Shadowed intermediation. How two-sided platforms reshape intermediation to support direct exchanges between local food producers and consumers communities

With the commoditization of the Internet in the 2000's, new distribution/retail actors performing intermediation functions have appeared: two-sided Internet platforms (TSIP). A TSIP is defined as "a market-making intermediary that facilitates transactions and negotiations between selling and buying [actors]" (Watson et al. 2015, p. 559). Their impact on contemporary markets (Airbnb, Uber…) is such that some scholars invite researchers to reconsider the role of traditional retailers from the perspective of TSIP. Two-sided markets and platforms have been investigated both by economists and marketing scholars mainly considering quantitative issues. Few recent studies depart from this economic-perspective to question behavioral issues such as customer orientation and power/dependence structure. Here we seek to understand how and what kind of value TSIP bring to their communities of customers. The empirical setting of this research is a French TSIP aiming at facilitating the development of local food systems in which consumers directly procure food from producers. The case is designed as a four embedded units of analysis study. Data collection technics combine personal interviews, observation and secondary data analysis. Results highlight the economic, functional and symbolic value propositions of the TSIP to its different kind of customers. Decomposing transactional, physical and communication channels allows understanding how value is co-created within the networks. Previous studies consider that TSIP do not control exchanges between their groups of customers. Here we show how the TSIP, discretely, but tightly, monitors and controls interactions between communities of sellers and buyers while squeezing the costs of physical distribution out of its business model. We then discuss discretion and control and their implication for the co-construction of symbolic value rooted in collective representations of direct exchanges between local food producers and consumers.