The Seller’s Experience in Consumer-to-Consumer E-Commerce

Abstract

Digitization has reshaped the retail landscape and changed the way that consumers buy, use, and dispose of products. One such development is the rise of consumer-to-consumer electronic commerce (C2C e-commerce) platforms. These platforms complement and compete with existing forms of retail, which is why studying the characteristics of customer experience in these platforms is both managerially and academically interesting and topical. The purpose of this study is to explore and analyse the selling experience on C2C e-commerce platforms. More specifically, the paper (1) identifies the phases that make up the selling experience as a process and (2) characterizes and analyses these experiences. A qualitative research approach is used to generate these insights. This study contributes by focusing on the seller’s perspective and investigating it from the experiential perspective, which has remained relatively overlooked in prior research. Nonetheless, the seller’s experience is vital, as it is the supply of used goods that determines whether C2C markets can be established in the first place.