Playing the Trust Game Successfully in the Reputation Economy

Hunting for “stars”, the icons of the reputation economy, is a prerequisite for survival in e-commerce in general and on sharing platforms in particular. The key to understanding the rise of reputation is trust, and the ability of a platform to provide this trust has become crucial in the past decade. Social media managers are now key players in marketing departments. One of their most important jobs is the careful curation of digital reputations. Marketers need to engage in diverse forms of reputation management and master several challenges in designing the right systems and utilizing reputation information in optimal ways. Engendering trust is more complex than gaining star ratings or positive reviews on owned or third-party platforms. How platforms are designed – in terms of how people can make bookings or orders and how users rate each other – is the key issue. It needs to be managed in a sophisticated way, especially in an era when topics such as racial and ethnic justice are key societal concerns.