Intermediary Platform Research Articles

Dealing with special supervisors: a typology of coping strategies toward accountability to customers in gig work

Numerous studies have explored the situations of gig workers in the ‘new’ gig economy. While the existing literature focuses on intermediary platforms’ algorithmic control over workers, this paper emphasizes the interpersonal and negotiable aspects of gig worker-customer interactions through an accountability perspective. We posit that algorithmic control and accountability to customers constitute two coordination mechanisms for platform HRM. The latter has gained significance as intermediary platforms adopt algorithmic management and empower customers as visible supervisors. Algorithm-mediated customer control assigns customers direct influence, thereby positioning them as prominent accountability sources and compelling gig workers to meet their expectations. Nevertheless, how gig workers navigate their behaviors under these conditions remains unknown. This study employs a typological approach to explore gig workers’ coping strategies in response to accountabilities, providing micro-level insights into the functionality and dysfunctionality of HRM with gig platforms. Drawing from a qualitative study in the Chinese online delivery industry, we integrate metaphors from cognitive research (i.e. intuitive psychologists and intuitive economists) with the metaphor derived from accountability theory (i.e. intuitive politicians) to develop a fourfold typology grounded in two dimensions (i.e. cognitive modes and economic motives). Our findings reveal both the inevitability and possibility of accountability to customers, identifying four coping strategies (i.e. obedient, ingratiatory, defensive, and cooperative behaviors). This paper offers novel insights into the fields of accountability and HRM research, along with practical implications.

Young Consumers’ Satisfaction and Intention in Sharing Economy Using the Case of Airbnb

This paper sought to investigate young consumers’ satisfaction and intention in sharing economy using Airbnb as the ideal case company. In doing so the entity sought to fill up gaps in the literature on hotel management, since the study discovered that there is no detailed concept of consumer behaviour in the process of providing services as an intermediary platform in the market. In ensuring these gaps were adequately filled the study relied on quantitative research methods which ensured that voluminous data was collected within limited time limits and included using questionnaire survey, and finally have the collected data analysed using SPSS. Accordingly, the study found out that customer satisfaction has a general positive relationship towards young customer’s intention to use Airbnb. This was has been gained as a result of benefits of the share economy that customers tend to gain through affordability, familiarity, trust or even offering customers a feeling of belonging that induce higher satisfaction and eventually high intention to use Airbnb. Therefore, the study recommends that Airbnb should consider offering customized services for different markets and also, the entity should also increase investment in innovation so that it can enable it come up with winning products within Airbnb hence increase the customers satisfaction and resultant customer intention.

Qbnb: An innovative C2B2C2B2C e-commerce mode for integrated on-demand services.

The traditional supply-side-driven e-commerce modes provide consumers with massive amounts of structured information about goods and services. Due to the lack of a tailor-made ability to describe, explain, and accurately understand unstructured service demands, existing technologies and service modes still struggle to fully explore, articulate, and meet the personalized, high-quality, and urgent service demands of the disadvantaged groups in e-commerce. This paper innovatively proposes the concept of "integrated services on demand" and develops its C2B2C2B2C-based "Qbnb" e-commerce mode, operation mechanism and intermediary platform architecture. After conducting exploratory operation training, it demonstrates that the Qbnb mode can effectively achieve centralized allocation of idle social surplus service capacity to cater to the needs of disadvantaged groups in e-commerce. Compared to the traditional e-commerce service mode, Qbnb will significantly expand service demand and capacity, achieve higher service efficiency, and create a broader service consumption market, resulting in many more job opportunities.

Social influencer spillover effects under cap-and-trade and carbon tax regulation: the choice between marketplace or reseller mode

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze manufacturers' production decisions and governments' low-carbon policies in the context of influencer spillover effects.Design/methodology/approachThis paper investigates the impact of the social influencer spillover effect on manufacturers' production decisions when they collaborate with intermediary platforms to sell products through marketplace or reseller modes. Game theory and static numerical comparison are used to analyze our models.FindingsFirstly, under low-carbon policies, the spillover effect does not always benefit manufacturer profits and changes non-monotonically with an increasing spillover effect. Secondly, in cases where there are both a carbon emission constraint and a spillover effect present, if either the manufacturer or intermediary platform holds a strong position, then marketplace mode benefits manufacturer profits. Thirdly, regardless of business mode used when environmental damage coefficient is high for products; government should implement cap-and-trade regulation to optimize social welfare while reducing manufacturers’ carbon emissions.Practical implicationsThis study offers theoretical and practical research support to assist manufacturers in optimizing production decisions for compliance with carbon emission limits, enhancing profits through the development of effective influencer marketing strategies, and providing strategies to mitigate carbon emissions and enhance social welfare while sustaining manufacturing activities.Originality/valueThis paper addresses the limitations of prior research by examining how the social influencer spillover effect influences manufacturers' business mode choices under government low-carbon policies and analyzing the social welfare of different carbon emission restrictions when such spillovers occur. Our findings provide valuable insights for manufacturers in selecting optimal marketing strategies and business modes and decision-makers in implementing effective regulations.

Sale of goods through marketplaces: problems of realization and protection of consumer rights

The subject of the research in this article is the problems of legal regulation of the sale and protection of the rights of buyers when selling goods through marketplaces. The authors pay special attention to the characteristics of the application of this method of selling goods. The specifics of providing the marketplace to the consumer with reliable, complete and accurate information about the characteristics of the product, price, delivery and return conditions, the specifics of ordering and canceling the order, returning goods of inadequate quality and goods that did not suit the consumer in shape, dimensions, style, coloring, size or configuration are considered. The doctrinal approaches to the definition of the concepts of "marketplace" and "information aggregator" are investigated. It is noted that terminological certainty, which is so necessary in this field of legal regulation, is accepted as a condition for extending legal guarantees of the realization and protection of consumer rights in their universal meaning to the studied relations. The research was conducted using general philosophical (materialistic, dialectical), general scientific (logical, system-structural), private scientific (formal legal) methods. As a result of the study, it is proved that the sale of goods to consumers through marketplaces is characterized by a number of significant features that distinguish this method from distance trading in general, due to the presence of which there is a need to develop rules for the sale of goods (provision of services, performance of works) based on the marketplace. The authors propose to understand the marketplace as an intermediary platform between consumers of goods, works and services, organizations, individual entrepreneurs selling goods for personal, family and other consumption unrelated to entrepreneurial activity, built on the basis of a specific aggregator of information about goods, designed to create conditions for the conclusion, execution, termination and modification of the contract between the specified entities through e-commerce. It is noted that the mandatory components of the rules should be the rules for the exchange and return of goods purchased through the marketplace; the rules for refunding funds for goods of inadequate quality or goods that did not suit the consumer in shape, size, style, coloring, size or configuration; the rules for disclosing information about the sold product, including requirements for its originality; the rules registration and cancellation of the product order on the marketplace; rules for handling complaints and appeals to the marketplace.

Analysis Of Structural Assurance, Integrity, Easy of Use And Brand Image On Trust In Use Of P2P Lending

Peer to Peer (P2P) lending has a role as an intermediary platform for lenders and borrowers to conduct transactions without having to go through bank. However, so many P2P Lending cases that reduce public confidence in using P2P Lending. Gradana is one of the P2P lending companies registered with the Financial Services Authority (OJK). Although P2P lending investors have decisions that refer to adverse selection, Gradana shows good performance. This study aims to analyse the factors that influence trust in using P2P lending by adopting trust theory. The sample was 100 respondents from retail investors in Indonesia. The study using SmartPLS4 software. The results showed that integrity has a positive influence and significant on trust in use, while brand image, ease of use and structural assurance has no positive impact on trust in use. The results are expected as reference for companies in increasing the trust of P2P lending users.

Marketization and Policy Support: Challenges and Countermeasures of Private Art Troupes Participating in Cultural Intermediary Platforms in China

Marketization and Policy Support: Challenges and Countermeasures of Private Art Troupes Participating in Cultural Intermediary Platforms in China

Choosing a self-built or an intermediary platform for hosting winner-take-all crowdsourcing contests?

Choosing a self-built or an intermediary platform for hosting winner-take-all crowdsourcing contests?

A Study of the Intermediary Platform for the Use of Healthcare Big Data

A Study of the Intermediary Platform for the Use of Healthcare Big Data

A blockchain‐based user authorization management method for information exchanging of federation of industry and commerce

AbstractThe blockchain does not need the central organization to make trust endorsement, which is suitable for large scale information exchange between different regions. In addition, blockchain has the characteristics of decentralization and tamper resistant, so that it no longer needs an intermediary platform. A blockchain‐based user authorization management method is proposed, which applies blockchain as an underlaying security mechanism for distributed user authorization management within a trusted community of a distributed information exchange sites of federation of industry and commerce. This method can ensure the reliability, consistency, and integrity of user authorization information. With this method, an elastic data exchange trusted community can be built between the data owner and the authorized data user according to the data exchange needs to achieve reliable distributed access authorization.

Social Network and Resources Integration Within Logistics Industry in China --- With Case Study of Cainiao Network

The business network in logistics industry is essential for integrating resources and establish firms own advantage of compettitiveness in the market, as well as providing more comprehensive services that facilitate firms to gain its revenue. Construction of intermediary platforms has therefore been an effective mean. Cainiao, a subdivided branch of Chinese giant enterprise Alibaba, has seized this opportunity. Though the debate about how social networks function to boost the high-quality development of firms has been very hot over the last three decades, few studies have mentioned and worked to understand to the linkage between social network analysis (SNA) and logistics chain management. Hence, the purpose of this research is to identify the construction of a business network by the giant Chinese logistics companies and its enhancing function of collaboration among firms and embeddedness for the success of Cainiao, which constructs the whole network. This paper will be carried out in concept explaination of essential terms in SNA and the practice of them into operation of Cainiao Network, as well as some diagrams made by Ucinet software will be applied. Results of the study show that through the early alliance of giant express enterprises, Cainiao has gained a wide network map that permits it to utilize abundant resources for the firms prosperity, and boosts the conjunction between the other companies and customers.

FingerChain: Copyrighted Multi-Owner Media Sharing by Introducing Asymmetric Fingerprinting Into Blockchain

Nowadays, more and more people are engaged in media creation and sharing for income. A common way to earn income is to upload media to an intermediary platform and then let the platform distribute some profits. However, intermediary platforms generally not only extract most of the profits, but also lack transparency in their operation, where owners lose direct control over the media. Nevertheless, individual sharing is not feasible for owners because each owner holds too little media to attract enough users independently. Blockchain is a solution to the above problem by gathering media from multiple owners without intermediaries. Though a lot of works have studied the use of blockchain for decentralized management of media data, many of them either did not consider sharing needs or tracing the illegal redistribution by malicious users. As for other works, most of them adopted symmetric digital watermarking in their blockchain networks, and thus fail to protect the rights of users who may be framed by malicious owners. Although asymmetric watermarking has been used by two existing works, the owner-side embedding pattern results in low owner-side efficiency. In view of this, we design a media sharing blockchain network in which the asymmetric fingerprinting (i.e., watermarking) with user-side embedding is introduced. Besides superior owner-side efficiency, our scheme also outperforms the above two ones in terms of TTP-free. Moreover, our scheme is designed to offer a user-friendly experience and support record traceability. The performance of our scheme is verified by both theoretical and experimental evaluations.

스마트물류 전자문서 중계플랫폼 구성에 관한 연구: 비지니스 모델 관점으로

스마트물류 전자문서 중계플랫폼 구성에 관한 연구: 비지니스 모델 관점으로

국내외 공유숙박 규제 정책의 비교 분석과 시사점

This paper discusses the sharing economy's global expansion, highlighting its disruptive influence on traditional economic structures across various sectors. Focusing on accommodation sharing, the study critically examines the existing regulatory frameworks and their shortcomings, using Korea and four overseas cities (San Francisco, New York, Paris, and Amsterdam) as primary cases. This study also analyzed the legal status of workers who operate as suppliers through intermediary platforms in the sharing economy, specifically focusing on whether these workers should be viewed as independent contractors or employees of the platform companies It notes the cultural resonance of the sharing economy and underscores the challenges faced by the Korean government in crafting effective regulations. The research seeks to fill this gap by examining accommodation-sharing regulations in major international cities and Korea. The paper concludes with the call for contextually nuanced, adaptive, and ethically informed regulatory frameworks, underlining the importance of co-regulation and localized strategies in governing the sharing economy.

Practical Application of Platform Comment Sentiment Binary Classification Based on Deep Learning

The role of product reviews is to display real product information, help users judge whether the real situation of the product is consistent with the merchant's description, and indirectly help users judge the price range of the product. At present, most commodity platforms and accommodation intermediary platforms adopt the method of user star rating, which leads to many invalid positive reviews and malicious negative reviews, thus bringing a lot of disturbing information to consumers. Therefore, this paper introduces a mechanism based on artificial intelligence to judge the emotion expressed by a machine, and further verifies the validity and accuracy of the model on the BERT Hugging face dataset.

THE SHARING ECONOMY'S SUCCESS: ADVANTAGES, DRAWBACKS, AND APPLICATIONS

AbstractThe emergence of intermediary platforms created networks that facilitate peer-to-peer interactions, as well as encourage the sharing of goods and services within the context of collaborative consumption and cost saving. This article sets out to inspect “why the sharing economy is so successful” and provide a critical viewpoint on the topic's essential ideas, while also taking a perspective on the advantages and disadvantages that affect the end users. A literature review paired with case studies of Airbnb, Uber, and other applications of the shared economy, looks upon how despite their rapid market growth in the past decade and public approval, such platforms caused disruptions to the markets they operate in. Results indicate that by being involved as a part of the collaborative consumption ecosystem, either as a provider or a user, the absence of personal ownership is key, while the utilisation of the product needs to be maximised to result in a pleasant experience. However, it is critical that the development of these platforms which thrive on connecting people stays closely monitored by regulatory bodies, and that the legislation needed for prevention of unethical practices follows quickly enough to ensure rightful operation.

Google the Gatekeeper: How Search Components Affect Clicks and Attention

The contemporary Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) supplements classic blue hyperlinks with complex components. These components produce tensions between searchers, 3rd-party websites, and Google itself over clicks and attention. In this study, we examine 12 SERP components from two categories: (1) extracted results (e.g., featured-snippets) and (2) Google Services (e.g., shopping-ads) to determine their effect on peoples’ behavior. We measure behavior with two variables: (1) click- through rate (CTR) to Google’s own domains versus 3rd-party domains and (2) time spent on the SERP. We apply causal inference methods to an ecologically valid trace dataset comprising 477,485 SERPs from 1,756 participants. We find that multiple components substantially increase CTR to Google domains, while others decrease CTR and increase time on the SERP. These findings may inform efforts to regulate the design of powerful intermediary platforms like Google.

Searching for ideas from creative Crowds: The role of examples in problem statements

Crowdsourcing as a mechanism of open innovation is a popular way for organizations to solicit ideas from external agents. Our research focuses on the relationship between examples in problem statements provided to a crowd and the subsequent number of ideas submitted by the crowd. We investigate the quantity, as well as the diversity, of these examples. Using generalized regression to analyze data from 122 problem briefs posed to a crowd on an intermediary platform between 2018 and 2021, we find that the relationship between the number of examples given to a crowd and the number of ideas received from the crowd is an inverted U-shaped one. Further, we find that providing a diverse set of good and bad idea examples increases the number of new ideas received from a crowd. Our research extends the nascent crowdsourcing research on using problem statements to guide the crowd’s response to innovation problems.

Crowdfunding using Blockchain Technology

Crowdfunding is an online method of raising funds that was initially intended for individuals to contribute small amounts of money to support innovative projects. This fundraising method allows people to invest in entrepreneurial ventures through an intermediary platform. However, the current issue with traditional crowdfunding methods is that the third-party intermediaries do not guarantee the money invested by the backers, and the investors do not have control over their contributions. This paper proposes a blockchain-based crowdfunding solution to provide a private, secure, and decentralized platform for crowdfunding. The main aim of this paper is to enable investors to contribute to any project efficiently by creating smart contracts that give them control over their invested funds. Additionally, both project creators and investors can effectively manage and allocate funding for the project

Aesthetics of Women: A Visual Rhetoric Study to Short Videos about Beauty & Makeup

With the diffusion of digital intermediary platforms in the media space, platform technology has brought revolutionary changes to cultural and creative content, which has spawned new categories of creative workers, such as online celebrities. Such creative workers who rely on mental, spiritual, and emotional labor as the core in cyberspace have realized the labor upgrading from "digital odd jobs" to "digital spiritual jobs". Then it is worth pondering over how platform capital will achieve ideological control of digital flexible labor through hidden labor control. At present, there are a lot of research results on digital flexible technology, but the research results from the perspective of journalism and communication lack systematic theoretical elaboration. This article hopes to start from the local practice, and put the emerging communication phenomenon of digital flexibility in China in recent years into a specific social and historical stage scenario for investigation. Especially in the current situation, with the rapid development of short video, live broadcast and other digital cultural services, as a flexible force among short video producers, female short video producers not only focus on the general characteristics of the current digital smart groups, but also build on gender issues and femininity, Through the analysis of female short video producers, we can examine the survival status of digital workers from another dimension: on the one hand, we will conduct a more systematic investigation on the short video creative workers, a digital flexible worker group; On the other hand, from the perspective of visual rhetoric, we can understand how the female groups that were ignored or even deliberately suppressed in the past traditional society rose in the modern network society, gradually formed the network female group, and have female expression ways, and explore the development trend of the future female group in the network space and how to guide the female group more effectively and normatively.