Carsharing is often promoted as a potentially environmental‐friendly alternative to individual car ownership. However, various carsharing programs have displayed limited success in the past. An initial field study of a new carsharing service is such a story of failure: The introduction of this new service at a medium‐sized German university generated unexpectedly low adoption rates so that the service was eventually scaled down and then suspended. Quantitative field study results as well as additional qualitative focus groups reveal that missing compatibility is a key barrier to adoption. Drawing on extant conceptual frameworks of user participation in sharing business models, a factorial survey identifies the importance of different dimensions of carsharing business models for their acceptance. The results reveal that a set of convenience and lifestyle dimensions influences usage intentions, including mode of drive, pickup and drop‐off mode, service level, price model, availability, and type of market mediation. In contrast, vehicle fleet does not appear to influence carsharing models' acceptance. These findings contribute to research on business model configuration as well as the attitude–behavior gap in the sharing economy by determining relevant dimensions of a carsharing business model that can bridge the gap between basically positive attitudes and usage resistance. Thereby, they also serve for concrete managerial recommendations.

Access-based services (ABS) provide an opportunity for brands to promote their new products by enabling (unintended) trials. However, the mechanisms and impact of consumer exposure to products in ABS and the subsequent potential spillover effects on both the brand and the product perception are largely unknown.Our hypotheses are derived from the information integration theory (IIT) and subsequently tested. Study 1 is a field study investigating an unintended trial moderated by involvement and positive experience. The results indicate the positive effects of the unintended trial on product and brand attitudes, brand purchase intention, and word of mouth. In line with IIT, these effects are more pronounced for positive trial experience, although in contrast to IIT, they are less pronounced for high-involvement consumers. While the results of Study 2, an online experiment, show substantial effects of both trials compared with nontrials, they also reveal that intended and unintended trials have a similar impact on attitude, but ABS experiences have a stronger positive impact on brand purchase intention. We thus recommend that brand managers promote not only new products but also their brands in unintended trials. This study fills a gap in current discussions about the trial effect(s) of ABS. K E Y W O R D Saccess-based services, attitudinal change, e-mobility, field study, information integration theory, involvement, trial effects, unintended trial, word of mouth (WOM)

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Access-based service usage, or simply “sharing”, is an emerging consumption trend many companies pursue. As various firms seek to exploit this trend, however, consumers might not perceive these companies’ services to be adequate, especially if they misleadingly present traditional marketplace exchanges (e.g., car renting) as sharing. This paper explores potential consequences of such forms of deceptive communication. Drawing on the concept of greenwashing and on consumer skepticism research, we introduce the concept of sharewashing, which we define as misleading communication that erroneously asserts a firm’s offer as part of the sharing economy. To identify the underlying mechanism as well as the consequences of these deceptive practices, this research refers to three experimental studies. The results reveal negative effects of sharewashing on subsequent usage intentions, compared to both sharing and renting offers. Consumer skepticism mediates the effect between the type of offering and usage intention when a sharing offer is compared to a sharewashing offer, and it leads to lower perceived attractiveness and decreasing recipients’ information seeking tendencies regarding the sharewashing offer. However, this mechanism does not hold true if a rental offer is compared to a sharewashing offer, which indicates a different underlying mechanism. From the findings we derive several implications for companies and propose future research directions.