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The age of reputation
Reputation has always been important for organizations. With the rise of digital business models and sharing platforms, however, having no reputation has become almost worse than having a bad reputation. Hunting for “stars”, the icons of the reputation economy, is a prerequisite for survival in e-commerce in general and on sharing platforms in particular. As such, understanding how reputations are formed, how they are used, and why they are so important has become a paramount concern in marketing departments and C-suites around the globe. In contrast to the dystopian sci-fi world in Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror story, “Nosedive” (see Box 1), there is still a life without ratings, but hardly anyone or any organization can avoid the need to build their reputation solidly by means of ratings and rankings.

Why reputation has become the new key asset
The key to understanding the rise of reputation is trust. When people interact with others they do not know, and in particular, when they engage in economic exchange, whether it is with an organization or a peer, if and how to trust the other party becomes a paramount concern[CK1] . A guest may not have ever met the Airbnb host whose home they will sleep in, but their confidence in the Airbnb platform, via reputation management practices, allows them to sleep comfortably. The ability for a platform to provide this trust has become crucial in the past decade, as more economic activity takes place digitally, and peer-to-peer exchange has come to the fore with the rise of the sharing economy.

Trust can be thought of as a confident relationship with the unknown (Figure 1). However, building a sense of confidence in the unknown is not as easy as it might seem. For organizations, managing online reputations is a full-time job, as this is the space where trust will be accrued – with partners, consumers, communities, and stakeholders. Having a digital reputation is the key to success in today’s marketplace. It has become a valuable intangible asset to organizations, similar to how significant brands are. In his article in this issue, Gandini discusses the role of reputation more deeply and points out that reputation work is becoming more professionalized. That is, social media managers are now key players in marketing departments, whereas they didn’t exist ten years ago, and one of their most important jobs is the careful curation of digital reputation.

Key issues and challenges of reputation management
Marketers need to engage in diverse forms of reputation management and master several challenges in designing the right systems and utilizing reputation information in optimal ways (see Figure 2).

• The interdependence of platform and user reputation
  On digital platforms, one of the key issues in the reputation economy is managing the reputation of the platform versus the reputation of the user or consumer within the system. This is a complex issue. If one trusts a platform like Uber, will one trust the individual driver in whose car they are riding? While there are typically ratings of individual drivers to address this, these tend to have large positive bias, so the star ratings are not a straightforward indicator of the trustworthiness of the driver; there must be trust in the platform as well. In the digital space, how people interpret trust indicators depends on several factors (see Figure 3). The individuals who are providing the service via the platforms, like the Uber driver or Airbnb host, contribute directly to how much the platform, overall, is trusted. Yet, because they are not employees, it is much more difficult for organizations to ensure consistent and on-brand practices.

• Unverified and fake reviews
  All trust-building efforts are endangered if reviews are faked. In fact, one out of seven reviews on Tripadvisor and as much as 60% of Amazon reviews are estimated to be fake; almost all articles in this issue discuss possible strategies to take against fake reviews. Reputation platforms, such as Tripadvisor, have begun to review comments before they are posted publicly, since there has been a strong backlash against the plethora of fake reviews that appear on the site. Also, blockchain is a technology that many hope can revolutionize reputation management, as it can eliminate fake reviews and ratings, including those from click farms and bots. Yet, although blockchain has been in use for a few years now, we have not yet seen these issues disappear.
   
• Positivity bias and reputation inflation
  Another reason why using ratings as proxies for digital reputation is problematic is that overly positive reviews have a tendency to get even more positive over time, which is the phenomenon of reputation inflation. Averages of star ratings tend to be around 4.5, and with this positive skew, the signal sent by the rating becomes harder to interpret. Strategies to address these challenges lie not only with the platforms themselves, but also with regulators as well as users and consumers on the platform, as Moehlmann and Tuebner explain in their article. Different participants in the ratings eco-system need to cooperate to increase the overall efficacy of rating systems.
   
• Reviewer bias and reviewer skills
  Even without fake and overly positive reviews, the picture delivered by reviews and ratings does not represent a complete picture of all experiences. In their article, Maffael and Gottschalk remind us that digital consumer reviews are written by a small percentage of consumers. Reviewers often post strategically, and what they write can be influenced by past reviews. In addition, not all types of experiences are shared equally. Dieckmann and Unfried point out that more emotionally arousing experiences – positive as well as negative – are more likely to be shared with others than more neutral ones. Further, van Laer demonstrates that reviews are not equally persuasive. The most persuasive reviews are the ones that relate an engaging narrative.