Takeaway Trust: A Market Data Perspectiveon Reputation Portability in Electronic Commerce

Abstract

Reputation has become a key factor within today’s online platform landscape. In particular for sellers in electronic commerce, the management of reputation as a signal of trustworthiness has become a relevant business activity. Prior studies have focused on either the role of reputation within given (but platform-bound) environments or general data portability between platforms. The question of cross-platform reputation portability, however, has thus far achieved much less attention. With this exploratory work, we present survey data on consumers’ perception of portable reputation in the platform economy and a case study based on actual (seller) market data from an e commerce marketplace. Our results show that consumers are generally receptive for imported seller reputation. However, for seller ratings to function as an effective signaling device across platform boundaries, adequate means of representation have yet to be found.