Sharing platforms : customer loyalty, the result of calculative and affective commitment as a competitive advantage. The case of PM network

Abstract

In the course of history, the world economy has always faced various challenges, and to each challenge it had its responses. In this thesis, we go through the business model of sharing platforms, dissecting it and understanding how it can be a response to the current challenges. And while the key driver to a successful sharing platform is the positive impact of customer loyalty, most of the previous studies have focused on the business-related variables and the direct service providers’ elements in order to understand a better functioning of the model. This study will cover the consumers point of view and more precisely the element of customer loyalty derived from calculative and affective commitment. For testing the model, the study analyses the case of “PM network”, a platform that provides tutoring sessions for university students. Several key antecedents for the calculative and affective commitments are explored: trust, social recognition, social bonding, social benefits, relative attractiveness and the price/value ratio. After sampling 168 students using a questionnaire based on the Likert scale, the study runs regression tests on the models and the established hypotheses. The results indicate that both affective and calculative commitments influence significantly customer loyalty in the case of PM network while affective commitment has a stronger impact on the loyalty dimension. Trust, social recognition and social bonding all affect positively the affective commitment; while only social benefits positively influence the calculative commitment. Observations revealed insignificant effect of the variables of relative attractiveness and price fairness on the calculative commitment.