Platform Exploitation: When Service Agents Defect with Customers from Online Service Platforms

Abstract

Online, pure-labor service platforms (e.g., Zeel, Amazon Home Services, Freelancer.com ) represent a multibillion-dollar market. An increasing managerial concern in such markets is the opportunistic behavior of service agents who defect with customers off platform for future transactions. Using multiple methods across studies, the authors seek to explain this platform exploitation phenomenon. In Study 1, a theories-in-use approach clarifies why and when platform exploitation occurs and derives some hypotheses…