Unlocking Online Reputation

Timm Teubner (), Marc T. P. Adam and Florian Hawlitschek
Additional contact information
Timm Teubner: TU Berlin
Marc T. P. Adam: University of Newcastle
Florian Hawlitschek: TU Berlin

Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, 2020, vol. 62, issue 6, No 4, 513 pages

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Data portability; Digital platforms; Reputation; Sharing economy; Signaling theory; Trust (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12599-019-00620-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:binfse:v:62:y:2020:i:6:d:10.1007_s12599-019-00620-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/12599

DOI: 10.1007/s12599-019-00620-4

Access Statistics for this article

Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK is currently edited by Martin Bichler

More articles in Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK from Springer, Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().