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This study examines how individual contributors' evaluation of the two aspects in reward-based crowdfunding—service and community—influences the formation of platform loyalty. It also seeks to determine the conditions under which the evaluation is positive.

We collaborated for data collection with two reward-based crowdfunding platforms in South Korea that primarily promote crowdfunding campaigns in the creative domains. We combined the survey data collected from 578 contributors and campaign data from the platforms, empirically examining the formation of platform loyalty and its antecedents.

The results suggest that service satisfaction with a platform and a sense of belonging to it are positively associated with platform loyalty. We also found that an individual contributor's self-image congruence with the crowdfunding platform is positively associated with service satisfaction and a sense of belonging, while the experience of greater campaign success moderates the relationship in different ways.

This study contributes to the crowdfunding literature by establishing a theoretical background for understanding reward-based crowdfunding platforms, which combine service and community. It also extends the scope of the literature on crowdfunding by examining the role of platform loyalty at the platform level.

The results suggest that service and community are both critical for building a sustainable crowdfunding platform. Platform operators are expected to provide high-quality services and foster a sense of community. Identifying and developing contributors with higher self-image congruence with the platforms is essential.

While previous literature on reward-based crowdfunding has focused on individual contributor- and campaign-level analyses, platform-level knowledge is lacking. This study is among the first to focus on platform loyalty of individual contributors toward reward-based crowdfunding platforms. Moreover, we use both individual-level perception and campaign-level performance variables to examine the formation of platform loyalty.

This study explores how sharing platforms achieve platform loyalty through various operation management strategies.

A multiple case study method has been conducted in two Chinese sharing economy industries: ride- and bike-sharing. Data were collected through 30 semi-structured interviews with managers from four platform companies (DiDi, Uber China, ofo and Mobike). Individual case studies were developed from the triangulation of all existing data. Concurrent with the development of these individual case studies was a cross-case analysis. Emerging patterns have been identified and compared to previous findings in the literature to build upon and modify the existing knowledge base and to formulate a series of propositions.

Platform asset characteristics and mergers and acquisitions affect supply network readiness and operational capacity, respectively, and this effect would consequently contribute to achieving platform loyalty through user satisfaction. Moreover, externality, as a moderator, may influence the strength of the relationship between satisfaction and platform loyalty.

The proposed theoretical model provides an overarching framework for sharing platform companies to design and operate their businesses while carefully examining the situations, contexts and actions of users and other stakeholders and choosing an appropriate strategic mechanism to drive platform growth.

This study is one of the first to empirically explain how firms in a sharing economy sector could gain platform loyalty by adopting an expectation–confirmation theory perspective.

Given a product or service, the number of its installed user base has a significant positive effect on the existing users’ loyalty and new users’ conversion. This effect is conceptualized as network externalities in economics. Network externalities are supposed to be particularly striking in nowadays online business-to-business (B2B) platforms, but yet the mystery behind their effects on user loyalty to online B2B platforms remains to be delicately unraveled. The purpose of this paper is to discover the factors driving users’ loyalty, especially buyers’ loyalty, to online B2B platforms, by highlighting the impacts of network externalities on loyalty and other mediating factors.

A conceptual model of buyer loyalty under network externalities is elaborated. The reliability and validity of the instruments of the latent model constructs are assessed by confirmatory factor analysis, and the hypothesized causal relationships among the constructs are tested by structural equation modeling, on 710 valid buyer samples collected from a famous online B2B platform in China.

The analysis demonstrates that: perceived value, user satisfaction and switching costs are the major predictors of buyer loyalty to online B2B platforms characterized by network externalities; network externalities positively account for buyer loyalty by contributing to perceived value, user satisfaction and switching costs; and direct network externality (measured by perceived network size and perceived external prestige) has a significant effect on indirect network externality (measured by perceived compatibility and perceived complementarity).

The findings allow the authors to conclude meaningful managerial implications for online B2B service providers to build up loyal user bases through improving users’ perceptions of network externalities, switching costs and value.

Various digital banking platforms (website and apps) are offered to bank customers in order to create an experiential service, which is essential in retaining customers and generating brand bank loyalty. The current study aims to examine the dynamics of customer emotional experience generated during digital banking service delivery and investigate the effect of customer psychological engagement with various digital platform types on brand bank loyalty creation.

A conceptual framework was constructed. Data were collected from digital banking customers through a web-based survey conducted via an online Internet panel. It involved 502 participants. The study employs a path analysis method using structural equation modeling.

The empirical results suggest that there are two paths from emotional attachment to bank loyalty: a direct path and an indirect path shaped by customer psychological engagement with service platforms. Additionally, it was found that the digital platform (website vs apps) used by the customer determined the magnitude of the impact of emotional attachment to the bank on psychological engagement with service platforms.

This research claims that features of digital banking services are sufficient to enhance affective brand responses and maintain long-lasting relationships with customers. Using experiential services and psychologically engaging the customers, this goal can be achieved. Additionally, well designed apps can improve interaction with services and subsequently enhance loyalty.

This study facilitates a better understanding of the customer's emotional–psychological state during engagement with digital service delivery. Its novelty and contribution to the literature focus on the notion that the impact of emotional attachment on bank loyalty is mediated by experiential psychological engagement with the digital platform and moderated by the type of digital platform used.

This study examines how customer loyalty among DiDi users in China is affected by two types of online social interaction (transactional and interpersonal) and how the online interaction–customer loyalty relationship is mediated by three kinds of perceived benefits (functional, social-hedonic and safety).

This study empirically examines research hypotheses based on a questionnaire survey of 428 DiDi consumers.

The results reveal that transactional interactions significantly enhance customer loyalty among DiDi users via the partial mediating effects of customers' perceived functional, social-hedonic and safety benefits. By contrast, interpersonal interactions do not directly influence customer loyalty, and only social-hedonic benefits fully mediate the positive influence of interpersonal interactions on loyalty.

This study contributes to the theoretical development of interactive marketing management by examining how two types of online social interactions contribute to customer loyalty on sharing economy platforms by influencing the perception of benefits. It also provides useful managerial insights to help ride-sharing platforms design online social interaction functions that improve customer perceptions and loyalty.

Given the acute competition between music-streaming platforms (MSPs), the purpose of this study is to identify the relational motivators of brand loyalty towards the MSP in terms of user-brand involvement, brand trust, brand engagement, brand recommendation and brand loyalty.

Cross-sectional quantitative data, gathered from a total of 340 eligible respondents via an online questionnaire survey, were empirically analysed and validated using a hybrid predictive-analytics structural equation modelling (SEM) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) method.

The results of this study demonstrate that user-brand involvement promotes brand loyalty toward a MSP by fostering brand engagement, brand trust and positive word-of-mouth. SEM and ANN data comparison reveals good consistency.

The generalizability of the research outcomes may be constrained, as this study only considers the data from a single country (i.e. Malaysia) and one music streaming platform (i.e. Spotify). This study highlighted the relevance of user-brand involvement and non-core supporting services in the cultivation of brand loyalty, particularly their salient roles in promoting favourable attitudes and behaviours towards platform brands.

The insights produced can aid MSPs in devising better user retention strategies that can be used to maintain their competitive edge over time. The findings of this study made it abundantly evident that practitioners should facilitate more user-brand cooperative activities to encourage user-brand involvement and, ultimately, foster brand loyalty.

This study has addressed a major research gap by examining the relational roots of brand loyalty, which transcend the typical focus on transactional factors and technical lock-in. This study pioneered the investigation of brand involvement with user involvement.

Guided by memory-dominant logic, this study aims to examine how Airbnb experiences (i.e. home benefits, social interaction and authenticity) lead to memorability, which subsequently results in platform attachment and loyalty. The mediating role of memorability and the moderating role of arousal in forming platform loyalty were also investigated.

A quantitative method was adopted including the use of a national survey with US travelers who had an Airbnb accommodation experience in the past six months. Data were collected from a representative sample generated from the Qualtrics consumer panel using an online self-administered survey.

Results suggested that Airbnb experiences have a positive impact on memorability, which leads to platform attachment and loyalty. The findings further supported the full mediation. The results also revealed a moderating role of arousal in influencing the relationship between social interaction and memorability.

This study contributes to the literature by investigating the role of Airbnb experiences and memorability in influencing customer responses to the Airbnb platform. This study also provides a holistic understanding of how platform attachment and loyalty develop through the mechanism of memorability.

Given the continuous competition from hotels, Airbnb providers should continue to improve critical Airbnb attributes and balance its hedonic and functional values. The moderating role of arousal suggests that Airbnb could maintain a virtual community or a social platform where guests can interact with hosts or the locals before, during and after Airbnb experiences.

The findings provide a holistic understanding of the experiences with insight into the new business model of the sharing economy.

This study aims to investigate the process of developing loyalty in the Chinese mobile health community from the information seeking perspective.

A covariance-based structural equation model was developed to explore the mobile health community loyalty development process from information seeking perspective and tested with LISREL 9.30 for the 191 mobile health platform user samples.

The empirical results demonstrate that the information seeking perspective offers an interesting explanation for the mobile health community loyalty development process. All hypotheses in the proposed research model are supported except the relationship between privacy and trust. The two types of mobile health community loyalty—attitudal loyalty and behavioral loyalty are explained with 58 and 37% variance.

This paper has brought out the information seeking perspective in the loyalty formation process in mobile health community and identified several important constructs for this perspective for the loyalty formation process including information quality, communication with doctors and communication with patients.

An increasing number of customers are using customer-to-customer (C2C) platforms to buy and sell products and services. Despite this growth, little research has examined customer experiences with C2C e-commerce. This study examines how informational and emotional interactions affect customer patronage behaviors by increasing customer trust in both sellers and platforms.

A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 181 customers of C2C platforms in the United States. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

The results show that informational interactions affect customer trust both in sellers and platforms, resulting in customer loyalty. The findings also show that emotional interactions affect customer trust in sellers. Multi-group analyses suggest that the impacts of informational and emotional interactions on trust vary depending on customer demographics.

Theoretical implications in this study arise from (1) examination of customer experiences with C2C platforms using the stimulus-organism-response framework, (2) identification of the role of informational and emotional interactions in the formation of trust and (3) exploration of the ways in which customer gender, age and income affect the connection between experiences and consequences in C2C settings.

From a practical perspective, this study provides useful guidelines to help C2C business practitioners increase customer patronage behavior by means of interactions and trust.

This study provides practical and academic implications by examining how customer interactions affect customer trust in e-commerce C2C platforms.

Extant literature in Video on Demand (VoD) has taken the consumer perspective; however, the stakeholder perspective is largely neglected. This paper aims to fill this gap by understanding the strategies to enhance the experience and engage customers from the supplier’s point of view. The purpose of the study is to identify and analyse strategies adopted by over-the-top (OTT) platforms that ensure consumer loyalty in the VoD space.

Using a qualitative approach and inductive qualitative design, the authors interviewed 16 industry experts associated with OTT platforms in India and people handling various marketing-related positions. Data collected included topics related to industry landscape, the value created for a customer, consumer experience, engagement and platform stickiness. Thematic analysis was used to find meaningful semantic elements.

This study has found that consumer experience, content differentiation, consumer sense-making and engagement and platform extension as value enhancers as the key strategies been adopted in the Indian context, thereby leading to a platform’s stickiness.

This research offers insights to policymakers of content, digital platforms, media practitioners and managers that are drawing consumers influenced by platform strategies.

This research provides insights to content policy makers, digital platform leaders, media practitioners, and managers who are influencing consumers through platform strategies.

The research could help entrepreneurs and marketers understand the perspectives of stakeholders in the VoD industry in India.

The study encourages researchers to explore the concept of stickiness, which may or may not be equivalent to loyalty. It is important to focus on quality, frequency, and regular reminders to help customers return to the same platform in the short term.