A netnographic study of P2P collaborative consumption platforms’ user interface and design

Abstract

Although still embryonic, collaborative consumption and the sharing economy have become social and economic phenomena in just a few short years, yet there is little consensus on how to define them. The current classificatory schema or typologies of platforms have some weaknesses. Sectoral classifications, technological functionality, and discursive modes of understanding sharing and collaborative economies all provide valuable insights, but when taken individually important gaps are evident, not least in their inter-system isolation, but most particularly when technology, such as platform architecture and user interfaces, is disassociated from wider social and economic conditions of possibility. In order to build on previous research we set out to develop a more complex understanding of collaborative consumption by studying platform architecture, interface, design and informational content to examine how technological affordances of digital platforms’ structure social interaction. In order to carry out the research we designed a netnographic protocol that systematised data collection across four dimensions of platforms’ technological structure and informational content: functionality and usability; trust and virtual reputation; codes of conduct and community footprint. Data was collected on fifty-five platforms, including forty-seven across Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain, as well as eight international platforms. Following factor and cluster analysis, and on the basis of the theoretical understandings of the sharing and collaborative economy, we developed a typology that grouped platforms into three groups: network, transaction and community oriented.