The Role of Economic, Social and Environmental Benefits for Customer Loyalty in Different Sharing Services

Abstract

Across five samples (i.e., apartment, car, garment, bike and food sharing), this paper shows that there are several reasons why customers want to maintain a relationship with a sharing service provider. Our paper contributes to research on the sharing economy and loyalty research by showing the diverse effects of economic, social and environmental benefits on customer loyalty. In contrast to the sharing industry’s communication to “serve a better world”, community or environmental motives do not generally drive consumers’ intentions to use a sharing provider again. Economic reasons dominate in all five sharing sectors. Thus, the economic perspective on the sharing economy trumps the motive of “doing good for others”. In the case of all five samples, it is self-centered benefits that drive customers to remain loyal. In consequence, sharing providers that would focus primarily on the social and environmental reasons of their customers would implement less effective means. Thus, their customers might be less loyal. One reason for the lower impact of social and environment benefits might be due to the industry itself. Consumers might for example lack comprehensive and reliable information about the environmental effects of sharing services. Thus, evaluating and communicating potential effects for the environment might help to increase consumers’ loyalty in the future. Furthermore, it is in the field of mobility services where all three benefits increase customer loyalty. Whereas carsharing consumers are mostly motivated by economic benefits, bike sharing consumers mostly maintain their relationship because of their desire to belong to a group. These different findings illustrate that specific transport services are used because of the different motives of consumers. The economic benefits of carsharing stem very probably from the high(er) costs of car purchases and their maintenance costs. Buying a bike requires less effort and, thus, economic reasons are less relevant. The importance of social benefits for bike sharing might result from several bike sharing firms investing vast sums of money in recent years and, thus, the visibility of the bikes in public. Moreover, on social media, these firms particularly emphasize the use of bikes in touristy and big cities, thus signaling belonging to a group of mindful and knowledgeable citizens. In consequence, consumers might feel that they are part of a voguish group as it was shown that trend affinity increase repurchase intentions for Airbnb accommodation. The findings also show that loyalty towards providers of apartment sharing is mostly driven by economic benefits. This can be explained by two reasons. First, the apartment sharers mainly advertise that people can save money. Second, consumers of apartment sharing might prefer apartment sharing because they travel more frequently than others. Thus, they need to focus on reasonable prices to continue to travel frequently. The benefit of belonging also increases loyalty, but to a lesser extent. Thus, pursuing the idea of belonging to a group of similar-minded people increases customer loyalty. However, we explain the rather small effect on loyalty with the lack of intense contact with the apartment provider and/or neighbors of the apartment or house. It appears that apartment users seem to cognitively prefer the idea of being a part of a group but not necessarily engage with others in the tourist spot. Furthermore, there is no proven effect of environmental motives on the loyalty of apartment sharers. This can be explained with either the lack of knowledge about the environmental effect, or the knowledge that apartment sharing might be less beneficial to the environment than communicated. To conclude, our paper provides not only detailed findings about five industries of the sharing economy but also delineates management implications for each single sector. In summary, we suggest that sharing providers should not transfer marketing means from other sharing sectors without reflecting upon this beforehand. The drivers of consumers’ loyalty are diverse and marketing means in one industry will be less effective in another.