Service interactions in platform-based sharing services and social transformation of the base of the pyramid segment

Advancements in technology have facilitated in the development of online service environments, enabling the service actors to interact eagerly both with firms and service peers (Ostrom et al., 2015. p.1). With the emergence of the platform model of services, the digitally enabled service interactions have revolutionized the act of collaborative consumption (CC) into commercial services, facilitating social exchanges in ways that has uplifted the service organizations as well as the macro-environment they operate in (Huarng and Yu, 2019; Mair and Reishauer, 2017; Tsou et al., 2019; Watanabe et al., 2017). For years, the major emphasis of services research has been firm centric, engrossing biasedly on the managerial implications and centring on the organizational outcomes of service interactions (Rosenbaum, 2015). This prejudice was achieved at the expense of exploring the individual and collective well-being stemming from service experiences and interactions (Anderson and Ostrom, 2015; Anderson et al., 2013; Ostrom et al., 2021; Rosenbaum et al., 2011), specifically, from the viewpoint of service providers (Buhalis et al., 2019; Zhang, Bufquin and Lu, 2019), which is an underrepresented perspective, owing to the increased inclination of the discipline towards firm profitability i.e., repurchase intentions and customer satisfaction etc. Moreover, when exploring the transformative outcomes of service interactions, previous research has ignored the largest yet underrated segment i.e., Base of the Pyramid (BoP), where not only is this segment considered to be a promising target group, but platform-based service interactions also intend to address a multitude of challenges faced by citizens of this segment (Fisk et al., 2016; Ostrom et al., 2015; Prahalad, 2002).