Brand Switching Intention in Collaborative Consumption Apps: moderating effects of perceived price
Description
Academic literature on collaborative consumption has gained prominence in recent years. However, studies related to brand management of collaborative consumption platforms are still very little explored. In this context, this study applies a theoretical model based on the relationship between brand parity, brand dependence and switching costs in loyalty and brand switching intention. Perceived price was also tested as a moderating variable between these relationships. The model was tested using a covariance based structural equation model. For data collection, the instrument used was a fully structured questionnaire, containing five scales adapted from the literature, for the context of this study. The questionnaire contains twenty-five indicators, with a ten-point likert scale, built from Google Forms. The target population of this study are Brazilian students that already have used a collaborative consumption transport app. They were selected from a filter question "Have you ever used any transport app?". In order to investigate perceived price as a moderating variable, the questionnaire was divided into two questionnaire options, questionnaire A or B. Questionnaire B started with the following sentence “When answering the questions, consider that you are an Uber user, but competitors app (99Pop, Cabify) is more expensive than Uber.” Questionnaire A, on the other hand, did not contain any price indication for individuals when answering the questionnaire. When performing the multigroup analysis, the ideal scenario is that there is not a very large difference between the group’s samples studied. Thus, to make the size of the two samples similar, when the final period of data collection arrived, the questionnaire that had the largest number of respondents (questionnaire A) was closed. Therefore, only answers to questionnaire B were still being collected, until the number of respondents between the groups approximated. The sample was defined as being non-probabilistic, using convenience sampling technique. The questionnaire was disseminated through social media, related to collaborative consumption transport, and students of three different campus of University of São Paulo (USP) during the month of April 2021.