Customer loyalty in the sharing economy: The role of customers’ personal reputation

Purpose – Sharing economy is a recent phenomenon that is booming and brings with it economics, social and environmental impacts. It has some peculiarities (e.g., triadic model, exchange of underutilized resources) that make it different to the existing models. The recent research focused on the definition of sharing economy, the participants’ motivations and the impacts it has. However, limited research has been developed regarding the loyalty of customers in the sharing economy and the bilateral reputation systems that enables services providers (i.e., sellers) to give reviews to customers. This thesis aims to examine the role of customers’ reputation on one sharing economy platform (i.e., Airbnb), on the loyalty level of customers. In particular, the research will study the effects of review valence (i.e., positive or negative), self-esteem as mediator and review length as moderator (i.e., short or long), on customers’ loyalty. Design/methodology/approach – For the research it was adopted a multimethod approach. Firstly, an exploratory research was conducted following an observational research design to collect insight into the topic via a series of interviews. Secondly, a confirmatory research was conducted by adopting an experimental research design to test the hypotheses. In particular, it was created a survey and participants were randomly exposed to one of four scenarios. Findings – The findings show that review valence have both a direct and indirect positive influence on customer loyalty. Indeed, the mediating role of self-esteem in the relationship “review valence – loyalty” was partially confirmed. In particular it was found that self-esteem has a complete mediating role between review valence and repurchase intention, but just a partial mediating role between review valence and word of mouth. The hypothesised moderating role of review length between review valence and self-esteem was rejected. On the other side, it was found to be significant the negative moderating role of review length between the mediating relationship of self-esteem on word of mouth. Originality/value – Given that bilateral reputation systems are a peculiarity of sharing economy, limited research is available regarding customers reputation. This study thus contributes to extend the knowledge in this field. In addition, it also extends the existing theory regarding loyalty in the sharing economy, by studying for the first time the role and effects of customers’ reputation on customers themselves (by analysing self-esteem) and their loyalty.