Humanize your business. The role of personal reputation in the sharing economy

Abstract Drawing on the services marketing and sharing economy literature, the study identifies the leading reputational attributes that boost popularity in sharing economy platforms. As popularity stands as a purchase decision-making tool, the purpose of this paper is to jointly examine the influence of personal reputation and product description. A sample of Airbnb listings was collected in November 2016 in Italy and UK (n = 502). The database consists of popularity variables along with personal reputational attributes and the description of the product being offered. The findings of the study, based on the Shapley Value Regression, suggest that personal reputation is of paramount importance, explaining alone almost 40% of popularity variation. The paper concludes with theoretical implications on self-branding and, given the importance weights of the different attributes in popularity building, practical implications for sellers operating in sharing economy platforms.

[1]  F. J. Velázquez,et al.  Are innovations relevant for consumers in the hospitality industry? A hedonic approach for Cuban hotels , 2016 .

[2]  Daniel A. Guttentag,et al.  Assessing Airbnb as a disruptive innovation relative to hotels: Substitution and comparative performance expectations , 2017 .

[3]  P. Leeflang,et al.  Popularity of Brand Posts on Brand Fan Pages: An Investigation of the Effects of Social Media Marketing , 2012 .

[4]  Jennie Germann Molz,et al.  SOCIAL NETWORKING TECHNOLOGIES AND THE MORAL ECONOMY OF ALTERNATIVE TOURISM: THE CASE OF COUCHSURFING.ORG , 2013 .

[5]  Li Miao,et al.  Consumers’ responses to ambivalent online hotel reviews: The role of perceived source credibility and pre-decisional disposition , 2011 .

[6]  R. Belk.  Why Not Share Rather Than Own? , 2007 .

[7]  J. Berbegal‐Mirabent,et al.  Factors influencing popularity of branded content in Facebook fan pages , 2014 .

[8]  Nicholas A. John.  The Social Logics of Sharing , 2013 .

[9]  M. Spence.  Signaling in Retrospect and the Informational Structure of Markets , 2002 .

[10]  Brian L. Connelly,et al.  Signaling Theory: A Review and Assessment , 2011 .

[11]  Jerker Denrell.  Following the crowd can lead people who learn only from their own experience to agree with a mistaken majority , 2012 .

[12]  Nicholas H. Lurie,et al.  Searching for Experience on the Web: An Empirical Examination of Consumer Behavior for Search and Experience Goods , 2009 .

[13]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  Investigating the Influence of the Functional Mechanisms of Online Product Presentations , 2007 .

[14]  Byung-Kwan Lee,et al.  The effect of information overload on consumer choice quality in an on-line environment , 2004 .

[15]  Y. Benkler,et al.  Commons‐based Peer Production and Virtue* , 2006 .

[16]  Daniel A. Guttentag.  Airbnb: disruptive innovation and the rise of an informal tourism accommodation sector , 2015 .

[17]  Jenny Kennedy.  Conceptual boundaries of sharing , 2016 .

[18]  Qing Ke,et al.  Sharing Means Renting?: An Entire-marketplace Analysis of Airbnb , 2017, WebSci.

[19]  James A. Fitzsimmons,et al.  Consumer Participation and Productivity in Service Operations , 1985 .

[20]  M. Peris-Ortiz,et al.  Entrepreneurship and Innovation in a Context of Crisis , 2014 .

[21]  Chrysanthos Dellarocas,et al.  The Sound of Silence in Online Feedback: Estimating Trading Risks in the Presence of Reporting Bias , 2006, Manag. Sci..

[22]  David Schuff,et al.  What Makes a Helpful Review? A Study of Customer Reviews on Amazon.com , 2010 .

[23]  A first look at online reputation on Airbnb, where every stay is above average , 2021 .

[24]  Yong Liu.  Word-of-Mouth for Movies: Its Dynamics and Impact on Box Office Revenue , 2006 .

[25]  Iis P. Tussyadiah.  Strategic Self-presentation in the Sharing Economy: Implications for Host Branding , 2016, ENTER.

[26]  Jiaying Lyu,et al.  Why travelers use Airbnb again?: An integrative approach to understanding travelers’ repurchase intention , 2017 .

[27]  Matthew J. Salganik,et al.  Leading the Herd Astray: An Experimental Study of Self-fulfilling Prophecies in an Artificial Cultural Market , 2008, Social psychology quarterly.

[28]  Michael Luca,et al.  Digital Discrimination: The Case of Airbnb.com , 2014 .

[29]  Huaping Chen,et al.  Credibility of Electronic Word-of-Mouth: Informational and Normative Determinants of On-line Consumer Recommendations , 2009, Int. J. Electron. Commer..

[30]  Florian Hawlitschek,et al.  Price Determinants on Airbnb: How Reputation Pays Off in the Sharing Economy , 2017 .

[31]  Marianna Sigala,et al.  Collaborative commerce in tourism: implications for research and industry , 2017 .

[32]  Donghun Lee,et al.  An Analysis of Social Features Associated with Room Sales of Airbnb , 2015, CSCW Companion.

[33]  Eric J. Arnould,et al.  Liquid Relationship to Possessions , 2012 .

[34]  Xinran Y. Lehto,et al.  The accommodation experiencescape: a comparative assessment of hotels and Airbnb , 2017 .

[35]  N Yannopoulou,et al.  User-Generated Brands and Social Media: Couchsurfing and Airbnb , 2013 .

[36]  Giampaolo Viglia,et al.  Exploring How Video Digital Storytelling Builds Relationship Experiences , 2016 .

[37]  Jay Kandampully,et al.  What drives customers to use access-based sharing options in the hospitality industry? , 2016 .

[38]  Barbara Neuhofer,et al.  Value co-creation and co-destruction in the Airbnb sharing economy , 2017 .

[39]  Clayton M. Christensen.  The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail , 2013 .

[40]  Jen-Hung Huang,et al.  Herding in online product choice , 2006 .

[41]  Wendell Bell,et al.  The Third Wave. , 1982 .

[42]  Pia A. Albinsson,et al.  Alternative marketplaces in the 21st century: Building community through sharing events , 2012 .

[43]  Mareike Möhlmann.  Collaborative consumption: determinants of satisfaction and the likelihood of using a sharing economy option again , 2015 .

[44]  Marianna Sigala,et al.  Gamification for Crowdsourcing Marketing Practices: Applications and Benefits in Tourism , 2015 .

[45]  Jeroen Oskam,et al.  Airbnb: the future of networked hospitality businesses , 2016 .

[46]  Paul Resnick,et al.  Trust among strangers in internet transactions: Empirical analysis of eBay' s reputation system , 2002, The Economics of the Internet and E-commerce.

[47]  Kent Grayson,et al.  The Intersecting Roles of Consumer and Producer: A Critical Perspective on Co-production, Co-creation and Prosumption , 2008 .

[48]  Qiuzhen Wang,et al.  Seller reputation or product presentation? An empirical investigation from cue utilization perspective , 2016, Int. J. Inf. Manag..

[49]  Svetlozar Nestorov,et al.  Airbnb: Exciting innovation or passing fad? , 2016 .

[50]  Richard Ronald,et al.  The Ideology of Home Ownership: Homeowner Societies and the Role of Housing , 2008 .

[51]  A. Fleischer,et al.  The Role of Cybermediaries in Reputation Building and Price Premiums in the Online Hotel Market , 2012 .

[52]  Lloyd S. Shapley,et al.  Additive and non-additive set functions , 1953 .

[53]  Sangwon Park,et al.  What makes a useful online review? Implication for travel product websites. , 2015 .

[54]  J. Schor,et al.  Collaborating and connecting: the emergence of the sharing economy , 2015 .

[55]  Angelika Dimoka,et al.  The Nature and Role of Feedback Text Comments in Online Marketplaces: Implications for Trust Building, Price Premiums, and Seller Differentiation , 2006, Inf. Syst. Res..

[56]  Gary E. Bolton,et al.  Engineering Trust - Reciprocity in the Production of Reputation Information , 2009, Manag. Sci..

[57]  L. Festinger.  A Theory of Social Comparison Processes , 1954 .

[58]  Airi Lampinen,et al.  Monetizing Network Hospitality: Hospitality and Sociability in the Context of Airbnb , 2015, CSCW.

[59]  B. Sparks,et al.  The impact of online reviews on hotel booking intentions and perception of trust. , 2011 .

[60]  Z. Bauman,et al.  Liquid Modernity@@@Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds , 2005 .

[61]  G. Owen.  VALUES OF GAMES WITH A PRIORI UNIONS , 1977 .

[62]  Byeong Ho Kang,et al.  Web Information Management System: Personalization and Generalization , 2003, ICWI.

[63]  Stephanie Q. Liu,et al.  Airbnb: Online targeted advertising, sense of power, and consumer decisions , 2017 .

[64]  R. Belk.  Sharing: Table 1 , 2010 .

[65]  Ingoo Han,et al.  The Effect of On-Line Consumer Reviews on Consumer Purchasing Intention: The Moderating Role of Involvement , 2007, Int. J. Electron. Commer..

[66]  Anindya Ghose,et al.  Examining the Relationship Between Reviews and Sales: The Role of Reviewer Identity Disclosure in Electronic Markets , 2008, Inf. Syst. Res..

[67]  Iis P. Tussyadiah,et al.  Impacts of Peer-to-Peer Accommodation Use on Travel Patterns , 2016, Journal of Travel Research.

[68]  E. Ert,et al.  Trust and reputation in the sharing economy: The role of personal photos in Airbnb , 2015 .

[69]  Lauren I. Labrecque,et al.  Online Personal Branding: Processes, Challenges, and Implications , 2011 .

[70]  E. Carvajal-Trujillo,et al.  An evaluation of Spanish hotel websites: Informational vs. relational strategies , 2013 .

[71]  Antecedents of Brand Post Popularity in Facebook: The Influence of Images, Videos, and Text , 2015 .

[72]  Nikolaos Stylos,et al.  Unraveling the diverse nature of service quality in a sharing economy: A social exchange theory perspective of Airbnb accommodation , 2017 .

[73]  W. Wayne Fu,et al.  Aggregate bandwagon effect on online videos' viewership: Value uncertainty, popularity cues, and heuristics , 2011, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[74]  Mingming Cheng.  Sharing economy: A review and agenda for future research , 2016 .

[75]  Rob Law,et al.  Be a “Superhost”: The importance of badge systems for peer-to-peer rental accommodations , 2017 .

[76]  C. Prahalad,et al.  Co-creation experiences: The next practice in value creation , 2004 .

[77]  Giana M. Eckhardt,et al.  Access-Based Consumption: The Case of Car Sharing , 2012 .

[78]  R. Belk.  You are what you can access: Sharing and collaborative consumption online , 2014 .

[79]  Barbara Neuhofer,et al.  Airbnb – an exploration of value co-creation experiences in Jamaica , 2017 .

[80]  Rachel Botsman,et al.  What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption , 2010 .

[81]  Iis P. Tussyadiah,et al.  Social Networking and Social Support in Tourism Experience: The Moderating Role of Online Self-Presentation Strategies , 2013 .

[82]  Dimitrios Buhalis,et al.  The influence of e-word-of-mouth on hotel occupancy rate , 2016 .

[83]  N. Pappas.  The complexity of purchasing intentions in peer-to-peer accommodation , 2017 .

[84]  Kun-Huang Huarng,et al.  Innovation and entrepreneurship in knowledge industries , 2013 .

[85]  Karen L. Xie,et al.  Consumer valuation of Airbnb listings: a hedonic pricing approach , 2017 .

[86]  G. Viglia,et al.  Please, talk about it! When hotel popularity boosts preferences☆ , 2014 .

[87]  Iis P. Tussyadiah,et al.  Identifying salient attributes of peer-to-peer accommodation experience , 2017 .

[88]  C. Williams,et al.  Regulating the sharing economy to prevent the growth of the informal sector in the hospitality industry , 2017 .

[89]  C. Heo.  Sharing economy and prospects in tourism research , 2016 .

[90]  J. Nicolau,et al.  Price determinants of sharing economy based accommodation rental : a study of listings from 33 cities on Airbnb.com , 2017 .

[91]  Jun Li,et al.  Agent Behavior in the Sharing Economy : Evidence from Airbnb , 2015 .

[92]  Wei-Jue Huang,et al.  Past experience, traveler personality and tripographics on intention to use Airbnb , 2017 .

[93]  Giampaolo Viglia,et al.  When distinction does not pay off - Investigating the determinants of European agritourism prices , 2017 .

[94]  G. Viglia,et al.  Who Am I? How Compelling Self-storytelling Builds Digital Personal Reputation , 2016 .

[95]  Paolo Parigi,et al.  Reputation offsets trust judgments based on social biases among Airbnb users , 2017, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[96]  Y. Benkler.  'Sharing Nicely': On Shareable Goods and the Emergence of Sharing as a Modality of Economic Production , 2004 .

[97]  Iis P. Tussyadiah.  Factors of satisfaction and intention to use peer-to-peer accommodation , 2016 .

[98]  GEORGIOS ZERVAS,et al.  The Impact of the Sharing Economy on the Hotel Industry: Evidence from Airbnb's Entry Into the Texas Market , 2015, EC.

[99]  Georgios Zervas,et al.  A first look at online reputation on Airbnb, where every stay is above average , 2015, Marketing Letters.

[100]  M. Troilo,et al.  Airbnb customer experience: Evidence of convergence across three countries , 2017 .

[101]  A. Mauri,et al.  Web reviews influence on expectations and purchasing intentions of hotel potential customers. , 2013 .

[102]  Jun Li,et al.  Pros vs Joes: Agent Pricing Behavior in the Sharing Economy , 2016 .

[103]  S. Lipovetsky,et al.  Analysis of regression in game theory approach , 2001 .

[104]  Frank Huettner,et al.  Axiomatic arguments for decomposing goodness of fit according to Shapley and Owen values , 2012 .

[105]  Ge Zhu,et al.  Inside the sharing economy: Understanding consumer motivations behind the adoption of mobile applications , 2017 .

[106]  Frank M. Bass,et al.  A New Product Growth for Model Consumer Durables , 2004, Manag. Sci..

[107]  Kun-Huang Huarng,et al.  Viral effects of social network and media on consumers’ purchase intention , 2015 .

[108]  Roland Helm,et al.  Implications from cue utilisation theory and signalling theory for firm reputation and the marketing of new products , 2007 .

[109]  Karen L. Xie,et al.  The impacts of quality and quantity attributes of Airbnb hosts on listing performance , 2017 .