaskus should avoid or minimise the asymmetric information. It can lead to unfavourable problems in C2C markets (Zhao et al., 2006: 71).

Kaskus should maintain its servers better. User overload problems are frequent, and they can make the website inaccessible for brief periods of about five minutes. Also, some users are disappointed with clumsy redirected URLs which have a lot of zero numbers in the links. This is not efficient (Lukman, 2012). Kaskus should make the links shorter or just remove the zero numbers. The development team has a lot of work to do in reducing error codes.

In terms of usability, Kaskus's appearance is a good one but it should improve the website's ease of use. It needs to improve its search engine, and navigation with an easy to understand sitemap (Kim and Ahn, 2007: 122). It would be helpful if Kaskus could provide input assistance in the search engine. Users can get some recommendations regarding the item that they want to find. It might be a good opportunity for Kaskus to synchronise it with the Kaskus Ads service in order to generate more potential buyers.

Kaskus's website is web browser-friendly and can be interpreted reliably enough by various users' devices. However, in terms of mobile phones or tablet devices, Kaskus's mobile application has a fatal limitation. It cannot show the application in landscape mode on Smartphones or tablets. Kaskus should update its mobile application more routinely in order to decrease the minor malfunctions and increase the application's performance. Additionally, Kaskus should develop its compatibility with international internet servers. Kaskus must prove that it is more knowledgeable and capable than its competitors in the online forum industry. If not, it will have difficulties in convincing their users to do transactions (Barnes and Vidgen, 2001: 25).

 

Value Creation Model in Kaskus

Value creation model captures the essence of the business model and describes how companies run business (Amit and Zott, 2010: 221). These value drivers consist of design parameters which are constructed by acronym NICE (Novelty, Lock-In, Complementary, and Efficiency). These elements assess
the strategic management of e-commerce companies and their business activity systems. The ranking is based on the author's analysis as Kaskus user perspective which detail dominant value creation drivers of Kaskus's business model.

Lock-In [1=most important]

Lock-in is the most important thing for community-based websites such as Kaskus, as it can preserve the priceless asset of community-based websites: the users. Therefore, if there are no users in the online forum, this website will be worthless (Shapiro and Varian, 1999: 180).

Ken Dean Lawadinata, CEO of Kaskus, stated in a 14 July 2011 interview (Tech in Asia) that the users are not only connected via internet forums, but are also engaged in various offline gatherings. They interact with each other, and organise many social activities such as attending events and concerts. Kaskus is keen to maintain itself as a platform where the content belongs to the communities. According to HypeStat (2012), Kaskus receives about 675,107 unique visitors daily and 16.78 page views per visitors per day, which should earn about $2,248 (£1,402) per day from advertising revenue. The estimated site value is $4,193,062 (£2,614,781). These revenues and net worth estimates have helped Kaskus rise to be the 9th most popular website in Indonesia and 355th in global rank (Alexa 2012).

Complementarity [2=second most important]

Complementarity is a major priority of Kaskus, in order to prepare the ground for further development. The current position of Kaskus as the largest Indonesian community gives it a chance to be the eBay and PayPal of Indonesia (Wee, 2012). In 2009, Kaskus developed KasPay (Grazella, 2012), an
online payment system to guarantee safe transactions for users in order to support its C2C business model. Kaskus adopted PayPal and customised it to fit with Indonesians' common payment model. KasPay uses a conventional method for transactions, which is via bank transfer. It is a good idea, because most Indonesians are more familiar with the bank transfer method than using debit or credit card. Registering in KasPay is free. The revenue streams come from merchants' commissions. Merchants pay a 0.5% commission on the price of the transaction to KasPay. It shows that value creation of an e-business will increase by offering bundles of complementary services and products to the users (Amit and Zott, 2001: 505). Additionally, KasPay is also used for payment of Kaskus Ads which is a self-serve ads platform. Users can easily scale up or down and pinpoint very specific campaigns within Kaskus forums.

Novelty [3=third most important]

Novelty is the third most important feature. Kaskus is not an original idea; it is modelled after many similar online forum websites. Kaskus just localised its content. Substantially, the Kaskus website is divided into two main forums: the lounge forum and the trading forum. In the lounge forum, users can discuss anything topical, as long as it is not sexually explicit or racist in content. The most popular forum is the trading forum. In the trading forum, buyers and sellers can negotiate prices. People are allowed to sell anything on this free platform, as long as it is legal (Yusuf, 2012).

Kaskus creates a trust system through virtual reputation. Users who have created 2,000 posts can give a rating to other users. There are two kinds of ratings, red and green, and both of these are referred to as reputations. The user who has more green reputations will get more trust from other users. A red reputation means less trust. This rating element, improves influences.

Efficiency [4=least important]

Efficiency is the least important feature, as Kaskus tries to be an all-in-one website. Although Kaskus provides many services such as an internet forum platform, online payment system, news, advertising platform, it can still run the business. It indicates that efficiency element does not really matter for Kaskus.

 

Key Recommendations

According to the value creation in e-business analysis, there are some key recommendations for improving Kaskus's business model.

Lock-in

Kaskus is a user-generated content website. It improves lock-in by enabling users to customise information to their individual needs in various ways (Amit and Zott, 2001: 506). It provides a forum platform for each topic or thread and content is created by users. Kaskus gives appreciation through Hot Thread. It is a scheme for increasing users' awareness to create many threads. The thread which gets the most responses or replies from the other users is designated as a Hot Thread. This scheme has been a culture in the Kaskus forum. It is seen as an honour for users to create Hot Threads successfully.

Hot Threads are shown on the Kaskus home page and updated every day. Everyone who visits Kaskus's home page can read it. Therefore, the users compete to create the most interesting thread that will be discussed by many other users. Meanwhile, every forum or sub-forum has a moderator. The moderator's task is to minimise the illegal content. Although, there is a moderator, there is no system to control the information validity. Kaskus must develop a system that can make ensure information validity.

On the other hand, Kaskus builds the loyalty of the users by virtual reputation. This reputation can only be given by users who have created a minimum of 2,000 posts. As previously described, the user who gets more green-ratings will get a higher reputation. Users compete to get green ratings. As a result, users who get more trusts from the other users can sell products or services more easily, because buyers believe in the seller's reputation. At the beginning, users need to learn the interface design of Kaskus, until they become familiar with the rules. This is a good thing. Consequently, if Kaskus wants to change its interface design or rules in the forum, it cannot be done aggressively.

Kaskus has also organised several loyalty activities in order to bond its users. In November 2012, Kaskus cooperated with a local mobile phone provider. They launched a special edition SIM card for Kaskus's users (Lukman, 2012). In 2004, Kaskus built streaming radio for its communities that can be accessed via the internet world wide. Meanwhile, Kaskus's users who live in different regions within Indonesia and even abroad can call each other using the Kaskus Regional, although this depends on where they live. This generates intensive user interaction which gains interpersonal attraction, influence, and can improve user loyalty (Shen et al., 2010: 49). Communities in Kaskus forums are very loyal, because they can find others who have similar point of view and interests. Users often organise activities, such as gatherings and social activities, where they can interact and meet up with the other community members. Therefore, Kaskus should facilitate more of these activities and show sufficient appreciation to maintain member numbers.

Complementarity

In the meantime, KasPay has co-operated with three major banks in Indonesia; BCA, Mandiri, and Permata (Yusuf, 2012). It would be better
if Kaskus could make a mutual partnership with more local banks. According to Nielsen Indonesia (2012), the number of local banking customers rose 20% to 9.5 million in nine big cities last year, up from 8 million a year before. It is an opportunity to expand KasPay to get more merchants and extend the markets. The drawback of KasPay is currently unavailable for withdrawal services so that users cannot withdraw their balance into their bank account. In spite of focus on local content, if Kaskus wants to support international transaction, it should be available for exchange currency services as well.

Novelty

Kaskus is claimed as the biggest internet forum in Indonesia (Kevin, 2011) that successfully generates new communication culture among young people, who are oriented to the Kaskus forum culture. It is also the first web developer with an online payment system for accommodating users' needs in Indonesia (Mochtar, 2012).

There are few internet forums in the region that have as loyal or as large a following as Kaskus. The company has completed some complementary innovations that relate to Kaskus's lock-in feature. For instance, Kaskus launched Kaskus Radio and a special edition SIM card for Kaskus users on 19th November 2012 (Panji, 2012).

These complementary innovations serve as a serious warning to C2C platform providers, if they only serve to offer an intermediary platform for users to conduct transactions, because they do not hold their own products (Chen et al., 2009: 147). With the constant rapid technological development within this market, Kaskus should be more creative. It must develop new and fresh ideas in order to keep Kaskus foremost in users' minds. Currently, Kaskus has no direct competition in Indonesia, but there are some websites that could be considered as Kaskus's competitors. For example, Indowebster is a file sharing forum. It has 1.5 million members and 350,642 unique visitors per day. According to MuStat (2013), this site is estimated to earn at least $1,052 (£694) daily from advertising revenues. The other online forums, with similar target markets and business models, will seek to poach customers away from Kaskus. Within this highly competitive market, user loyalty is crucial.

Efficiency

Kaskus needs to expand its market area to be the biggest e-marketplace in Indonesia. It must design a marketing strategy so that economic activity can be integrated into the system, instead of relying on coincidental social interactions (Balasubramanian and Mahajan, 2001: 133). In terms of a marketing strategy, Kaskus could start by improving its customer support service. For instance, Kaskus provides real time customer support, such as live chat and customer support calling. It solves navigation problems. It also adds value to Kaskus, particularly for potential customers who need a fast response.

Even though Kaskus has provided a contact service and users can choose the category of message recipient, Kaskus does not record and compile users' responses into a Frequently Asked Question page. If Kaskus did this, it would not be reliant solely on a real-time reply service and many questions could be answered automatically. The purpose of this system design is to reduce transaction costs (Amit and Zott, 2010: 221).

Kaskus seems to not have the space to publish official press releases. In July 2012 the domain suddenly changed from .us to .co.id and .com, which caused errors in many of their links. Furthermore, many people did not like Kaskus changing their domain without publishing information beforehand. This situation caused panic. Additionally, there were no official press releases from Kaskus to explain the domain change clearly, and many fake statements were spread on the internet news. This was a big issue. Kaskus has not overcome this properly. This situation temporarily downgraded Kaskus's reputation. Many advertisers discontinued using the Kaskus Ads service. As a result, Kaskus's revenue fell dramatically in that month. Learning from this issue, Kaskus should provide a special page to publish information that relates to current issues. This allows immediate information sharing whilst minimising asymmetric information. As Amit and Zott (2001: 503) stated, reducing asymmetric information can be done by providing up to date and comprehensive information.

 

Conclusion

The objective of this exploratory investigation was to analyse Kaskus's website design and its business model within the context of Indonesian online C2C commerce. Kaskus was originally a phenomenal online forum in Indonesia which subsequently transformed into a giant e-marketplace; the initial idea was modelled on the successful Alibaba's website and Taobao in China (Chen et al., 2009: 147).

The most obvious finding to emerge from this research is that a successful website should be harmonious within its appearance and accessibility; a lock-in system and innovation need to be prepared in advance. In this case, Kaskus grabbed the required markets quickly and provides services compatible with user expectations. Hagel and Armstrong (1997: 138) stated that the e-marketplace could enable e-commerce companies to create online communities that bonds users when they undertake specific transactions. Kaskus uses the lock-in system effectively. This allows users of multiple Kaskus programmes to communicate conveniently with other users.

Andrew Darwis, Kaskus founder and CTO, stated in an interview (Tech in Asia) on 23 November 2011 that Kaskus has always been trying to answer user needs from the outset. A website which can generate huge traffic by giving benefits to its users has proved that members will not only come to love it, but also become loyal to the service. An existing website that works so well can be an inspiration, but businesses have to be able to customise and localise according to their target markets.

Regarding the value creation of the business model, e-business should improve its lock-in system in order to retain its users. This will increase customer retention and reduce the risk of them switching to other online forums. Moreover, the e-commerce should try to provide an appropriate supporting system to increase efficiency. The company needs to establish a mechanism for generating new ideas as a way of keeping the site fresh and exciting in an increasingly fickle market. Finally, e-business needs to develop each supporting system until they are stable and ready to enter the global market.

The main limitation of this research is that the work reported in this article used a relatively small sample size; all this research is based on some underlying personal assumptions. Due to time constraints, it could not be achieved within the limitations of the present study, but future research designs are explicitly aimed at expanding the number of respondents instead of making judgements based on the author's subjective opinion. In addition, the valid data of Kaskus's statistics are difficult to collect.

It would have been interesting to conduct the study over a longer time frame, in order to collect valid data from the website. It would also be valuable to conduct the research to evaluate users who have interacted with the sites over a period of time. Future research should analyse a more representative sample of respondent and employ advanced statistical analysis.

Although the findings are limited by the relatively small sample size, this study provides useful diagnostic information for managers and website administrators in order to develop an e-commerce website. The research also does provide some initial exploratory insights into an emerging area that has had little attention in the e-business literature: evaluating the quality of an internet forum website that turned into an e-marketplace.

Furthermore, this research helps contribute to the understanding of e-commerce website quality measures and support in the improvement of theory in e-business area. The study also contributes to the development of the WebQual 2.0, WCAG 2.0, and Value Creation Model in E-Business framework to provide managers with a useful tool to understand customer perceptions of Website quality in the Indonesian C2C e-commerce setting.

 

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Acknowledgements

The WebQual is being developed by the Management Schools at the University of Bath and the University of East Anglia by Stuart Barnes and Richard Vidgen. Full details in the papers section are available at http://www dot webqual dot co dot uk.

 

List of Tables

Table 1: WebQual 2.0 Table (Adapted from Barnes and Vidgen, 2001: 16)

 

Notes

[1] Gregorius A. Wicaksana (gaw21 at kent dot ac dot uk) is an undergraduate student at the Kent Business School, University of Kent as part of an international exchange programme with Bandung Institute of Technology in Indonesia. He is interested in information technology and enterprise studies.

 

References

 

 

To cite this paper please use the following details: Wicaksana, G. (2013), 'An Online Forum that Became a Giant e-Marketplace: A Case Study of the Largest Indonesian Online Community Kaskus.co.id,' Reinvention: an International Journal of Undergraduate Research, BCUR/ICUR 2013 Special Issue, http://www.warwick.ac.uk/reinventionjournal/archive/bcur2013specialissue/wicaksana/. Date accessed [insert date]. If you cite this article or use it in any teaching or other related activities please let us know by e-mailing us at Reinventionjournal at warwick dot ac dot uk dot