The role of a central actor in increasing platform stickiness and stakeholder profitability: Bridging the gap between value creation and value capture in the sharing economy

Abstract

The viability of a sharing economy platform is determined by the central actor's ability to actively manage and, in the long term, maintain synergies between the value it creates and the value it appropriates. • Development of a multi-stakeholder network in the sharing economy is not selfgoverned, but rather a well-designed process that is developed and managed by the central actor. • We posit eight value-driving mechanisms through which the central actor can simultaneously increase platform stickiness (ability to draw in and keep stakeholders) and stakeholder profitability (ability to capture value from multiple stakeholders). • We integrate value-driving mechanisms in the Platform Stickiness-Stakeholder Profitability Framework that not only offers novel theoretical insights, but can also be used by practitioners to improve their stakeholder management strategies. • Our study extends the sharing economy literature into the B2B context by providing empirical insights into the UK's first-of-a-kind B2B platform that is disrupting the events industry.

The digital marketing capabilities gap

“…Thus, midstream digital relationships came to the fore by examining virtual networks, collaboration marketplaces, and governance mechanisms for collaboration. Topics that emerged here included empirical works investigating e-market orientation (Shaltoni & West, 2010), central actors in platform relationships (Laczko, Hullova, Needham, Rossiter, & Battisti, 2019), and governance mechanisms in electronic markets (Grewal et al, 2010) as interfirm capabilities.…”

“…These included: return on engagement activities within B2B relationships (Guesalaga, 2016); customer relationship management in post-sales service (Agnihotri, Trainor, Itani, & Rodriguez, 2017); as well as digital sales resources deployed to identify franchisees (López-Fernández & Perrigot, 2018). Sales-based studies are complemented by intra-firm digital relationships such as the work by Li, Guo, Cao, and Li (2018) on internal branding, as well as the higherorder exploitation of resources deployed to deliver innovation (Hardwick & Anderson, 2019;Zahay, Hajli, & Sihi, 2018) and advanced coordination, collaboration, and integration capabilities between firms and platforms (Laczko et al, 2019;Mallapragada, Grewal, Mehta, & Dharwadkar, 2015). It is clear that the diffusion of the mature digital relationship adoption practices in B2C markets are diffusing to B2B markets, albeit at a slower rate.…”

Achieving loyalty for sharing economy platforms: an expectation–confirmation perspective

“…In the SE context, user satisfaction in this study refers to the level of satisfaction from both the service supplier and customer sides towards the service they obtained (Mao and Lyu, 2017), while platform loyalty is arguably the consequence of user satisfaction. It is a unique attribute of an SE platform that makes its products and/or services indispensable and valuable to its owners (Laczko et al , 2019). Platform loyalty can be measured by the number of daily active users and monthly active users, that is, the larger the number, the stickier the platform is, to increase platform loyalty (see Table 4).…”

Revisiting Contemporary Issues in B2B Marketing: It's Not Just about Artificial Intelligence

“…In B2B marketing, there are a set of more profound implications than those that current marketing research currently recognizes. B2B interactions constitute part of the service ecosystem or network, hence multiple stakeholders face impacts (Hoejmose et al, 2012; Laczko et al, 2019). This perspective highlights some important challenges.…”