Finding information on products has never been easier. Prospective buyers can find information not only on merchants' Web sites, but they can also turn to online product forums and read about other consumers' experiences with a specific product or share their own (Tapscott & Ticoll, 2003). At the same time, consumer-to-consumer (C2C) interaction on the WWW enables companies to gather marketing intelligence from the product reviews people post. However, as Gately (2000) rightly notes, not everyone with an opinion qualifies as a professional critic. Therefore, C2C Web sites need to implement measures to encourage competent users to post high-quality contributions. This paper explores the nature of C2C interactions and seeks to identify strategies that render the knowledge provided by C2C sites more useful.
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