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This study examines the inverted U-shaped relationship between a live-streaming seller’s disclosure of two-sided product information and consumers’ trust in the seller and product. It also explores the interaction between these two types of information disclosure and their impact on purchase intention in the live-streaming sales context.

An e-questionnaire survey was conducted in China, followed by multiple regression and structural equation modeling analyses.

The disclosure of both negative and positive product information is positively correlated with consumers’ trust in the seller or product but does not directly affect their purchase intention. Negative information disclosure neither enhances nor diminishes the positive impact of disclosing positive information on consumer trust.

Live-streaming sellers (i.e. retailers or manufacturers) should disclose both positive and negative product information to form consumers’ trust toward them (or products) and enhance sales.

Live-streaming sellers often worry about the negative effects of excessive promotions or disclosure of positive or negative product information. However, these negative effects were not statistically significant.

Since some researchers have found nonlinear effects of two-sided product information in other contexts, this study is the first to focus on the impact of live-streaming sellers’ disclosure of two-sided product information on consumers’ trust in the live-streaming sales context rather than on the information per se.

Two-sided messages in advertising, which contain both negative and positive information, can have varying effects on persuasion. Thus, it is crucial to understand the conditions under which such messages are more or less effective compared to one-sided messages that only contain positive information. This research investigates the moderating role of the visual angle (close-up vs. long shot) of an image by drawing upon construal level theory.

This research reports two experimental studies employing a 2 (message: two-sided [positive and negative information], one-sided [positive information as a control condition]) × 2 (visual angle: near [close-up], distant [long shot]) between-subjects design.

The results demonstrate that two-sided messages paired with a close-up image decrease positive electronic word of mouth (eWOM) due to increased feelings of ambivalence, while two-sided messages paired with a long-shot image increase positive eWOM due to increased perceived authenticity.

These findings provide insight into the impact of two-sided messages on advertising persuasion and provide guidance for marketers in developing effective communication strategies to leverage positive eWOM.

The purpose of this research is to test the importance of the discounting attribute in the two-sided communication from a retail salesperson as a boundary condition that eliminates the trade-off between trustworthiness and purchase intentions.

The hypotheses are tested by three experimental studies in three different retail contexts. Two lab studies manipulate the importance of the attribute and the type of message: one-sided vs two-sided. A field study improves the external validity of the findings.

A two-sided message from a salesperson reduces the use of persuasion knowledge and, therefore, enhances the consumer’s perception of the salesperson’s trustworthiness; this positive effect remains significant across different levels of importance of the discounting attribute. A two-sided message decreases the consumer’s probability of purchase only when an important attribute is disclaimed, through the consumer’s beliefs regarding the product’s attributes.

For the appropriate use of two-sided appeals, retailers should identify the importance of product attributes from the consumers’ perspective. A negative remark from a salesperson when referred to an unimportant attribute makes no harm to purchase intentions while leading to stronger intentions to return to the store and to recommend the store by enhancing trustworthiness.

This paper shows that it is possible to enhance trustworthiness through a two-sided message without mitigating the intentions of buying by discounting an attribute at low importance in the two-sided message.

Online reviews are increasingly available for a wide range of products and services. Several studies have demonstrated the benefits of the presence of customer reviews to an online retailer, but the issue of what makes online reviews helpful to a consumer in the process of making a purchase decision remains uninvestigated. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Given the strategic potential of online reviews, this study drew on past research to develop a conceptual understanding of the components of helpfulness and to further empirically test the model using actual online review data from iPeen.com in Taiwan. A content analysis of 989 reviews across four products identified the interplay effects of review sidedness, reviewer’s expertise, and product type on the helpfulness of an online review.

For search goods, consumers consider two-sided reviews to be more helpful than one-sided reviews when the reviewers are experts in writing such articles, whereas they consider two-sided reviews to be equally helpful as one-sided reviews when the reviewers are novices. Conversely, for experience goods, consumers consider one-sided reviews to be more helpful than two-sided reviews when the reviewers are experts in writing review articles, but they consider one-sided reviews to be equally helpful as two-sided reviews when the reviewers are novices.

With an understanding of how review sidedness affects online review helpfulness, online retailers could establish the policy for promoting the helpfulness of reviews more effectively.

This research yields at least three important contributions: first, it contributes to the message sidedness literature by showing which arguments (one- or two-sided) are deemed to be helpful; second, it contributes to the online peer review literature by demonstrating the importance of considering product type and heuristic cues (i.e. the reviewer’s expertise) when explaining helpfulness; and third, the results in this research demonstrate that people are drawn to dual-processing; that is, the judgment of online review helpfulness is determined by heuristic cues (e.g. the status of the reviewer) and systematic processing (e.g. review content).

This paper aims to develop a dynamic two-sided stable matching method based on preference information of the matching objects in uncertain environments, so as to solve the matching problem of cloud manufacturing tasks and services with load balancing.

For dynamic two-sided matching, due to the complexity of social environment and the limitation of human cognition, hesitation and fuzziness always exist in the process of multi-criteria assessment. First, in order to obtain the accurate preference information of each matching object, uncertain linguistic variables, uncertain preference ordinal and incomplete complementary matrices are used to evaluate multi-criteria preference information. This process is undertaken by considering the probability of each possible matching pair. Second, the preference information at different times is integrated by using the time-series weight to obtain the comprehensive satisfaction degree matrices of the matching objects. Further, the load adjustment parameter is used to increase the satisfaction degree of the matching objects. Afterward, a dynamic two-sided stable matching optimization model is constructed by considering stable matching conditions. The model aims to maximize the satisfaction degree and minimizes the difference in the satisfaction degree of matching objects. The optimal stable matching results can be obtained by solving the optimization model. Finally, a numerical example and comparative analysis are presented to demonstrate the characteristics of the proposed method.

Uncertain linguistic variables, uncertain preference orders and incomplete complementary matrices are used to describe multi-criteria preference information of the matching objects in uncertain environments. A dynamic two-sided stable matching method is proposed, based on which a DTSMDM (dynamic two-sided matching decision-making) model of cloud manufacturing with load balancing can be constructed. The study proved that the authors can use the proposed method to obtain stable matching pairs and higher matching objective value through comparative analysis and the sensitivity analysis.

A new method for the two-sided matching decision-making problem of cloud manufacturing with load balancing is proposed in this paper, which allows the matching objects to elicit language evaluation under uncertain environment more flexibly to implement dynamic two-sided matching based on preference information at different times. This method is suitable for dealing with a variety of TSMDM (two-sided matching decision-making) problems.

This paper aims to investigate how user expectations affect value-added service (VAS) investment and pricing decisions of two-sided platforms. It draws on the information asymmetry theory and offers suggestions on how platform operators can manage user expectations.

According to the game theory, this study considers three user expectations (responsive, passive and wary). By framing the Hotelling duopoly model and comparing the VAS investment, price and platform profits, the optimal platform decision is analyzed and discussed.

The conclusions demonstrate that the monopolistic two-sided platform obtains more profits from the informed users with responsive expectations than uninformed users with passive or wary expectations. The marginal investment cost and cross-network externalities are two key factors that determine the platform's VAS investment and pricing strategies of passive or wary users. Furthermore, considering the expectation preferences, i.e. the uniformed users hold wary expectations with more information and hold passive expectations with less or no information, the results suggest that the proportion of wary users to all uninformed users increases the platform's VAS investment, profits and the price of informed users, and increase (decrease) the price of uninformed users when the cross-network externalities of informed users are relatively small (larger).

These results can provide insightful enlightenment into how platform operators utilize bilateral users' expectations and information level to guide their VAS investment and pricing decisions.

This paper is one of the first to explore the impact of three user expectations and the heterogeneity of preferences in informing users' passive or wary expectations, based on different levels of information on the decision-making of two-sided platforms regarding VAS.

Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insight and analysis into E-commerce in China and how it has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society. Split into four distinct sections, the book first lays out the theoretical foundations and fundamental concepts of E-Business before moving on to look at internet+ innovation models and their applications in different industries such as agriculture, finance and commerce. The book then provides a comprehensive analysis of E-business platforms and their applications in China before finishing with four comprehensive case studies of major E-business projects, providing readers with successful examples of implementing E-Business entrepreneurship projects.

Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insights and analysis into how E-commerce has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society in China.

This article is based on a systematic and comprehensive review of the literature on two-sided platforms, the business structure based on the concept of matchmaking groups of customers (e.g. Uber or Airbnb). The research aims to identify gaps in the existing literature while providing a structured summary of the existing knowledge in the field. Finally, we propose a conceptual framework enabling platform thinking, the ability to see hybrid multi-sided platforms as a useful resource-orchestration structure to unveil innovation opportunities.

This study adopts a bibliometric approach, combing co-citation and text mining analyses of 196 papers, also implementing a longitudinal analysis that highlights the evolution of the field since its inception till today.

The novel aspect of the paper consists in taking a purely managerial stance of a very peculiar kind of platform, merging existing knowledge in comprehensive frameworks while providing potential avenues for research.

From an academic perspective, this research highlights the double nature of two-sided platforms: as an operational choice or as a way to exploit (digital) assets and reach the economic sustainability. A research agenda is proposed, based on three pillars: a side-based standpoint, a business model perspective and an evolutionary stance to see how these businesses may evolve.

The research identifies different literature streams that may help practitioners in identifying how two-sided platforms may help them in fostering innovation.

The identification of two-sided platforms as a different way to create value (transaction platforms) or to capture value (non-transaction platform), enhancing the debate on this innovative business model. A research agenda to bring the field forward is proposed.

Omnichannel has become increasingly important with the development of e-commerce. In omnichannel, merchants expect customers to get the products and services at anytime, anywhere and in any way, and the same is true for customers. This drives multihoming in online platforms for both merchants and customers. Thus, once both customers and merchants are multihomed, what price and subsidy decisions should be made between platforms to compete to obtain optimal profits? The main purpose of this paper is to solve these problems and provide decision-making for two-sided platforms in omnichannel.

This study builds a dual Hotelling model to capture the utility and network effects of customers and merchants on two-sided platforms. This study introduces the exposure effect and convenience effect of multihomed customers and merchants in the model and analyzes the impact of these effects in the market with multihoming on one side. Then, this study extends the model to the market with multihoming on both sides and makes the pricing decision for two-sided platform when considering the exposure effect and convenience effect through an equilibrium solution. Finally, this study also uses numerical analysis to simulate the decision and profit of the platform.

This paper finds that the convenience effect will only increase social welfare when customers are single-homed and merchants are multihomed. In addition, when both users are multihomed, the platform will subsidize to attract merchants and customers if the convenience effect and exposure effect are relatively high. This study also finds that network effects come not only from the same platform but also from another platform in the case with multihoming on both sides. And network effects in the heterogeneous platform will be reduced by the convenience effect and exposure effect.

According to the behavioral characteristics of merchants and customers in omnichannel, this paper first adopts the dual Hotelling model to study the pricing of two-sided platforms with multihoming on both sides. This paper shows that network effects originate not only from the same platform but also from another platform and that the exposure effect and the convenience effect can exist as cross-platform network effects, which provides a new explanation for network effects in markets with multihoming on both sides. This research extends the theory of network effects and plays an important role in the development of two-sided platforms in omnichannel.

With the rapid development of the digital economy, an increasing number of digitalized two-sided platforms have deployed the tying strategy to leverage their market power from the core two-sided product to other two-sided products in the competitive market, which transforms the competition among single platforms into that among platform ecological networks. To clarify the mechanism of the formation of the digital platform ecological networks, this paper aims to analyze the expansion and stability of platform ecology by exploring the impacts of network externalities and sellers’ heterogeneity on the tying strategy of two-sided platforms.

This paper develops a game model of two-sided platforms based on Choi and Jeon (2021), which highlights the decisive influence of non-negative price constraints (NPC) on platforms’ tying motivation. Taking the operating systems market as an example, we expand from the perspective of platform service differences to relax the NPC and explore the internal logic of platform ecosystem expansion.

Platforms have an incentive to charge lower prices or even subsidize buyers when the network externalities on the sellers’ side are relatively strong. When the product is highly differentiated and heterogenous, platforms are motivated to tie to capture more buyers with a lower price and grab excess profits from sellers. Eventually, tying is able to consolidate the two-sided platform ecological networks by excluding competitors, capturing user value and deterring entry.

In order to describe the characteristics of platform ecological network more generally, this paper extends the research based on the analyses of Choi and Jeon (2021) by (1) allowing horizontal differences between tied products and (2) relaxing the NPC. Unlike Choi and Jeon (2021), this paper allows platforms to charge users of two-sided platforms at negative prices (or to subsidize them). (3) Setting simultaneous pricing in two-sided platforms. Classical two-sided market theory stresses that the presence of cross-network externalities can give rise to a “chicken and egg” problem.