Providers Versus Platforms: Marketing Communications in the Sharing Economy
研究发现，共享经济品牌使用以提供商为中心的营销传播（而非平台中心）时，消费者会因感知到帮助个人提供商而更愿意支付、购买和下载应用，该效应源于消费者采用“共情视角”。
Peer-to-peer (P2P) business models have become increasingly prevalent in the marketplace. However, little is known about what factors influence consumer perceptions of purchases from firms using these models. The authors propose that features inherent to the P2P model lead consumers to perceive high provider–firm independence, where providers are viewed as relatively independent from the platform on which they offer goods/services. Across a series of studies, the authors show that when P2P brands use provider-focused (vs. platform-focused) marketing communications, consumers perceive a purchase as helping an individual provider to a greater extent, which increases consumers’ willingness to pay and their likelihood of both making a purchase and downloading the brand’s app. This is because provider-focused marketing communications in this context lead consumers to think about their purchase from the provider’s perspective, thus adopting an “empathy lens.” The authors further show that this effect does not extend to other business models. This work thus identifies provider- (vs. platform-) focused marketing communications as a way for marketing managers of P2P brands to drive important purchase-related outcomes.