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Service providers on highly competitive online outsourcing platforms employ various signals to entice buyers to make online purchases. One such signal—the solution exemplars—attracts attention through depictions of exemplary prior work completed by the service providers. Unfortunately, it is not known the extent to which solution exemplar characteristics affect sales performance nor is it clear how such signals perform in the presence of complementary signals such as service provider expertise. This paper explores these issues.

Extending signaling theory, the authors develop a model to explore the effects of solution exemplar characteristics (i.e. exemplar quantity, exemplar diversity and exemplar popularity) on sales performance under the moderating impact of service provider expertise. The authors test the model using proprietary data from ZBJ.com, a leading online outsourcing platform in China.

Exemplar quantity and exemplar popularity positively affect sales performance; exemplar diversity has no significant impact on sales performance and service provider expertise positively moderates the relationships between exemplar quantity, exemplar popularity and sales performance.

This work makes several significant contributions. First, the authors enrich the research on signals in online outsourcing by exploring the impact of solution exemplar characteristics on sales performance. Second, the authors analyze three solution exemplar characteristics: exemplar quantity, exemplar diversity and exemplar popularity. Third, this work shows that service provider expertise moderates the relationship between solution exemplar characteristics and sales performance. Important practical implications for both online outsourcing platforms and service providers are discussed.

Couriers are in an unequal relationship with on-demand logistic platforms with regards to order assignment and delivery-related information acquisition, which leads to high courier turnover rates. Based on social cognitive theory and justice theory, this research investigates the impact of order assignment and delivery-related information disclosure strategy on couriers' perceived justice and continuous participation intention and presents managerial suggestions to on-demand logistic platforms to lower the courier turnover rate.

Taking Chinese couriers as experimental subjects, this study conducts experiments by constructing an order receiving scene of order assignment strategy (performance-priority vs distance-priority) and delivery-related information disclosure strategy (detailed-information vs brief-information) and analyzes the results of 452 valid respondents.

The results indicate that the interaction between order assignment and delivery-related information disclosure strategy in on-demand logistics significantly affects couriers’ continuous participation intention, specifically under performance-priority order assignment and detailed-information (vs brief-information) disclosure strategy. Informational justice and distribution justice play mediating roles, and work experience and proactive personality moderate the relationship interactions.

The research helps us to understand the order-receiving justice demand and delivery-related information demand of couriers in on-demand logistics platforms and sheds light on cutting down turnover rates through different strategies designs and justice environment construction.

This research integrates social cognitive theory into on-demand logistics and combines with justice theory to fill platform strategies, couriers’ justice perception and characteristics, as well as behavior into “triadic reciprocal causation.” Meanwhile, it investigates different impacts and interactive relationships of order assignment and delivery-related information disclosure strategy, expands strategies from the impact of operational efficiency to the impact of couriers’ participation and extends the literature of justice perception and individual characteristics in on-demand logistics.