This study examines how service delivery platforms enable identity manipulation through virtual services. The authors theorize service camouflage, operator actions that alter how production sources are represented and investigate how these actions reshape platform signals and consumer trust. The purpose of this study is to explain when and how identity-switching practices distort the information environment and influence judgments during the deployment detection cycle.
Using a qualitative, case-informed research design, the authors analyze seven cross-jurisdiction cases drawing on journalistic investigations, regulatory documents and platform-level digital traces. The authors develop two conceptual tools: the camouflage-signal-trust (CST) process model, which maps practices, signal mechanisms and their effects and the camouflage consequence matrix (CCM), which classifies cases by degree of manipulation and value impact.
The study identifies four camouflage practices, alias proliferation, cloning, rapid relisting and ownership obfuscation and four signal mechanisms: distortion, inflation, suppression and erasure. CST shows how these practices decouple signals from their referents and impact trust across the deployment detection cycle. CCM distinguishes intensive, cosmetic, passive and benign cases and clarifies boundary conditions separating legitimate brand portfolioing from systematic, history-resetting manipulation.
This study introduces the concept of service camouflage, develops the CST process model and CCM matrix and provides the first integrated framework explaining how identity manipulation emerges on service platforms. It offers novel theoretical contributions to service-dominant logic and signaling theory and actionable guidance for platform governance.
