Recent years have witnessed a rapid growth in peer to peer (P2P) sharingservice businesses such as Uber or Airbnb. In P2P sharing-service businesses,
goods or services are provided by customers (peers) who own underutilized assets
rather than by servi...
Recent years have witnessed a rapid growth in peer to peer (P2P) sharingservice businesses such as Uber or Airbnb. In P2P sharing-service businesses,
goods or services are provided by customers (peers) who own underutilized assets
rather than by service firms, who act simply as an intermediary between customers.
One of customers acts as a peer-service provider (PSP), and the other acts as a
service-receiving customer. For example, Uber offers an online platform that
coordinates underutilized assets (e.g., an PSP’s vehicles) to serve a
customer’s need for transportation. P2P sharing-service firms have no direct
control over an PSP’s quality of service provided to a customer. Further, both
PSPs and customers are customers to the firm, and therefore firms are concerned
with the quality of service provided not only to customers but also to PSPs.
In the P2P sharing-service context, particularly in the case of services serving
the needs of diverse travelers (e.g., Uber or Airbnb), customers and PSPs can be
people of different genders and ethnicities, which can cause them to feel social
distance between them. According to the social identity theory, the more a
customer feels dissimilar to an PSP, the more a customer is likely to experience
social distance. Thus, when service failure occurs, customers can show more
negative emotions to dissimilar PSPs than to similar PSPs because they are not
ingroup members. However, PSPs are not professional service employees, they may
not know how to cope with the social distance, which can result in uncomfortable
service experience for both customers and PSPs. Yet, few studies examined how
such social distance can influence on customers and how it can be reduced,
especially in the service context. This study is intended to fill this gap in
the research. First, the current study proposes and empirically examines the role
of customer’s perceived social distance in the service failure context. Second,
PSP’s communication accommodation style moderates between customer’s perceived
social distance and customer discomfort, and between customer’s perceived social
distance and perceived competence of PSP. Third, PSP’s failures can lead to
customer’s negative emotional and behavioral intentions towards a Platform
Provider (PP) who does not occur the failure.
A total of 150 valid responses from US customers were collected through an
online scenario-based survey with a 2 (perceived dissimilarity: low vs. high) x
2 (communication accommodation styles: convergence vs. maintenance) betweensubject experimental design. Univariate Analysis conducted with the effects of
perceived dissimilarity on perceived social distance. The result was
insignificant. Regression analysis conducted with the effects of perceived social
distance on customer discomfort and perceived competence of PSP. The results were
significant. Hierarchical regression analysis conducted to check the moderating
effects of communication accommodation style on between perceived social distance
and customer discomfort, and between perceived social distance and perceived
competence of PSP. The moderating effect was significant only between perceived
social distance and perceived competence of PSP. Lastly, regression analysis
conducted to examine customer’s cognitive, affective, behavioral blame
attribution to PSP, and PP. The results were all significant. Customers show
negative affective, behavioral intentions not only towards PSPs, but also PPs.
Specifically, towards PSPs, customers feel anger and disappointment, and have
intention to give a bad rating and to write a negative review. Towards PPs,
customers feel disappointment, and it decreases reuse intention and increases
negative word-of-mouth. However, anger and disappointment towards PSPs failed to
discriminant validity test, so careful interpretation is needed.
Academically, findings of this study deal with unique operational issues in
P2P sharing-service and empirically tests a coping strategy for those issues.
Second, this study empirically tested the role of social distance in service
encounter. This study proved customer’s perceived social distance worsens
customer discomfort and decreases perceived competence of PSP. Third, this study
examined and empirically tested the effects of communication accommodation style
in the service context. Lastly, this study finds that customers show negative
emotional and behavioral intentions to PSPs, but also PPs who are not occurred
the failure. Managerially, this study helps P2P sharing-service firms improve
the quality of service offered to customers by PSPs by supporting PSPs to adopt
appropriate communication styles which can adjust customer’s perceived
competence of PSP. Also, this study highlights PPs have to manage their PSP’s
failures, which can lead to customer’s negative emotional and behavioral
intentions towards them.