Contagious Effects of Customer Misbehavior in Access-Based Services

Abstract

Customer misbehavior in service settings is problematic for two reasons: (1) because of the direct damage it causes and (2) because of additional negative effects that arise from the contagion of such misbehavior. The authors extend existing theory of customer misbehavior by studying its contagious effect. The investigation focuses on access-based services, defined as transactions in which multiple consumers successively gain temporal, short-term access to a good, while legal ownership remains with the service provider (e.g., car sharing and fashion rentals). Due to the nature of these services, they are especially prone to indirect customer misbehavior, which is directed at the accessed product and occurs in the absence of others. Two online experiments provide the first empirical evidence for a contagiousness of misbehavior and reveal that this effect is driven by customers' perceptions of the social norms among the customer group. Moreover, they indicate that greater strength of the accessed product's brand as well as lower anonymity of the accessed product's owner attenuate contagion. A field experiment shows that an increase in the communal identification among access-based service customers reverses the contagious effect, with customers more likely to remove signs of previous users' misbehavior. The results suggest that access-based service providers should address customer misbehavior by (a) investing in the products they offer access to, (b) establishing more personal relationships with customers, and, foremost, (c) increasing communal identification among customers.

A Definition and Theoretical Review of the Circular Economy, Value Creation, and Sustainable Business Models: Where Are We Now and Where Should Research Move in the Future?

“…Agency theory posits that the agent-in this case, the customer-may misbehave by, for instance, inappropriately handling, damaging, or overusing product [41,100]. Risk is transferred to the seller, who owns the product, because this misbehavior makes it more difficult to reuse or recycle the product.…”

Enabling Value Co-Creation in the Sharing Economy: The Case of Mobike

“…This is because, in a highly-connected sharing market, the sense of reciprocity and community belonging is not only instrumental to market promotion, but also essential for maintaining the network effects, ensuring positive usage outcome, sustaining active participation, and preventing participants' misbehavior [30]. Some researchers argue that users in the sharing systems are prone to abuse rules or misbehave-engaging in theft, vandalism, and free riding, for example-through deliberately acting against the commonly accepted or set rules, or taking advantage of loopholes in the system and damaging trust [31,32]. Therefore, regulation of users toward sustainable value co-creation behavior is crucial to mitigate possible negative actions, manage the commercial sharing systems effectively and improve the welfare of the whole community [33][34][35].…”

“…Social identification with groups or organizations can be established to develop or extend one's individual identity. According to marketing literature, consumers often use identification to express their extended self through the symbolic meaning embodied in the brand; and such identification is considered to inspire consumers to protect the brand, the community or the company [32,65,66]. Specifically, C-C identification in this context is reflected in the relationship between active value co-creators and Mobike, as the interview data show that prosumers are inspired by the mission (green and last-mile transport) and the actual product/service (fashionable bike and convenient usage) of Mobike, as well as the lifestyle it supports (sustainability).…”

The Relationship between Access Practices and Economic Systems

“…This type of lack of trust has been referred to by Sahlins (1972) as negative reciprocity: goods and services are exchanged, but typically only one side benefits from the exchange. Indeed, Schaefers et al (2015) note that customer misbehavior is the norm when goods are communally accessed rather than owned. That is, customers do not care about the objects they access or each other, and become contagious within a community of people who are accessing the same goods (like cars via Zipcar, for example, in .…”