Modeling user concerns in Sharing Economy: the case of food delivery apps

Sharing Economy apps, such as Uber, Airbnb, and TaskRabbit, have generated a substantial consumer interest over the past decade. The unique form of peer-to-peer business exchange these apps have enabled has been linked to significant levels of economic growth, helping people in resource-constrained communities to build social capital and move up the economic ladder. However, due to the multidimensional nature of their operational environments, and the lack of effective methods for capturing and describing their end-users’ concerns, Sharing Economy apps often struggle to survive. To address these challenges, in this paper, we examine crowd feedback in ecosystems of Sharing Economy apps. Specifically, we present a case study targeting the ecosystem of food delivery apps. Using qualitative analysis methods, we synthesize important user concerns present in the Twitter feeds and app store reviews of these apps. We further propose and intrinsically evaluate an automated procedure for generating a succinct model of these concerns. Our work provides a first step toward building a full understanding of user needs in ecosystems of Sharing Economy apps. Our objective is to provide Sharing Economy app developers with systematic guidelines to help them maximize their market fitness and mitigate their end-users’ concerns and optimize their experience.