Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Unlocking Online Reputation

On the Effectiveness of Cross-Platform Signaling in the Sharing Economy

  • Research Paper
  • Published:
Business & Information Systems Engineering Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

With the ever-growing popularity of sharing economy platforms, complementors increasingly face the challenge to manage their reputation on different platforms. The paper reports the results from an experimental online survey to investigate how and under which conditions online reputation is effective to engender trust across platform boundaries. It shows that (1) cross-platform signaling is in fact a viable strategy to engender trust and that (2) its effectiveness crucially depends on source–target fit. Implications for three stakeholders are discussed. First, platform complementors may benefit from importing reputation, especially when they have just started on a new platform and have not earned on-site reputation yet. The results also show, however, that importing reputation (even if it is excellent) may be detrimental if there occurs a mismatch between source and target and that, hence, fit is of utmost importance. Second, regulatory authorities may consider reputation portability as a means to make platform boundaries more permeable and hence to tackle lock-in effects. Third, platform operators may employ cross-platform signaling as a competitive lever.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. In this regard, quality control mechanisms such as Uber’s policy to expel drivers with a rating below 4.6 stars or Airbnb’s background checks on new hosts provide a rationale for the effectiveness of trust transfer (Airbnb 2017; BusinessInsider 2015).

  2. See Zippo’s attempt to market a women’s perfume (Austin 2013); Who would not want to smell like lighter fluid?!

References

  • Aaker DA, Keller KL (1990) Consumer evaluations of brand extensions. J Mark 54(1):27–41

    Google Scholar 

  • Abramova O, Krasnova, H, Tan C-W (2017) How much will you pay? Understanding the value of information cues in the sharing economy. In: Ramos I et al (eds) Proceedings of the 25th European conference on information systems, Guimaraes, pp 1011–1028

  • Airbnb (2017) Does Airbnb perform background checks on members? https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/1308/does-airbnb-perform-background-checks-on-members? Accessed 29 Mar 2019

  • Akbar P, Mai R, Hoffmann S (2016) When do materialistic consumers join commercial sharing systems. J Bus Res 69(10):4215–4224

    Google Scholar 

  • Akerlof GA (1970) The market for ‘lemons’: quality uncertainty and the market mechanism. Q J Econ 84(3):488–500

    Google Scholar 

  • Arikan E, Yilmaz C, Bodur M (2016) Expanding the boundary of brand extensions through brand relationship quality. J Bus Econ Manag 17(6):930–944

    Google Scholar 

  • Austin C (2013) See the 10 worst brand extensions currently on the market. https://www.businessinsider.com/the-10-worst-brand-extensions-2013-2?IR=T#zippo-the-woman-perfume-2106-votes-10. Accessed 26 Mar 2019

  • Basoglu KA, Hess TJ (2014) Online business reporting: a signaling theory perspective. J Inf Syst 28(2):67–101

    Google Scholar 

  • Bolton G, Greiner B, Ockenfels A (2013) Engineering trust: reciprocity in the production of reputation information. Manag Sci 59(2):265–285

    Google Scholar 

  • Botsman R (2012) The currency of the new economy is trust. https://www.ted.com/talks/rachel_botsman_the_currency_of_the_new_economy_is_trust?language=en. Accessed 27 Sept 2019

  • Boush DM, Loken B (1991) A process-tracing study of brand extension evaluation. J Mark Res 28(1):16–28

    Google Scholar 

  • BusinessInsider (2015) Uber’s internal charts show how its driver-rating system actually works. https://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-charts-show-how-ubers-driver-rating-system-works-2015-2?IR=T. Accessed 29 Mar 2019

  • Campbell C (2019) How China is using ‘Social Credit Scores’ to reward and punish its citizens. https://time.com/collection/davos-2019/5502592/china-social-credit-score/. Accessed 21 June 2019

  • Chen J, Shen XL (2015) Consumers’ decisions in social commerce context: an empirical investigation. Decis Support Syst 79:55–64

    Google Scholar 

  • Chen X, Huang Q, Davison RM, Hua Z (2015) What drives trust transfer? The moderating roles of seller-specific and general institutional mechanisms. Int J Electron Commer 20(2):261–289

    Google Scholar 

  • Dakhlia S, Davila A, Cumbie B (2016) Trust, but verify: the role of ICTs in the sharing economy. In: Ricciardi F, Harfouche A (eds) Information and communication technologies in organizations and society. Springer, Cham, pp 303–311

    Google Scholar 

  • Dens N, De Pelsmacker P (2010) Attitudes toward the extension and parent brand in response to extension advertising. J Bus Res 63(11):1237–1244

    Google Scholar 

  • Dimoka A, Hong Y, Pavlou PA (2012) On product uncertainty in online markets: theory and evidence. MIS Q 36(2):395–426

    Google Scholar 

  • Dohmen T, Falk A, Huffman D, Sunde U, Schupp J, Wagner GG (2011) Individual risk attitudes: measurement, determinants, and behavioral consequences. J Eur Econ Assoc 9(3):522–550

    Google Scholar 

  • Donath J (2007) Signals in social supernets. J Comput Mediat Commun 13(1):231–251

    Google Scholar 

  • Dong C, Russello G, Dulay N (2007) Trust transfer in distributed systems. In: Etalle S, Marsh S (eds) IFIP international federation for information processing, vol 238. Springer, Boston, pp 17–29

    Google Scholar 

  • Dunham B (2011) The role for signaling theory and receiver psychology in marketing. In: Saad G (ed) Evolutionary psychology in the business sciences. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 225–256

    Google Scholar 

  • Eisenmann T, Parker G, Van Alstyne MW (2006) Strategies for two-sided markets. Harv Bus Rev 84(10):92–101

    Google Scholar 

  • Eisenmann TR, Parker G, Van Alstyne MW (2008) Opening platforms: how, when and why? In: Gawer A (ed) Platforms, markets and innovation. Edward Elgar, Northampton, pp 131–162

    Google Scholar 

  • Ert E, Fleischer A, Magen N (2016) Trust and reputation in the sharing economy: the role of personal photos in Airbnb. Tour Manag 55(1):62–73

    Google Scholar 

  • EU (2017) Exploratory study of consumer issues in online peer-to-peer platform markets. http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/just/item-detail.cfm?item_id=77704. Accessed 26 Mar 2019

  • European Parliament (2016) General data protection regulation. Council of the European Union. http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-5419-2016-INIT/en/pdf. Accessed 23 Mar 2019

  • Faul F, Erdfelder E, Lang A-G, Buchner A (2007) G* Power 3: a flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behav Res Methods 39(2):175–191

    Google Scholar 

  • Filippas A, Horton JJ, Golden JM (2018) Reputation in the long-run. SSRN working paper 3103688. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3103688. Accessed 27 Sept 2019

  • Gal-Oz N, Grinshpoun T, Gudes E (2010) Sharing reputation across virtual communities. J Theor Appl Electron Commer Res 5(2):1–25

    Google Scholar 

  • Gefen D (2000) E-commerce: the role of familiarity and trust. Omega 28(6):725–737

    Google Scholar 

  • Gefen D (2002) Reflections on the dimensions of trust and trustworthiness among online consumers. ACM SIGMIS Database 33(3):38–53

    Google Scholar 

  • Gefen D, Straub DW (2004) Consumer trust in B2C e-commerce and the importance of social presence: experiments in e-products and e-services. Omega 32(6):407–424

    Google Scholar 

  • Gefen D, Straub DW, Boudreau MC (2000) Structural equation modeling and regression: guidelines for research practice. Commun Assoc Inf Syst 4(1):1–77

    Google Scholar 

  • Ghose A (2009) Internet exchanges for used goods: an empirical analysis of trade patterns and adverse selection. MIS Q 33(2):263–291

    Google Scholar 

  • Graef I (2016) Blurring boundaries of consumer welfare: how to create synergies between competition, consumer and data protection law in digital markets. SSRN working paper 2881969. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2881969. Accessed 27 Sept 2019

  • Grinshpoun T, Gal-Oz N, Meisels A, Gudes E (2009) CCR: a model for sharing reputation knowledge across virtual communities. In: International conference on web intelligence and intelligent agent technology, Thessaloniki, pp 34–41

  • Gutt D, Kundisch D (2016) Money talks (even) in the sharing economy: empirical evidence for price effects in online ratings as quality signals. In: Proceedings of the international conference on information systems, Dublin. https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2016/Crowdsourcing/Presentations/3/. Accessed 27 Sept 2019

  • Gutt D, Neumann J, Zimmermann S, Kundisch D, Chen J (2019) Design of review systems: a strategic instrument to shape online reviewing behavior and economic outcomes. J Strateg Inf Syst 28(2):104–117

    Google Scholar 

  • Hair JFJ, Black WC, Babin BJ, Anderson RE (2010) Multivariate data analysis: a global perspective. Pearson, Upper Saddle River

    Google Scholar 

  • Han H, Koo C, Chung N (2016) Implication of the fit between Airbnb and host characteristics: a trust-transfer perspective. In: Proceedings of the ICEC 2016, Suwon, pp 1–6

  • Havakhor T, Soror AA, Sabherwal R (2016) Diffusion of knowledge in social media networks: effects of reputation mechanisms and distribution of knowledge roles. Inf Syst J 28(1):104–141

    Google Scholar 

  • Hawlitschek F, Teubner T, Adam MTP, Borchers N, Möhlmann M, Weinhardt C (2016a) Trust in the sharing economy: An experimental framework. In: Proceedings of the international conference on information systems, Dublin. https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2016/Crowdsourcing/Presentations/21/. Accessed 27 Sept 2019

  • Hawlitschek F, Teubner T, Weinhardt C (2016b) Trust in the sharing economy. Swiss J Bus Res Pract 70(1):26–44

    Google Scholar 

  • Hendrikx F, Bubendorfer K, Chard R (2015) Reputation systems: a survey and taxonomy. J Parallel Distrib Comput 75(1):184–197

    Google Scholar 

  • Hesse M, Teubner T (2019) Reputation portability: quo vadis? Electron Mark 29(5):1083–1119

    Google Scholar 

  • Hong IB, Cho H (2011) The impact of consumer trust on attitudinal loyalty and purchase intentions in B2C e-marketplaces: intermediary trust vs. seller trust. Int J Inf Manag 31(5):469–479

    Google Scholar 

  • Jarvenpaa SL, Tractinsky N, Vitale M (2000) Consumer trust in an internet store. Inf Technol Manag 1(1):45–71

    Google Scholar 

  • Jøsang A (2007) Trust and reputation systems. In: Aldini A, Gorrieri R (eds) Foundations of security analysis and design, vol IV. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 209–245

    Google Scholar 

  • Jøsang A, Ismail R, Boyd C (2007) A survey of trust and reputation systems for online service provision. Decis Support Syst 43(1):618–644

    Google Scholar 

  • Kathuria V, Lai JC (2018) User review portability: why and how? Comput Law Secur Rev 34(6):1291–1299

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelley HH (1973) The processes of causal attribution. Am Psychol 28(2):107–128

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim DJ (2014) A study of the multilevel and dynamic nature of trust in e-commerce from a cross-stage perspective. Int J Electron Commer 19(1):11–64

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim H-W, Xu Y, Koh J (2004) A comparison of online trust building factors between potential customers and repeat customers. J Assoc Inf Syst 5(10):392–420

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim DJ, Ferrin DL, Rao HR (2008) A trust-based consumer decision-making model in electronic commerce: the role of trust, perceived risk, and their antecedents. Decis Support Syst 44(1):544–564

    Google Scholar 

  • Kokkodis M, Ipeirotis PG (2016) Reputation transferability in online labor markets. Manag Sci 62(6):1687–1706

    Google Scholar 

  • Lim K, Sia C, Lee M, Benbasat I (2006) Do I trust you online, and if so, will I buy? An empirical study of two trust-building strategies. J Manag Inf Syst 23(2):233–266

    Google Scholar 

  • Lu Y, Zhao L, Wang B (2010) From virtual community members to C2C e-commerce buyers: trust in virtual communities and its effect on consumers’ purchase intention. Electron Commer Res Appl 9(4):346–360

    Google Scholar 

  • Ma X, Hancock JT, Mingjie KL, Naaman M (2017) Self-disclosure and perceived trustworthiness of Airbnb host profiles. In: Proceedings of the ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work and social computing, Portland, pp 1–13

  • McKnight DH, Choudhury V, Kacmar C (2002) Developing and validating trust measures for e-commerce. Inf Syst Res 13(3):334–359

    Google Scholar 

  • Mishra DP (1995) Signaling and monitoring strategies of service firms. Adv Serv Mark Manag 4(1):249–288

    Google Scholar 

  • Mittendorf C (2017) The implications of trust in the sharing economy: an empirical analysis of Uber. In: Bui T (ed) Proceedings of the Hawaii international conference on system sciences, Puaka, pp 5837–5846

  • Mittendorf C, Berente N, Holten R (2019) Trust in sharing encounters among millennials. Inf Syst J 29(5):1083–1119

    Google Scholar 

  • Otto L, Angerer P, Zimmermann S (2018) Incorporating external trust signals on service sharing platforms. In: Proceedings of the 26th European conference on information systems. https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2018_rp/78/. Accessed 27 Sept 2019

  • Pavlou PA, Gefen D (2004) Building effective online marketplaces with institution-based trust. Inf Syst Res 15(1):37–59

    Google Scholar 

  • Pingel F, Steinbrecher S (2008) Multilateral secure cross-community reputation systems for internet communities. In: Furnell S et al (eds) Trust, privacy and security in digital business. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 69–78

    Google Scholar 

  • PwC (2016) How the sharing economy is reshaping business across Europe. https://www.pwc.com/gr/en/publications/specific-to-all-industries-index/future-of-the-sharing-economy-in-europe-2016.html. Accessed 29 Mar 2019

  • Resnick P, Zeckhauser R (2002) Trust among strangers in internet transactions: Empirical analysis of eBay’s reputation system. In: Baye M (ed) The economics of the internet and e-commerce. Bingley, Emerald, pp 127–157. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0278-0984(02)11030-3

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Resnick P, Kuwabara K, Zeckhauser R, Friedman E (2000) Reputation systems. Commun ACM 43(12):45–48

    Google Scholar 

  • Riegelsberger J, Sasse MA, McCarthy JD (2005) The mechanics of trust: a framework for research and design. Int J Hum Comput Stud 62(3):381–422

    Google Scholar 

  • Rousseau DM, Sitkin SB, Burt RS, Camerer CF (1998) Not so different after all: a cross-discipline view of trust. Acad Manag Rev 23(3):393–404

    Google Scholar 

  • Scholz T (2016) Platform cooperativism: challenging the corporate sharing economy. Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Shaw JB (1990) A cognitive categorization model for the study of intercultural management. Acad Manag Rev 15(4):626–645

    Google Scholar 

  • Sia CL, Lim KH, Leung K, Lee MKO, Huang WW, Benbasat I (2009) Web strategies to promote internet shopping: is cultural-customization needed? MIS Q 33(3):491–512

    Google Scholar 

  • Spence M (2002) Signaling in retrospect and the informational structure of markets. Am Econ Rev 92(3):434–459

    Google Scholar 

  • Stummer C, Kundisch D, Decker R (2018) Platform launch strategies. Bus Inf Syst Eng 60(2):167–173

    Google Scholar 

  • Sundararajan A (2016) The sharing economy: the end of employment and the rise of crowd-based capitalism. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Swire PP, Lagos Y (2013) Why the right to data portability likely reduces consumer welfare: antitrust and privacy critique. Md Law Rev 72(2):335–380

    Google Scholar 

  • Teubner T, Hawlitschek F, Dann D (2017) Price determinants on Airbnb: how reputation pays off in the sharing economy. J Self Gov Manag Econ 5(4):53–80

    Google Scholar 

  • Teubner T, Hawlitschek F, Adam MTP (2019) Reputation transfer. Bus Inf Syst Eng 61(2):229–235

    Google Scholar 

  • Urbach N, Ahlemann F (2010) Structural equation modeling in information systems research using partial least squares. J Inf Technol Theor Appl 11(2):5–40

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Alstyne M, Parker G, Choudary SP (2016) Pipelines, platforms, and the new rules of strategy. Harv Bus Rev 94(4):54–63

    Google Scholar 

  • Venkatadri G, Zhong C, Gummadi KP (2016) Strengthening weak identities through inter-domain trust transfer. In: Proceedings WWW 2016, Montréal, pp 1249–1259. ISBN: 978-1-4503-4143-1

  • Verhagen T, Meents S, Tan YH (2006) Perceived risk and trust associated with purchasing at electronic marketplaces. Eur J Inf Syst 15(6):542–555

    Google Scholar 

  • Wessel M, Thies F, Benlian A (2017) Competitive positioning of complementors on digital platforms: evidence from the sharing economy. In: Proceedings of the international conference on information systems, Seoul, pp 1–18. https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2017/Peer-to-Peer/Presentations/21/. Accessed 27 Sept 2019

  • Zervas G, Proserpio D, Byers J (2015) A first look at online reputation on Airbnb, where every stay is above average. SSRN working paper 2554500. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2554500. Accessed 27 Sept 2019

  • Zijm H, Heragu S, Klumpp M, Regattieri A (2019) Perspectives on operations management: developments and research. In: Zijm H et al (eds) Operations, logistics and supply chain management. Springer, Berlin, pp 15–25

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. TU Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Timm Teubner & Florian Hawlitschek

  2. Einstein Center Digital Future (ECDF), Berlin, Germany

    Timm Teubner

  3. School of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, 2308, Australia

    Marc T. P. Adam

Authors
  1. Timm Teubner
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Marc T. P. Adam
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Florian Hawlitschek
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Timm Teubner.

Additional information

Accepted after two revisions by Dennis Kundisch.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary material 1 (PDF 104 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Teubner, T., Adam, M.T.P. & Hawlitschek, F. Unlocking Online Reputation. Bus Inf Syst Eng 62, 501–513 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-019-00620-4

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-019-00620-4

Keywords

Search

Navigation