Forums are a medium for open discussion or voicing ideas. Companies who typically use forums are looking to socially interact with current customers to hear their ideas and receive their opinion. Forums are 21st century bulletin boards that allow immediate interaction with others and their ideas. There are three basic components of a forum: user groups, moderator, and administrator.
A user group can be looked at in the same light as a focus group. They provide uncontrolled, uninfluenced, unbiased opinions or feedback for ideas, products or services. For example if you released a new product such as a video game you may launch a forum where users of that game can share strategy, game play problems, or suggestions for better games that you can build marketing differentiation around.
The second component mentioned was the moderator, they are users (typically employees of the forum site) who have access to all forum discussions, threads and posts and they are to mediate and take care of any spam or inappropriate articles posted on their forum site. Forum moderators are also key in organizing and guiding feedback so that managers can interpret the data and provide meaningful adjustments as necessary.
Last but not least is the administrator; this person manages all technical aspects of the forum site. Things like promoting and demoting users, tech issues and compatibility issues.