Tell Me What You Want: Exploring the Impact of Offering Option Repertoires on Service Performance in Gig Economy

Confronted with an increasingly competitive business landscape for credence goods in the gig economy, sellers in e-marketplaces must effectively design their services by configuring the service offering specification options to enhance the visibility of their service offerings. Motivated by the gap between the configuration of service offering specification options and its impact on service quality and sales, this study builds on the competitive repertoire theory to advance a research model that seeks to unveil how the volume, complexity, and heterogeneity of service offering specification option repertoires affect service quality and sales. We empirically examined our hypotheses with a dataset comprising 3,307 lifestyle-themed credence goods observations from Fiverr, one of the largest e-marketplaces for gig economy in the world. We discover that the repertoire volume increases both service quality and sales whereas repertoire complexity only increases service quality. Repertoire heterogeneity does not significantly impact on service quality and sales

Platform-Based Online Services, Competitive Actions, And E-Marketplace Seller Performance

Platform-based services are online services provided by e-marketplace operators to online sellers for them to compete and enhance performance. This paper aims at examining two important questions in the context of e-marketplace: (1) what kind of platform-based services can be used by online retail sellers as competitive moves? and (2) to what extent does the usage of these platform-based services impact online seller’s performance? Drawing on competitive dynamics theory, we argue that sellers that undertake a larger number of, more complex and heterogeneous platform-based services achieve better performance in e-marketplace. Using data of 1046 sellers, who open online retail stores and sell cosmetics on Taobao, a Chinese e-marketplace, we found that while undertaking more complex platform-based services is important by itself, it is more important to be strategic by undertaking a large number of platform-based services and these services had better be different from its competitors and the industry. Implications for practice and research and suggestions for future research on improving sellers’ competitiveness are discussed. This research was supported in part by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (No. CityU 141809)

Pay It Forward: Unraveling the Role of Cause-related Marketing in the Curvilinear Relationship between Price-oriented Function Usage and Consumer Satisfaction

Price-oriented functions have been prevalently used by sellers for attracting consumers on e-marketplace platforms. However, existing literature has mixed understandings about its influence on improving consumer satisfaction. Besides, few studies have considered how cause-related marketing moderates the impact of price-oriented function usage. Therefore, this paper firstly explores the curvilinear relationship between price-oriented function usage and consumer satisfaction by adopting the repertoire perspective, then further considers the moderating role of cause-related marketing. This study collected data on 29,506 products from one e-marketplace platform in China. By using fixed-effects regression models, it is found that price-oriented function usage (i.e., volume and heterogeneity) have inverted U-shaped relationships with consumer satisfaction. In addition, cause-related marketing weakens the impact of price-oriented function usage heterogeneity on consumer satisfaction. This study contributes to research about platform function usage and guides sellers in terms of using those functions to stimulate consumer satisfaction

Solution Exemplars and Sales Performance of Crowdsourcing Solvers: the Moderating Role of Reputation and Competence

An increasing number of signals are using to entice solvers to make online purchases by seekers in the competitive online markets today. However, how solution exemplars are in terms of their reputation or competence to improve sales performance has not yet been investigated. Extending signal theory to the online service marketplaces, we analyses the effect of solution exemplars’ structural characteristics on seekers’ sales performance such as quantity, diversity and popularity, exploring the moderating impact of seeker’s reputation and competence. We test the model using data from ZBJ.com, a popular crowdsourcing contest platform in China. Our analysis conducts a series of interesting findings, the impact of exemplar quantity and popularity on sales performance is positively significant, contrary to solution exemplar diversity. Regarding the moderation effects, reputation is proved to be negative, which is opposite to competence. We also elaborate on the theoretical contribution and practical significance

Competing within Aggregators: Competitive Moves in the Deliveroo Online Delivery Platform

Aggregators are platforms that also control a marketplace for the suppliers’ innovations. Suppliers competing within aggregators are limited by the technology and governance rules of the platform owner. As a consequence, aggregators influence the type and complexity of competitive moves suppliers can implement. Our research investigates the drivers of suppliers’ competitive advantage. We incorporate existing literature on competitive action to identify the categories of moves available to suppliers. Furthermore, we identify three types of orthogonal moves that are unique to competition within aggregators. Finally, we illustrate our advanced categorization in the context of a major food delivery platform. Our preliminary results confirm that suppliers, while bounded to resources exposed by the aggregator, have the opportunity to implement an heterogenous portfolio of moves in their pursuit of competitive advantage. This result calls for empirical research in the context of competition within aggregators in general, and food delivery platforms specifically

The Sales Impact of Storytelling in Live Streaming E-Commerce

Live streaming e-commerce (LSE) has emerged as a popular third-party service for improving product sales. It persuades consumers through streamers’ storytelling or narratives, which encompass descriptions and depictions of their own product experiences. However, the sales impact of a story or narrative in LSEs has been overlooked in the literature. Extending the narrative transportation theory to the LSE context, we posit that the dual landscapes of narrative—the landscapes of action and the landscape of consciousness—can improve product sales through their influence on consumers’ imagination of story plotline and empathy for streamers’ product experiences. We also propose that the efficacy of the dual landscapes is contingent on streamers’ interaction response to consumer query. By collecting LSE data from the Taobao Live platform, we manually and algorithmically measured these variables and proposed to empirically examine their effects

Coopetition Balance and Coopetition Capability in Platform Ecosystems: Complementors’ Perspective

In a platform ecosystem, complementors can utilize various resources from a platform owner that receives a variety of products/services via complementors for better customers’ choice and satisfaction. The literature has focused on the cooperative nature of the platform ecosystem. Less attention, however, has been given to coopetition (i.e., simultaneous strategic use of cooperation and competition). Drawing upon paradox theory, this study develops a research model that explains the individual and joint impact of coopetition balance and coopetition capability on relationship performance in a platform ecosystem. Based on survey data from 365 complementors to Amazon, this study illustrates that coopetition balance and coopetition capability have a significant impact on relationship performance. Additionally, coopetition capability moderates the relationship between coopetition balance and relationship performance. In particular, results show that coopetition capability is the most critical variable to enhance relationship performance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in this paper

Trust and exchange : the production of trust in illicit online drug markets

Au cours de la dernière décennie, les marchés illicites en ligne sont passés de niches de marchés à plateformes économiques à part entière. L’un des aspects de cette expansion semble reposer dans l’abandon de l’articulation traditionnelle de la relation de confiance entre vendeurs et acheteurs pour l’adoption de transactions régies par les principes d’atomisation sociale et d’anonymat. Se situant au cœur d’une sociologie économique des marchés illicites encore émergente, cette thèse cherche donc à étudier l’élaboration de la confiance au sein des marchés de drogues illicites en ligne. En m’appuyant sur la notion d’institutions en tant que constructions sociales, j'avance la thèse selon laquelle ces marchés illicites modernisent les modalités de transaction des marchés licites traditionnels : des contrats sont proposés ; des tribunaux sont érigés; la sanction est formalisée ; et la gouvernance est transformée. Cette approche permet de révéler un schisme fondamental de la littérature et de ses postulats à l’égard de l'ordre social régnant au sein des marchés illicites en ligne -- rupture qui s’exprime notamment par l’opposition entre 1) une conception de ces marchés comme socialement atomisés et régis uniquement par la réputation ; et 2) l’idée selon laquelle les serveurs restent sous le contrôle des administrateurs. Afin de pallier cette discordance, je propose un modèle d’élaboration de la confiance notamment issu des approches cognitives et comportementales. Premièrement, je soutiens qu'un ensemble de mécanismes actifs de renforcement remplace fonctionnellement les principes sociaux traditionnels de la confiance. Deuxièmement, je soutiens que la confiance, aussi bien interpersonnelle qu’abstraite (à savoir, la confiance accordée aux institutions), est principalement produite selon un processus bayésien d'accumulation d'expériences. Dans cette perspective, l'article « Uncertainty and Risk » examine l'ensemble des mécanismes actifs de renforcement de la confiance -- première composante de ce modèle -- et révèle que les vendeurs ajustent les prix non seulement en fonction de la réputation, mais également des contrats et du statut. Dans les articles suivants, le processus bayésien d'accumulation d'expériences -- deuxième partie du modèle -- est abordé. L’étude menée dans l‘article « Building a case for trust » met ainsi en lumière une association entre les échanges répétés avec le vendeur et une tendance à effectuer des transactions de plus en plus importantes. Le troisième article (« A change of expectations? »), quant à lui, met en exergue le fait qu’un faible nombre d’expériences satisfaisantes suffit à augmenter la certitude de l’acheteur quant à la qualité du produit illicite. Dans leur ensemble, ces deux articles soutiennent l’idée selon laquelle le processus d'accumulation d'expériences favorise la coopération et les attentes. Enfin, ce travail s’achève par l’articulation des deux composantes de ce modèle et, de manière plus générale, par l’articulation de la thèse de la modernisation et d’une conception de la confiance dont l’élaboration repose sur un processus d’accumulation d’expériences sociales. L’apport unique d'une sociologie économique dans l’étude criminologique des marchés illicites est notamment souligné et des pistes de recherches futures sont discutées.During the last decade illicit online drug markets have grown from niche markets into full-fledged platform economies. It seems that over the course of a few years, sellers and buyers have left the social bases of trust behind preferring to exchange under conditions of social atomization and anonymity. Situated in an emerging economic sociological approach to illicit markets, this work examines the production of trust in illicit online drug markets. Drawing on economic sociology, namely, the notion of institutions as social constructions, I advance the thesis that these markets modernize the premodern exchange modes of traditional illicit markets: Contracts are implemented; courts are erected; sanctions are formalized; and governance transforms. This analysis reveals a fundamental schism in the literature and its assumptions about the social order of illicit online markets. Specifically, a conception of these markets as socially atomized and governed only by reputation, versus the recognition that servers remain under the control of administrators. Building off the modernization thesis and the schism, I propose a model for the production of trust that is sensitive to both cognitive and behavioral approaches to trust. First, I propose that a set of active trust producing mechanisms functionally replace the bases of trust that have eroded as illicit markets move online. Second, I argue that trust is primarily produced through a Bayesian process of accumulating experience, which produces both interpersonal and abstract trust. In the article Uncertainty and Risk I examine the first component, the active production of trust. I revisit a key debate in the literature, the pricing of illicit goods. We find that sellers set prices adjust prices not only with respect to reputation, but also contracts and status. In the following two articles, I examine the second part of the model, the bayesian process of experience accumulation. In the article Building a Case for Trust, I find that repeated exchanges with a seller are associated with a propensity towards larger transactions. In the third article, A Change of Expectations?, I find that even a few experiences increases expectations in the performance of the market institution. Thus, the two articles provide evidence that the process of experience accumulation promotes cooperation and expectation. I conclude the work by reconciling a tension between the two components of the model, the proposition that markets are modernized, but that trust is produced primarily through a process of experience accumulation. On this basis, I continue to highlight the contributions and analytical advantages of the economic sociological approach to illicit markets