With the growth of Uber and Airbnb, a variety of O2O services are emerging, suggesting new value creation, and these O2O services have a great effect on the structure of existing industries, breaking down boundaries between industries. O2O services, i...
With the growth of Uber and Airbnb, a variety of O2O services are emerging, suggesting new value creation, and these O2O services have a great effect on the structure of existing industries, breaking down boundaries between industries. O2O services, including the sharing economy, are growing and creating new markets as the acceptance rate of O2O services is gradually increasing among consumers. Especially in China, the O2O market has developed rapidly, showing huge market size and a high growth rate, with new entrants free to enter and exit the market. However, although research on O2O service has increased greatly during the formation and development of this new business model, marketing strategies for O2O service remain to be studied.
In this research, we explored what strategy should be used when new entrants enter the market against the background of China’s O2O market condition. Specifically, we examined how new entrants should use marketing strategies that emphasize service attributes to enter or penetrate the market. In this study, the service type consists of experience and credence services, and the service attribute type distinguishes alignable and nonalignable attributes. We analyzed our empirical results using structural alignment theory and the defender model. We find that offline service is more effective in determining the type of O2O service than online service: a supplier that provides an actual product or service has more influence than one who does not on consumer perception formation in the O2O service structure. In addition, alignable attributes are more important for experience services, and nonalignable attributes are more important for credence services. Simulation study results show that using a marketing strategy that emphasizes alignable attributes for experience services and nonalignable attributes for credence services generates higher market share.
Our examination of competitive marketing strategies for O2O platform businesses provides the following implications and contributions. We first classify the types of O2O service, proposing a new classification method, and the results show that the importance of alignability (based on the possibility of comparing attributes) differs by service type. Our results also widen knowledge about attack strategies and provide normative suggestions for new entrants by inspecting successful strategies for market entry and market penetration in the potential service market.
This research has some limitations: we concentrate not on theory development but on theory testing and application. We do not cover the entire O2O service market, only experience and credence services, and we look at the O2O service system from a top-down perspective. Given those limitations, we perceive a need for additional research in the O2O service sector and suggest additional research directions for O2O service marketing strategy.