Brand Switching Intention in Collaborative Consumption Apps: moderating effects of perceived price

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.

近年来，关于协同消费的学术文献逐渐受到关注。然而，与协同消费平台品牌管理相关的研究却鲜有深入探讨。在此背景下，本研究采用基于品牌均质、品牌依赖及忠诚度与品牌转换意向间转换成本关系的理论模型。同时，感知价格也被视为调节这些关系的中介变量。该模型通过基于协方差的结构方程模型进行验证。在数据收集方面，所采用的工具为一套完全结构化的问卷，包含五个从文献中改编的量表，适用于本研究情境。问卷包含二十五项指标，采用十点李克特量表，由Google Forms构建。本研究的目标人群为已使用协同消费交通应用的巴西学生。他们通过筛选问题“你是否曾使用过任何交通应用？”进行筛选。为了探究感知价格作为调节变量的作用，问卷分为两种选项，即问卷A和问卷B。问卷B以以下句子开头：“在回答问题期间，请考虑你是一位Uber用户，但竞争对手的应用（99Pop、Cabify）的价格高于Uber。”而问卷A在回答问卷时则不包含任何价格指示。在执行多组分析时，理想的情况是研究群体样本之间差异不大。因此，为了使两组样本的大小相似，在数据收集的最后阶段，收集到受访者数量最多的问卷A被关闭。因此，仅收集问卷B的答案，直到两组受访者数量大致相等。样本被定义为非概率性的，采用便利抽样技术。问卷通过社交媒体，与协同消费交通相关，并在2021年4月期间在圣保罗大学（USP）的三个不同校区进行传播。