Millennial identity work in BlablaCar online reviews
María de la OHernández-López
Pablo de Olavide University
Abstract
In the age of Internet communication, car sharing as well as other types of sharing (accommodation, offices, etc.)
has led to the emergence of the so-called sharing economy platforms, such as BlaBlaCar. Previous studies have demonstrated that
millennials (i.e., those born between 1981 and 1999) are the most representative generational cohort regarding their interests in
activities organized around BlaBlaCar and similar sites (Činjarević, Kožo and Berberović
2019). One direct consequence of this fact is that the way in which millennials communicate in this particular affinity
space (Gee 2005; Jenkins 2006) may be highly
informative of their discursive identities (Bucholtz and Hall 2005).
Against this backdrop, this study examines 1,000 online reviews taken from www.BlablaCar.es, in order to, first, understand how millennials conceptualize
their experiences in BlaBlaCar; second, examine how identity emerges through labels and implicatures (Bucholtz and Hall 2005); and third, discuss and understand the relationship between the discourse
identity shaped in BlaBlaCar reviews and millennials’ social identity. The findings reveal that BlaBlaCar reviews are highly
informative of users’ identities and their relational needs. Also, these reviews no longer comply with traditional definitions of
‘consumer reviews’, and a re-conceptualization is needed.
In the age of Internet communication, sharing economy platforms have sprung up as new trends that have dramatically changed the way individuals perceive their experiences. BlaBlaCar, the world’s leading online platform offering intercity carpooling services (Guyader 2018), has become mainstream in Europe and is gradually replacing traditional ways of travelling (Bostman and Rogers 2011). The success of these platforms lies mainly in the fact that they not only offer a particular service (e.g., carpooling), but also the possibility of being part of the same virtual community of practice, or VCoP (Dubé et al. 2005). Their main advertising campaign and trust mechanism is online consumer reviews (OCRs; Zervas, Proserpio and Byers 2014) or electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM; Hennig-Thurau et al. 2004). According to Mudambi and Schuff (2010, 186), OCRs are “peer-generated product evaluations posted on company or third party websites”. Similarly, Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004, 39) define eWOM as “any positive or negative statement made by potential, actual or former customers about a product or company, which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet”.
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