Customer knowledge hiding behavior in service multi-sided platforms

Hiding knowledge engenders economic losses. Customer knowledge is an external source praised by knowledge management scholars. Multi-sided Internet platforms become knowledge flow vehicles, nurturing customer knowledge. Knowledge hiding is widespread in services contexts impairing knowledge sharing. Firms need to integrate the knowledge-based customer experience to attain performance goals. Using social exchange theory and customer experience theory, we adopt a customer perspective to uncover the type of knowledge hidden and the motivations for customers to hide it on service multi-sided platforms. Combining narrative inquiry and critical incident technique we collected an original dataset of 51 narrative accounts of multi-sided platform users (Uber, Airbnb, and BlaBlaCar). We identify 10 major categories of hidden knowledge building on the identified critical incidents and five motivations to hide knowledge. The findings enrich the literature on knowledge hiding by providing the customer viewpoint. For practitioners, firms need to acknowledge customers’ knowledge hiding behaviors in multi-sided settings.