Proactive or reactive? Platform governance strategy in C2C marketplace

In this paper, we present a case study of two major consumer-to-consumer marketplaces that adopt different platform governance strategies and examine how the users of each marketplace trust other users and the marketplace platforms. Our study was conducted in two steps: qualitative and quantitative research. As a first step, we conducted interviews with the directors of the two platforms. As the second step, we conducted user survey to assess the user perception of platform governance strategies. The preliminary finding from our interview with the operators of two major C2C marketplaces shows that the both operators acknowledge an effective governance system as the key factor of success, but adopt different approaches to ensure effectiveness. Two different strategies for platform governance are adopted: proactive and reactive. The preliminary finding from our user survey indicates that users perceive a reactive strategy as more effective compared to a proactive strategy.