These slides are useful to explain how consumers create value in the sharing economy. They explain that consumers navigate the challenges of cocreating in the sharing economy through orchestration work. It presents a framework with 4 overarching mechanisms of orchestration work and 14 specific actions that consumers engage in to overcome challenges and cocreate value in the sharing economy platforms. The slides also explain that consumer orchestration work creates value for platform firms, because it leads to efficiency, complementarities, consumer lock-in, and novelty.

1. From: Scaraboto and Figueiredo (2021)
How Consumer Orchestration Work
Creates Value in the Sharing Economy
Key Insights
Consumers face roadblocks when collaborating and exchanging in the sharing economy due to
the competing principles (communal and transactional) that guide sharing economy platforms
Platform firms can create more value in the sharing economy by understanding and supporting
consumer orchestration work, which is geared toward helping consumers overcome cocreation
roadblocks

2. From: Scaraboto and Figueiredo (2021)
Qualitative study of Couchsurfing
• sharing economy platform launched in 2004
• consumers (hosts and guests), share free
accommodation and cocreate cultural
experiences of hospitality.
Communal + Transactional
• Some couchsurfers seek friendships (i.e.,
communal) while keeping tabs on what they
give and receive when cocreating through the
platform (i.e., transactional).
• Similar to Airbnb consumers who treat their
paying guests as friends.
Couchsurfing – An In-depth Study

3. From: Scaraboto and Figueiredo (2021)
• Consumers navigate the challenges of cocreating in the sharing economy
through orchestration work, defined as set of actions that consumers
engage in to overcome cocreation roadblocks.
• There are 4 overarching mechanisms of orchestration work
Orchestration Work
C2C Alignment:
Consumers align
experiential elements with
those of heterogeneous
cocreation partners
Rewiring Relations:
Consumers use platform
affordances to navigate &
integrate the communal
and transactional aspects
of their relations
Trust Investment:
Consumers manage
platform resources to
mitigate the risk of
engaging in one-off
interactions with strangers
Network
Experimentation:
Consumers experiment &
extend the possibilities for
the cocreation of unique,
personalized, & valuable
experiences.

4. From: Scaraboto and Figueiredo (2021)
The study reveals 14 specific actions that consumers engage in
to overcome challenges and cocreate value in platforms.
Specific Orchestration Actions
C2C Alignment
• Screening (e.g., applying search filters, checking social media profiles)
• Cueing (e.g., listing expectations regarding partners, messaging to fine-tune expectations)
• Flexing (e.g., proposing or accepting changes to planned activities)
• Buffering (e.g., establishing boundaries, apologizing, offering peacemaking gifts)
Rewiring Relations
• Interest grouping (e.g., creating interest-based groups or joining existing ones)
• Lifestyle signalling (e.g., highlighting skills, showcasing identity or creative content)
• Enclaving (e.g., proposing and attending regular gatherings, organizing extraordinary events)
• Reconciling (e.g., toning down negative reviews, organizing self-interested yet community serving events)

5. From: Scaraboto and Figueiredo (2021)
(continued)
Specific Orchestration Actions
Trust Investment
• Revealing (e.g., requesting additional information from others and providing additional information about oneself)
• Cultivating reviews (e.g., hosting friends in exchange for reviews, asking for reviews of a specific kind)
• Scaffolding (e.g., meeting cocreation partners in public spaces first)
Network Experimentation
• Creative resourcing (e.g., making new resources available for cocreation, offering different sets of resources)
• Role improvising (e.g., taking on new roles and scripts to enhance the range of cocreation activities)
• Repurposing (e.g., using the network the platform for cocreation purposes other than those endorsed by firm)

6. From: Scaraboto and Figueiredo (2021)
• To best support consumer orchestration work and capture the value it
creates, managers of platform firms must identify common cocreation
roadblocks for consumers and help consumers overcome them.
• Ex. Airbnb can encourage screening through additional filters that account for
specific expectations and preferred ways of cocreation (e.g., guests indicate their
desired amount of contact/conversation with the host).
• Airbnb can also educate its consumers on the importance of screening prior to
cocreation.
What Should Managers Do?

7. From: Scaraboto and Figueiredo (2021)
How Orchestration Work Creates Value for Platform Firms
Consumer orchestration work leads to efficiency, complementarities, lock-in, and novelty in the
platform environment:
• It makes consumers’ cocreation more efficient and creates value for the platform firm by further
reducing direct and indirect costs associated with organizing exchanges.
• It leads to complementarities in cocreation by spurring beneficial interdependencies among
platform consumers. As the network becomes more valuable to consumers, the platform firm may
capture additional value in turn.
• It promotes lock-in by increasing the level of interpersonal trust among platform consumers.
Perceived risk in cocreation is reduced, and the platform is perceived as safer, so consumers are
likely to increase their engagement for longer periods of time.
• It creates opportunities for cocreating unique experiences for those involved and novel
configurations of resources for cocreation by others in the network. Adding those to the platform
offering makes it more appealing to a larger number of potential consumers.