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Knight AM T 2021.Pdf (638.5Kb) The Implications of The Sharing Economy for Public Relations Theory and Practice: A Thematic Analysis of Airbnb, Uber and TaskRabbit Andrew Knight Thesis submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Communication Nneka Logan (chair) John Tedesco Megan Duncan May 10, 2021 Blacksburg, Virginia Keywords: public relations, sharing economy, communication, relationship management theory The Implications of The Sharing Economy for Public Relations Theory and Practice: A Thematic Analysis of Airbnb, Uber and TaskRabbit Andrew Knight ABSTRACT (academic) This thesis presents a public relations perspective of the sharing economy by exploring how three prominent sharing economy companies, Airbnb, Uber and TaskRabbit, communicate to form a relationship with key stakeholders, including customers and service providers. Employing a qualitative, thematic analysis, this study analyzed each company’s website communication and found the relationship qualities of social trust, safety and support to be prominent elements of relationships communicated by each company. Serving as one of the only public relations studies to address the sharing economy, this thesis extends relationship management theory’s application to a new socioeconomic movement and situates current sharing economy research in a new context of public relations. This study provides important communication insights for organizations in the sharing economy that rely on strong organization-public relationships in order to be successful, and it unites public relations and sharing economy research. The Implications of The Sharing Economy for Public Relations Theory and Practice: A Thematic Analysis of Airbnb, Uber and TaskRabbit Andrew Knight ABSTRACT (non-academic) This thesis provides the academic discipline of public relations with a new context for understanding the way organizations communicate relationships with the general public and their customers or independent workers (gig workers) in a new environment called the sharing economy. The sharing economy has dramatically altered the way people consume products and services, as it allows people to temporarily share goods and services with strangers through an online platform. The study analyzes three prominent sharing economy companies, Airbnb, Uber and TaskRabbit, to explore this new, peer-to-peer business model. Through analyzing each company’s website communication, the study revealed that companies in the sharing economy communicate the relationship qualities of social trust, safety and support with the public. IMPLICATIONS OF THE SHARING ECONOMY Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................. 1 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................................... 4 Overview of Sharing Economy Companies ............................................................................. 4 Overview of the Sharing Economy .......................................................................................... 9 Defining the Sharing Economy .............................................................................................. 11 Components of The Sharing Economy .................................................................................. 23 Public Relations in The Sharing Economy ............................................................................ 43 Relationship Management Theory ......................................................................................... 45 METHOD ..................................................................................................................................... 63 FINDINGS .................................................................................................................................... 72 DISCUSSION ................................................................................................................................ 88 LIMITATIONS ............................................................................................................................ 102 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................ 104 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................. 107 Appendix A. .......................................................................................................................... 119 List of Figures FIGURE 1. ....................................................................................................................................... 13 FIGURE 2. ....................................................................................................................................... 56 FIGURE 3. ....................................................................................................................................... 73 iv IMPLICATIONS OF THE SHARING ECONOMY Introduction As the internet continues to become more accessible for communities around the world and in the U.S., the opportunity to gain knowledge, spread ideas and communicate instantaneously with one another has opened the door for people to share their underutilized assets and services with others through organized online platforms. By engaging online social networks, organizations have taken advantage of increased internet capabilities and created platforms where people are able to share their goods and services with others conveniently, an idea that has led the way to the economic movement called the sharing economy (Botsman & Rogers, 2011). The movement has not received significant research attention in the field of public relations, and it requires further study because the sharing economy poses important new challenges to public relations theory and practice. As organizations utilizing the sharing economy platform attempt to form two key relationships: one with the customers (including potential customers) and one with the service providers (who are deemed independent contractors and not full-time employees but often communicated to in a way that blurs the line), and who constitute a new stakeholder group created by the sharing economy, it is imperative to explore how the sharing economy changes the ways organizations communicate to establish and maintain relationships. To assess how organizations in the sharing economy attempt to form relationships with two dynamic publics, this study explores how three prominent sharing economy companies, Airbnb, Uber and TaskRabbit, communicate to establish relationships with the selected publics—customer and service provider—through their websites. This study examines Airbnb and Uber because they are the two largest revenue-generating sharing economy companies and dominate two of the biggest industries in the sharing economy: travel and ride sharing (Rooney, 1 IMPLICATIONS OF THE SHARING ECONOMY 2019; Schor, 2016). TaskRabbit, which provides a platform where customers can access temporary skilled workers to do odd jobs, was chosen because it is a smaller company in a smaller industry. Including Task Rabbit allows this study to explore how a smaller, less dominant, sharing economy company uses communication to establish and maintain relationships with key publics as compared to larger, more dominant sharing economy companies. Forming and maintaining mutually beneficial organization-public relationships is a fundamental goal of relationship management in public relations (Ferguson, 2018; Ledingham & Bruning, 1998; Hon & Grunig, 1999) that also aligns with the business objectives of sharing economy companies (Botsman & Rogers, 2011). Although the sharing economy is becoming increasingly prevalent and has important implications for public relations, only one public relations study has addressed the movement. Gregory and Halff (2017) explored the role of public relations in the sharing economy using the circuit of commerce model of communication. However, more research on the sharing economy is needed in public relations theory. Because relationships are central to public relations and to the sharing economy, this study will broadly draw upon relationship management theory to explore the implications of the sharing economy for public relations theory and practice. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the implications of the sharing economy for relationship management theory by analyzing the website communications of several sharing economy organizations. To accomplish its purpose, the thesis addressed the following research questions: 1. How do sharing economy companies communicate to establish relationships with their publics, including customers and service providers? 2 IMPLICATIONS OF THE SHARING ECONOMY 2. What are the main differences and similarities in how Airbnb, Uber and TaskRabbit communicate with their service provider and customer publics? 3. How should relationship management theory respond to the sharing economy? To address the research questions, the thesis employed an inductive thematic analysis of public relations artifacts found on the websites of Airbnb, Uber and TaskRabbit. Each company’s website homepage, service provider-facing pages and customer-facing pages were analyzed, coded and organized into themes that explain how
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