Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the trust antecedents and the effect of trust and transaction cost on passengers' e-loyalty in the context of mobile commerce enabled ride-sharing.

A mixed-methods research is adopted to investigate the phenomena of interest. The qualitative study was used to identify the context-specific trust antecedents. The quantitative study investigated the effects of trust and transaction cost on e-loyalty by combining the results of qualitative study.

Three important context-specific trust antecedents were identified in qualitative study, namely online rating score, service quality and driving skills. The quantitative study indicates that driving skills, explicit cost and implicit cost are positively associated with trust. Trust and implicit cost have direct and positive effects on e-loyalty.

This study contributes to understanding passengers' trust towards drivers in the context of mobile commerce enabled ride-sharing and the effect of trust on e-loyalty by including the transaction cost.

Management to enhance passengers' e-loyalty to ride-sharing might involve the measures to promote trust relationship.

Limited research has explored trust relationship for enhancing e-loyalty in the context of ride-sharing. The current study provides a novel contribution through an exploration of trust antecedents and the effects of transaction cost and trust on e-loyalty. The study has thrown light on the use of mixed-methods design in the research of user behavior in sharing economy.

Close relationship with major customers, by curtailing opportunistic behaviors during private placements (PPs) and guaranteeing the production and sales of products after, is expected to facilitate the realization of PP’s strategic goals. However, major customers, on the contrary, may impair PP’s performance because of their strong bargaining power. Based on the transaction cost theory and relational contract theory, this paper aims to investigate the impact of major customers on firms’ strategic development in the context of private placements. The mechanisms of such impact are analyzed from the prospect of economies of scale, supervision and the rip-off effect by major customers. Further, the moderating role of the customer relationship investment (CRI) is considered.

Using a sample of China’s non-financial A-share listed firms during 2010-2016, this paper empirically investigates the impact of customer relationships on firms’ operating performance following PPs. In the main regressions, the sales growth rate serves as the dependent variable to measure PP’s operating performance, while the customer concentration proxies for the closeness of customer relationship. This study captures the impact of customer relationships on PPs’ performance by looking at the coefficient of the interaction term of post PP dummy and customer concentration. In the additional tests, selling and management expenses along with entertainment and traveling expenditures are used to measure customer relationship investment.

Results show that major customers help improve PPs’ strategic performance. The more concentrated the customer portfolio is, the higher operating performance will be after the PPs. Such a relationship is stronger when CRI is at a higher level. However, CRI also incurs costs, which impairs the effect of major customers on net profit. Further research finds that the effect of major customers is more pronounced in situations of extensional PPs, with actively interactive customers and in non-state-owned firms. In addition, state-owned customers with strong bargaining power have impaired the role of customers in promoting PP’s operating performance.

This paper validates the role of customers in firms’ strategic development. The study not only contributes to the research on the economic consequences of customers but also adds to the evolving literature of factors affecting the performance of PPs. The findings of the study have important practical implications for both customer relationship management and the supervision of PPs.