Abstract
The sharing economy has penetrated everyday life, offering various services ranging from automotive services to transportation, labor, delivery, rental, travel, short-term loan and dining services. It is a means of sharing goods, services, ideas, information, and skills through a network of individuals, facilitated through social networks via computers and mobile apps. There still is not enough research on business-to-customer (B2C) relationship quality in this field. In particular, sharing economy businesses in China are faced with many problems with regard to safety, trust, loyalty, service quality, and credibility. In this PhD research proposal, the purposes of the study are to develop a framework that contributes to building B2C relationship quality between service providers, firms (sharing platforms), and customers, and furthermore to identify the independent variables that affect B2C relationships in the sharing economy in the Chinese context. Lastly, whether the quality of the B2C relationship between firms and customers affects the sharing service providers’ and customers’ relationships or not is assessed. A literature review is conducted to find the independent variables and, by proposal of a hypothesis, the framework is outlined. The data are collected using a questionnaire.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
R. Botsman, R. Rogers, What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption (HarperBusiness, New York, 2010), pp. 38–43
L. Piscicelli, The role of values in collaborative consumption. Proceedings of the CADBE PhD Conference 2014, At Nottingham Trent University, 2014
C.P. Lamberton, R.L. Rose, When is ours better than mine? A framework for understanding and altering participation in commercial sharing systems. J. Mark. 76(4), 109–125 (2012)
National Information Center, China internet “sharing economy”, research report (2017), Available online: http://www.199it.com/archives/569406.html. Accessed 24 July 2017
National Information Center, China internet “sharing economy”, research report (2016), Available online: http://www.sic.gov.cn/archiver/SIC/UpFile/Files/Htmleditor/201602/20160229121154612.pdf. Accessed 24 July 2017
iiMedia, China internet “sharing economy”, research report (2016), Available onine: http://www.iimedia.cn/14780907678270150n.pdf. Accessed 25 July 2017
Xinhuanet, The fast growing sharing economy in China (2017), http://news.xinhuanet.com/fortune/2017-03/16/c_1120636819.htm. Accessed 04 Jul 2017
C. Marquis, Z. Yang, The sharing economy in China: toward a unique local model. China Policy Rev. 9, 109–111 (2014)
J. Owyang, C. Tran, C. Silva, The collaborative economy: products, services, and market relationships have changed as sharing startups impact business models. To avoid disruption, companies must adopt the collaborative economy value chain, Altimeter Research Theme: Digital Economies, A Market Definition Report (2013), Available online: https://www.slideshare.net/Altimeter/the-collaborative-economy. Accessed 03 Aug 2017
T. Puschmann, R. Alt, Sharing economy. Bus Inform Syst Eng 58, 93–99 (2015)
R. Radka, A. Margolis, Changing models of ownership and value exchange, in Presentation at Epic Conference, Boulder, 20 September 2011
FTChinese, House sharing in China (2016), http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001067520#adchannelID=2000. Accessed 26 July 2017
News ScienceNet, Embracing sharing economy (2016), http://news.sciencenet.cn/htmlnews/2016/5/347478.shtm. Accessed 25 July 2017
R. Peters, The sharing economy requires relationship capital (2015), https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-sharing-economy-requires-relationship-capital-rob-peters. Accessed 11 Aug 2017
P. Guenzi, O. Pelloni, The impact of interpersonal relationships on customer satisfaction and loyalty to the service provider. Int. J. Serv. Ind. Manag. 15(4), 365–384 (2004)
R. Belk, Sharing. J. Consumer Res. 36, 715–734 (2010)
R. Belk, You are what you can access: sharing and collaborative consumption online. J. Bus. Res. 67(8), 1595–1600 (2014)
F. Bardhi, G.M. Eckhardt, Access-based consumption: the case of car sharing. J. Consum. Res. 39(4), 881–898 (2012)
B. Balaram, Reclaiming power in the sharing economy (RSA, London, 2016)
A. Andreotti, G. Anselmi, T. Eichhorn, C.P. Hoffmann, M. Micheli, Participation, privacy, and power in the sharing economy participation in the sharing economy, Report from the EU H2020 Research Project Ps2Share (2017), Available online: https://www.bi.edu/globalassets/forskning/h2020/working-paper-version-for-web-privacy.pdf. Accessed 04 Aug 2017
J. Madden, Exploring the new sharing economy (NAIOP Research Foundation, Herndon, 2015)
J. Hamari, M. Sjöklint, A. Ukkonen, The sharing economy: why people participate in collaborative consumption. J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 67(9), 2047–2059 (2015)
P. Munoz, B. Cohen, Mapping out the sharing economy: a configurational approach to sharing business modeling. Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change 125, 21–37 (2017)
K. Matzler, V. Veider, W. Kathan, Adapting to the sharing economy. MIT Sloan Manag. Rev. 56(2), 71–77 (2015)
B. Cohen, J. Kietzmann, Ride on! Mobility business models for the sharing economy. Org. Environ. 27(3), 279–296 (2014)
V. Demary, Competition in the sharing economy, IW policypaper, no. 19/2015 (2015), Available online: https://www.iwkoeln.de/fileadmin/publikationen/2015/235445/Sharing_Economy_Policy_Paper.pdf. Accessed 24 Aug 2017
J. Valant, A European Agenda for the Collaborative Economy (European Parliamentary Research Service, Brussels, 2016), Available online: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2016/593510/EPRS_BRI(2016)593510_EN.pdf. Accessed 23 Aug 2017
I. Stoica, R. Morris, D. Liben-Nowell, D.R. Karger, M.F. Kaashoek, F. Dabek, et al., Chord: a scalable peer-to-peer lookup protocol for internet applications. IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. 11, 17–32 (2003)
T.H. Roh, The sharing economy: Business cases of social enterprises using collaborative networks. Procedia Comput. Sci. 91, 502–511 (2016)
M. Mohlmann, Collaborative consumption: determinants of satisfaction and the likelihood of using a sharing economy option again. J. Consum. Behav. 14(3), 193–207 (2015)
L. Scholdan, N. van Straaten, C.N.A. Molenaar, What are the drivers of the sharing economy and how do they changes the customer behavior? E-marketing report, program me: e-marketing: marketing strategies for future success (2015), Available online: https://www.contextuallearning.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/drivers-of-the-sharing-economy-strategie.pdf. Accessed 24 Aug 2017
D. Roos, R. Hahn, Does shared consumption affect consumers’ values, attitudes, and norms? A panel study. J. Bus. Res. 77, 113–123 (2017)
L. Rajaobelina, J. Bergeron, Antecedents and consequences of buyer‐seller relationship quality in the financial services industry. Int. J. Bank Mark. 27(5), 359–380 (2009)
D.V. Parboteeah, J.S. Valacich, J.D. Wells, The influence of website characteristics on a consumer's urge to buy impulsively. Inform. Syst. Res. 20(1), 60–78 (2009)
M.S. Balaji, S. Kumar Roy, K. Kok Wei, Does relationship communication matter in B2C service relationships? J. Serv. Mark. 30(2), 186–200 (2016)
M. Law, T. Lau, Y.H. Wong, From customer relationship management to customer-managed relationship: unraveling the paradox with a co-creative perspective. Mark. Intell. Plan. 21(1), 51–60 (2003)
M.M. Raciti, T. Ward, T.S. Dagger, The effect of relationship desire on consumer-to-business relationships. Eur. J. Mark. 47(3/4), 615–634 (2013)
G. Winch, P. Joyce, Exploring the dynamics of building, and losing, consumer trust in B2C e-business. Int. J. Retail Distrib. Manag. 34(7), 541–555 (2006)
P. Parigi, Trust and relationships in the sharing economy, in Perspective: King’s College London Economics & Finance Society, (2016)
P. Parigi, Trust and relationships in the sharing economy. Respective student-led economics journal (2016), http://kcleconomics.com/trust-and-relationships-in-the-sharing-economy/. Accessed 11 Aug 2017
H. Park, Collaborative apparel consumption in the digital sharing economy: an agenda for academic inquiry. J. Consum. Stud. 41(5), 465–474 (2017)
M.T. Adjei, M.N. Clark, Relationship marketing in a B2C context: moderating role of personality traits. J. Retail. Consum. Serv. 17, 73–79 (2010)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Hu, X. (2019). B2C Relationship Quality in the Sharing Economy in the Chinese Context. In: Reyes-Munoz, A., Zheng, P., Crawford, D., Callaghan, V. (eds) EAI International Conference on Technology, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Education. TIE 2017. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 532. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02242-6_21
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02242-6_21
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02241-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02242-6
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)