How can C2C secondhand platforms increase sellers’ willingness to pay a membership fee? A uses and gratifications approach Open Access

Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce is defined as transactions that take place between consumers electronically (Pérez López et al., 2025). Usually linked to secondhand products, C2C e-commerce has seen continuous growth in recent years. In the USA, the online sale of secondhand products was valued at around $80bn in 2024 (Statista, 2024). Consequently, a great number of online C2C platforms, such as Grailed, Poshmark or Wallapop, where individual sellers are an important part of the business, have been set up to facilitate C2C transactions, building online secondhand markets (Nguyen et al., 2025).

C2C e-commerce platforms are commonly based on freemium business models, namely “those business models that offer free basic versions of their services and a value-enhanced paid version of them” (Hamari et al., 2020, p. 1). Previous research on freemium business models has analyzed why consumers pay subscription fees for online music services, access to online games and cloud services (Chang et al., 2024; Gupta et al., 2025; Lopes-Barata and Simoes-Coelho, 2021; Martins and Rodrigues, 2025; Nguyen et al., 2025; Tyrväinen and Karjaluoto, 2024). These studies find that factors such as community participation, perceived value, social interaction and enjoyment, increase willingness to pay (WTP) a membership fee. However, with few exceptions (Lu and Lin, 2012), these studies do not consider C2C e-commerce platforms in which consumers exchange secondhand products. Therefore, this article aims to answer whether and which platform attributes can increase sellers’ WTP membership fees in C2C platforms.

The scant research on WTP a membership fee in C2C e-commerce is surprising, since such fees represent one of the main sources of income for platforms. Consumers acting as sellers may be willing to pay membership fees for services such as market information, market access, product visibility and advertising (Lee et al., 2018; Lee et al., 2019; Lu and Lin, 2012). Lu and Lin (2012) showed that sellers’ intention to pay membership fees depends on their perception of value. Lee et al. (2018) analyzed how traffic-generation strategies can increase revenues from membership fees, and later, Lee et al. (2019) address retailer’s WTP for the services of a marketplace. However, none of these studies consider which attributes consumers who sell secondhand products online are willing to pay for.

This study has the main goal of investigating which C2C secondhand platform attributes influence sellers’ WTP for its services and how. To this end, several relevant platform attributes suggested in previous research are analyzed based on the uses and gratifications theory (UGT) proposed by Katz et al. (1973). This theory has been used to analyze adoption and use of e-commerce platforms (Chong et al., 2024; Krasonikolakis, 2022), as well as payment intentions in freemium business models (Hamari et al., 2020; Martins and Rodrigues, 2025). UGT proposes that consumers’ decisions are based on the gratifications they obtain, and that gratifications may vary depending on the context under study (Busalim and Ghabban, 2021; Martins and Rodrigues, 2025; Saavedra et al., 2024). This flexibility is especially interesting for the purposes of the present study, which is situated in the C2C e-commerce context, and explores the effects on WTP of specific gratifications: customization, platform business and communication support, efficiency, responsiveness, payment reception security and enjoyment. To test the influence of these factors on sellers’ WTP, the researchers conducted a survey among 442 Spanish consumers and analyzed the results by applying structural equation modeling (SEM).

This article makes several theoretical contributions to the marketing literature. First, it is among the first to study how C2C platforms can obtain revenues from sellers by considering the gratification that platforms can offer to sellers. Second, it explores some interesting relationships that the literature has not addressed previously, such as the effects on WTP of customization, platform business and communication support and responsiveness. The examination of these relationships helps to extend UGT by taking into account several attributes of C2C secondhand platforms that have not previously been addressed under the umbrella of that theory. Third, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present research is the first to study security of payment reception; previous research has focused on payment security as perceived by online shoppers rather than by sellers. Although both concepts relate to consumers’ perceptions of risks associated with payment in online transactions, the latter is specific to sellers and their perceptions. A focus on the sellers’ side is important because they also perceive uncertainty in the transaction, fear the loss of the amount due to them from the customer and experience privacy concerns (Pérez López et al., 2025).

Previous research on C2C e-commerce has tended to analyze the phenomenon from the shoppers’ perspective and not from the sellers’ perspective. Thus, knowledge of online sellers’ behavior is limited, focusing on unplanned sales (Chu and Liao, 2008), reselling expectations (Chu and Liao, 2010; Zhang, 2017), auction pricing (Lee et al., 2019), motivations to sell (Ertz et al., 2018), collaborative information exchange (Chen et al., 2021) and intention to pay for online auctions (Lu and Lin, 2012). This section reviews the main findings of the sparse research in this stream.

Chu and Liao (2008), following the classification of Jacoby et al. (1977), proposed a conceptual model of online reselling behavior according to which there are three groups of factors that influence this behavior: product characteristics, psychological characteristics of the seller and situational factors extrinsic to the product and the seller. The combination of different factors in each group leads to planned and unplanned sales.

Quantitatively, Chu and Liao (2010) found that consumers’ expectations about the price that a product may reach in the secondhand market strengthened the relationship between resale expectation and purchase intention. Zhang (2017) analyzed the resale behavior of Chinese women who buy luxury products in Europe to resell them in China online as a business. Ertz et al. (2018) identified several motivations to sell secondhand products online, such as economic, recreational and convenience motivations. Chu (2024) found that consumers’ awareness of the resale potential of a product can mitigate their perception of guilt when purchasing it.

Finally, Lu and Lin (2012) tried to explain the seller’s intention to pay for an online auction in terms of the perceived value of the selling activity. They found that usefulness and social benefits influenced perceived value positively, which in turn increased intention to pay. However, their study did not consider specific services that could increase sellers’ intention to pay or their WTP a membership fee. Furthermore, they did not directly relate usefulness and social benefits with intention to pay, but with perceived value. Thus, more research is needed to address which attributes of C2C secondhand platforms can make consumers pay a membership fee and how.

Many C2C e-commerce platforms are based on freemium business models; that is, they offer both a free basic version of their services and a value-enhanced paid version (Hamari et al., 2020). Free and paid (or full) versions usually differ in quality because paid versions have a greater number of features (Bordonaba-Juste et al., 2020), such as platform support to increase the probability of selling an item, greater flexibility in designing the product offering and stronger guarantees (Lee et al., 2019).

C2C e-commerce platforms based on freemium business models charge membership fees to sellers for subscription access to premium services such as additional communication possibilities, customization options and increased security of payment receipts (Lee et al., 2018). However, although previous research has noted these relevant attributes of C2C secondhand platforms, it has not addressed how they influence the consumer’s decision to pay for them.

In the present study, WTP is defined as the consumer’s disposition to pay for the extra services offered by the platform (Hamari et al., 2020). Table 1 presents some of the main studies that have examined consumers’ WTP for premium versions across a wide range of services, as well as the antecedents that explain why consumers switch from freemium to premium. From the overview of this table, three main conclusions can be extracted. First, a variety of theoretical frameworks have been used to explain consumers’ WTP in freemium business models, including the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) (Lopes-Barata and Simoes-Coelho, 2021), value theory (Yan and Wakefield, 2018; Hamari et al., 2020), service quality (Hamari et al., 2017) and UGT (Martins and Rodrigues, 2025).

Second, not all the factors that are helpful in explaining the adoption of products and services also prove relevant to explaining WTP for premium services, and these factors may change depending on the context. For example, while ubiquity has usually been considered an antecedent for adoption of cloud services, it is not relevant to explaining payment (Bordonaba-Juste et al., 2020). Similarly, although enjoyment positively affects intention to upgrade to premium in online music streaming services (Mäntymäki et al., 2020), its influence on WTP in online games platforms is not clear. Hamari et al. (2020) found a negative effect on purchase intention of free-to-play games, but Nguyen et al. (2025) found a positive effect.

Third, there is an absence of investigation into the role of sellers paying for extra services in C2C secondhand platforms, with the exception of Lu and Lin’s (2012) work. Even the latter article considered only a specific type of platform (auction sites) and focused on perceived value.

It should be noted that the literature review has not identified articles that considered relevant services such as platform business and communication support, customization and payment reception security. Accordingly, the present study proposes to analyze the influence of these factors on WTP a membership fee.

The perceived value of products and technologies has been related to the benefits and gratifications derived from them (Bordonaba-Juste et al., 2020). Therefore, sellers’ WTP may depend on the different gratifications they perceive from a platform, which may serve as motivations to pay. UGT seems a good theoretical framework in which to approach the research question of the present investigation, since it draws on customers’ motivations at the individual level to explain behavioral intentions (Busalim and Ghabban, 2021; Saavedra et al., 2024), and shows flexibility and adaptability to different research contexts and its suitability for the social commerce context (Busalim and Ghabban, 2021; Ibáñez-Sánchez et al., 2022).

UGT was introduced by Katz et al. (1973), who stated that individual needs have social and psychological origins that generate expectations of mass media, and that these can lead to different patterns of media exposure, resulting in needs or gratifications. Subsequent research has applied this theory to a wide range of disciplines and topics, including marketing and e-commerce (Busalim and Ghabban, 2021; Kaur et al., 2020; Ibáñez-Sánchez et al., 2022; Saavedra et al., 2024). UGT makes three basic assumptions. First, individuals actively seek the medium that satisfies their needs. Second, they select this medium to fulfill their communication objectives. Third, they are aware of what motivates them to choose a medium (Busalim and Ghabban, 2021). Consequently, UGT does not provide a fixed set of constructs to explain consumers’ behavior, as the relevant gratifications vary according to the context in which the theory is applied and the behavior under study. For example, previous research has considered utilitarian, hedonic and social gratifications in connection with addiction tendencies in microblogging (Li et al., 2018), and participation in mobile apps (Chong et al., 2024). Martins and Rodrigues (2025) focused on hedonic gratifications to predict subscriptions to premium options in music streaming services, and Saavedra et al. (2024) focused on utilitarian gratifications to explain the adoption of voice assistants.

Sellers in C2C e-commerce are usually motivated by utilitarian gratifications (e.g. saving space at home or getting back part of the value of a used product) and hedonic gratifications (e.g. the pleasure of accomplishing a sale or enjoyment in bargaining) (Ertz et al., 2018). Utilitarian gratification involves goal-oriented use; that is, consumers are willing to pay for the platform services because they are instrumental (i.e. convenient and useful) to the attainment of several goals (Saavedra et al., 2024; Kaur et al., 2020). The present article proposes customization possibilities and efficiency provided by the C2C platform as useful attributes that may lead sellers to pay a membership fee. Furthermore, sellers could be interested in paying for information about the market and how to improve their selling performance, as well as paying for the platform’s support to increase the visibility of their products. Thus, the platform could provide them with business support (Chen et al., 2021). The platform’s responsiveness and security of receipt of payments are part of its service quality (Lee and Kim, 2017). This quality can increase perceived value and intentions to pay in online shopping (Busalim and Ghabban, 2021).

Hedonic gratification involves the use of a medium because it is enjoyable or entertaining; that is, consumers will sell secondhand goods through a C2C platform because they perceive an intrinsic reward in doing so (Huang and Zhou, 2018). Thus, this article introduces perceived enjoyment as a hedonic gratification. Research has considered socialization and communication possibilities as hedonic gratifications (Chong et al., 2024). C2C e-commerce platforms can manage consumers’ interactions by providing higher or lower levels of socialization possibilities, according to their communication support (Perren and Kozinets, 2018).

This section develops the research hypotheses that relate utilitarian and hedonic gratifications with WTP a membership fee, as in the model proposed in Figure 1.

Efficiency is defined as the ease and speed of conducting a product sale through a C2C platform (Parasuraman et al., 2005). Efficiency includes quick loading of pages and the site being simple to use and well organized, allowing sellers to find information and services quickly and easily (Herzallah et al., 2022). It is part of the website’s perceived value, can determine loyalty intentions (Parasuraman et al., 2005), and can increase satisfaction, trust, continued use and repurchase intentions (Tyrväinen and Karjaluoto, 2024; Saavedra et al., 2024). Furthermore, efficiency reduces search costs and improves convenience (Gupta et al., 2025), which can increase sellers’ WTP a membership fee. Thus, the first hypothesis is proposed:

Customization refers to the possibilities for sellers to change the characteristics of their offering, such as its appearance on the platform and its distinctiveness (Blasco-Arcas et al., 2013; Martins and Rodrigues, 2025). For example, sellers can apply different categories and hashtags, upload different images, describe the offering or change the appearance of their ad. The possibility of customizing the online shopping experience leads to higher purchase intentions (Blasco-Arcas et al., 2013) and has been used to increase sales and advertising revenues (Huang and Zhou, 2018). Greater customization also increases shoppers’ perceived value in social commerce sites (Molinillo et al., 2021). Furthermore, customization increases the sellers’ perceptions of control over their offering, thereby improving their selling experience (Rose et al., 2012), and makes e-commerce transactions more convenient (Martins and Rodrigues, 2025). Thus, greater customization possibilities may lead to greater sale success by adapting the offering to the customers’ needs, which can increase the likelihood of sellers paying for this platform attribute. Therefore, the second hypothesis is proposed:

Platform business support is the extent to which a platform provides sellers with support on a range of business activities, such as product presentation, promotions, resolving operational problems and other business practices (Chen et al., 2021). Thanks to this support, sellers can increase their business knowledge (Garrido-Castro et al., 2025), which is a major determinant of their competitive advantage and may increase the likelihood of selling their products, as has been demonstrated in the B2C context (Saravade and Felix, 2024). Thus, the third hypothesis is proposed:

Following Parasuraman et al. (2005), a platform’s responsiveness is defined as its effectiveness and speed in handling problems that may arise during a selling experience, such as product return, delivery or transaction completion (Pham and Ahammad, 2017). Responsiveness is part of the platform’s service quality (Lee and Kim, 2017). It can influence consumers’ perceived value of the platform and lead to a greater WTP (Lassala et al., 2016). The faster the platform responds to sellers’ requests and complaints, the more satisfied the customer is (Pham and Ahammad, 2017), which may increase their WTP for a responsive service. Therefore, the fourth hypothesis is as follows:

Payment reception security refers to sellers’ perceived security against the risks associated with the reception of the amount paid by a buyer in a transaction (Liébana-Cabanillas et al., 2018). Perceptions of these risks are higher in C2C than in B2C contexts because of the peer nature of the transaction (Pérez López et al., 2025). Given the importance of payment security, platforms have developed secure payment procedures and offer guarantees to both buyers and sellers to reduce uncertainty and improve security in transactions (Shen et al., 2011). On the shopping side, perceived payment security is an important determinant of users’ intention to pay using mobile devices (Liébana-Cabanillas et al., 2018). Furthermore, cloud users are willing to pay a price premium for greater security (Bordonaba-Juste et al., 2020). Thus, this study proposes the fifth hypothesis:

Enjoyment is the extent to which sellers perceive their selling experience to be enjoyable, entertaining or amusing (Ibáñez-Sánchez et al., 2022). It has been considered by previous research on e-commerce, especially in B2C contexts (Lee and Kim, 2017). This type of gratification can increase consumers’ intention to undertake online shopping (Kaur et al., 2020) and intention to purchase in music streaming services (Nguyen et al., 2025). Following these findings, this research proposes that enjoyment is a gratification that can increase sellers’ WTP for C2C platform services:

Platform communication support refers to the efforts made by a C2C platform to facilitate interactions and communications among users (Chen et al., 2021). Forums, chatrooms and online groups enable communication between sellers and other users (buyers and other sellers). Discussions in these forums about interesting topics can increase the perceived value of the platform and encourage participation in mobile apps (Chong et al., 2024). Platform communication support encourages a sharing culture and a sense of identification with other users in the platform, motivating collaboration and trust among members (Krasonikolakis, 2022). Furthermore, through this function, the platform provides sellers with a supportive environment in which to conduct their business and socialize (Chen et al., 2021), thereby increasing their intrinsic rewards. This may encourage them to pay for that support, which is this study’s final hypothesis:

SEM was applied to test the hypotheses and estimate the results using the SmartPLS 4.0 statistics package (Ringle et al., 2015). This software offers several advantages, since it relaxes the assumption of normality in SEM, can be used with small samples, and has proven to be rigorous in its estimations (Shiau et al., 2019).

The target population of the study was Spanish consumers between 18 and 54 years of age who had resold a secondhand product at least once in the previous year through a C2C online platform. Data were obtained by administering a questionnaire to 465 consumers in November 2021. A simple random sampling procedure was used to select the participants from a panel of online consumers at a marketing research company. As some questionnaires had to be removed because of incomplete answers, the final valid sample consisted of 442 responses. Table 2 shows the sample’s demographics, which are in line with the target population of the study and the profile of Spanish online shoppers (ONTSI, 2021).

All the variables included in the model were latent variables. A pre-test with 30 individuals prior to the final survey confirmed the clarity and readability of the questionnaire. All the variables were reflective constructs, with items using seven-point Likert scales based on previous research (see Table 3).

Gender, age, education and occupation were included as control variables. Gender was captured through a dummy variable (0 = male, 1 = female) and age through a categorical variable with four levels. Education was also a categorical variable (taking the values no studies, primary, secondary and tertiary), and occupation was measured on five levels (with the values employed, unemployed, student, retired and homemaker).

To test for the unidimensionality of constructs, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted with varimax rotation in SPSS. The analysis resulted in a solution formed by eight constructs: WTP a membership fee, efficiency, customization, platform business support, platform communication support, responsiveness, enjoyment and payment reception security. A confirmatory analysis conducted using SmartPLS 4.0 supported the exploratory solution.

Since all the data used in the study were obtained through a questionnaire based on consumers’ perceptions, common method variance could be a serious issue. Therefore, a Harman’s one-factor test was conducted for the whole sample. The results indicated that the eight factors of the model explained 72.9% of the total variance, with the largest factor explaining 14.3%. Hence, there was no apparent global factor, and common method bias was not a problem in the data (Krishnan et al., 2006).

The assessment of the measurement model consisted of three stages: item reliability, composite reliability and convergent and discriminant validity. Regarding item reliability, Table 3 shows that all the items loaded highest on their respective construct and that these loadings were greater than 0.7 (Nunnally, 1978). The item EFF7 of efficiency was lower than 0.7, but close, and it was therefore retained. Cronbach’s alpha values and the composite reliability index were higher than 0.7 for all constructs (Hair et al., 2011), which confirmed internal consistency. Regarding convergent validity, the average variance extracted showed adequate values for all the constructs, exceeding the minimum acceptable value of 0.6. Discriminant validity was also adequate according to Fornell and Larcker (1982) and the HTMT ratio (Henseler et al., 2015) (Table 4).

The model showed adequate goodness of fit measures (SRMR = 0.051; χ² = 2480.335, NFI = 0.834). To test predictive relevance, the analysis considered the Q² value recommended by Stone (1974) and Geisser (1974). The model showed a positive value (Q² = 0.163) for the dependent variable (i.e. WTP a membership fee) and explained 19.9% of the dependent variable (R²) (Table 5).

Figure 2 shows the main results for the path coefficients of the model. H1 and H2 are not supported, since efficiency (β = −0.117; p = 0.096) has a non-significant negative effect on WTP, and customization (β = −0.121; p = 0.033) has a negative and significant effect. H3, H4 and H5 are supported, because platform business support (β = 0.323; p = 0.000), responsiveness (β = 0.116; p = 0.011) and payment reception security (β = 0.113; p = 0.008) have positive and significant effects on WTP. H6 is not supported, since enjoyment (β = −0.055; p = 0.149) has no significant influence on WTP, and H7 is supported, as the effect of platform communication support on WTP (β = 0.195 p = 0.000) is positive and significant. Finally, among the control variables, only gender is significant, which indicates that women are less willing to pay a membership fee for the services provided by the C2C platform.

Some findings of the present article confirm previous research on the effects of the attributes of C2C secondhand platforms on WTP, while other findings are unexpected. Regarding utilitarian motivations, the results show the non-significant effect of efficiency on WTP and the negative effect of customization. Both results are contrary to initial expectations. We expected a positive effect of efficiency on WTP for premium services in C2C secondhand e-commerce platforms, given that efficiency improves convenience and continued use, which can in turn increase WTP (Gupta et al., 2025). However, the results indicate a lack of significance of the relationship between efficiency and WTP. We can use two arguments to explain this result.

First, consumers may perceive ease of use, usability and convenience as basic, non-negotiable attributes of C2C e-commerce platforms. Thus, they are not willing to pay for these features; instead, they expect them to be included in the free version (Rose et al., 2012). Consumers will expect to post ads, write descriptions and upload pictures smoothly and conveniently, and do not expect to incur additional costs for these basic functionalities.

Second, the importance of platform attributes to influence consumer behavior is context specific. While efficiency and performance expectancy may lead to greater WTP for streaming music services and video gaming, it does not for cloud services (Bordonaba-Juste et al., 2020). Thus, in entertainment contexts expectations about performance may lead to paying for premium services because consumers value fluent experiences and enhanced hedonic gratifications that smoother and uninterrupted interactions provide. In contrast, in C2C e-commerce contexts, greater efficiency does not provide experiential value and does not meaningfully affect transaction success, being less relevant for sellers.

The negative effect of customization is surprising, since C2C platforms usually provide greater possibilities for personalization in their premium versions in the belief that this customization can increase participation and control over the offering. We propose three alternative explanations for this negative effect. First, customization may create higher time costs, greater cognitive effort and increased perceptions of mistake risk. This attribute entails a larger number of decisions to make (e.g. selecting pictures, layout, tags and shipping condition), leading to choice overload, greater cognitive effort and time costs (Lastovetskaia et al., 2025). In addition, customization increases the probability of making mistakes when designing the offering and accomplishing the selling task (e.g. posting unappealing product descriptions, mis-tagging items or making negation mistakes).

Second, customization may not align with sellers’ goals. Sellers in C2C e-commerce platforms are usually casual rather than professional, usually unwilling to invest effort in the selling task and are primarily motivated by earning a small amount of money (Bordonaba-Juste et al., 2020). For these sellers, customization is a peripheral or even irrelevant attribute that does not support their core objective of completing a transaction, thereby reducing the platform’s overall perceived value (Molinillo et al., 2021).

Third, many C2C sellers may be skeptical about the effectiveness of customization in increasing the visibility of their offerings and differentiating them from competing listings (Kuo and Cranage, 2012). Sellers often believe that algorithmic ranking is more important for visibility than visual or textual customization, which further reduces the value of customization options.

Platform business support, responsiveness and payment reception security positively and significantly impact WTP a membership fee, with the results indicating that platform business support is the most important of these factors. This finding confirms that platforms can formulate strategies directed to sellers to obtain revenues (Lee et al., 2018).

Responsiveness and payment reception security are intended to facilitate a transaction by reducing uncertainty. The fact that sellers are willing to pay for guarantees contingent on failure confirms previous research (Lee and Kim, 2017; Lassala et al., 2016). This finding suggests that responsiveness has an influence on WTP a membership fee in C2C e-commerce platforms, in contrast to the non-significance of this factor in explaining purchase intention in free-to-play games (Hamari et al., 2017). Payment security is a key aspect in e-commerce, and the present findings add to previous research on freemium business models which found that consumers are willing to pay for payment security, not only when using cloud and mobile services, but also when selling secondhand products on C2C platforms (Bordonaba-Juste et al., 2020).

Among hedonic gratifications, the findings indicate that enjoyment is not a sufficiently valuable attribute for sellers to pay for the platform’s services, which is contrary to our initial expectations. This result reveals that in C2C e-commerce platforms, despite being relevant in explaining satisfaction and loyalty, enjoyment does not significantly influence WTP (Cheng et al., 2020). This lack of significance can be explained by two main reasons. First, the main motivations for sellers to participate in C2C e-commerce platforms are economic, frugal and pragmatic motivations (Ertz et al., 2018; Saravade and Felix, 2024). Thus, sellers do not look for enjoyment when engaging in C2C e-commerce. Second, enjoyment does not contribute to transactional success, which reduces the extent to which sellers value it in their selling activity (Yuan et al., 2025).

Regarding platform communication support, the findings indicate a positive and significant effect on WTP, in line with initial expectations. Platform communication support can provide users with opportunities to socialize with other users. These interactions can help sellers gain knowledge about the selling activity and find social support by confirming their selling decisions regarding product offerings.

These findings have interesting theoretical implications. First, the present research contributes to the marketing literature by clarifying which attributes of C2C platforms can encourage sellers to pay for their services. Lee et al. (2018) considered membership fees as one of the main sources of revenue for e-commerce platforms. However, they focused on specific strategies that platforms could use to increase revenue from retailers in a B2C context. Furthermore, they did not consider platform attributes or gratifications that can motivate sellers to pay.

Second, although WTP has been examined extensively by marketing researchers, some important gaps remain in the e-commerce literature. Several relationships in the present study provide theoretical contributions that allow us to extend the UGT. To date, research has not considered attributes of C2C secondhand platforms such as platform business and communication support, responsiveness and payment reception security as gratifications that influence WTP. The literature has studied customization and platform support as elements that could improve customer experience in C2C e-commerce platforms but has not related these elements to WTP Bordonaba-Juste et al., 2018; Chen et al., 2021). Responsiveness has been considered as an antecedent of purchase intention in free-to-play games (Hamari et al., 2017). However, purchase intention in free-to-play games refers to the intention to make different purchases for some features and functionalities inside an online game. In contrast, in C2C e-commerce platforms, purchase intention is the consumers’ WTP a membership fee for an updated or premium version of the platform. Thus, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no prior research relates responsiveness to WTP a membership fee.

Third, this study contributes to marketing research by analyzing payment reception security. Previous research on this aspect has focused on the buyers’ perspective, examining their concerns about the security of the online payments they make to sellers (Liébana-Cabanillas et al., 2018; Bordonaba-Juste et al., 2020). However, taking into account that asymmetry of information, uncertainty and security are relevant for all users of C2C platforms (Pérez López et al., 2025), the present study extends the investigation of this variable to the sellers’ perspective, finding a positive effect on WTP.

Table 6 summarizes the main conclusions and implications of the article.

This study has interesting managerial implications for C2C platforms in terms of how they can increase their revenues. First, C2C platforms should be aware that some of their attributes are more important than others for encouraging sellers to pay for their services. Platform business support has been demonstrated to be a key element in this regard. Therefore, C2C platforms can offer market and selling knowledge to sellers in exchange for a premium fee. For example, platforms can make recommendations regarding ad writing and classification in a way that enables sellers to design their listings better and take greater advantage of their selling task. Responsiveness and security, too, are outstanding attributes, which implies that C2C platforms should offer timely responses to contact from sellers. For example, when a seller makes a query regarding the loss of a product, platform assistance must be especially effective to reduce negative feelings and to offer a quick solution and/or compensation. Guarantees and an efficient service for product returns are also valuable, as are secure mechanisms of payment reception, such as third-party intervention or additional privacy layers that allow more robust identity checks.

Second, C2C platforms, once they have identified the attributes that encourage sellers to pay, should use those attributes to communicate efficiently the advantages of being a member of their community. Platforms could send notifications to sellers reminding them of the advantages of premium services, for instance by providing information on how to highlight their listings and how to access additional payment reception guarantees.

Third, platforms should be aware of the attributes that have been shown to negatively influence WTP for premium services, such as customization. If platform managers want to add value to customization, they should make it convenient and easy to use and demonstrate its usefulness and effectiveness in facilitating successful transactions. Thus, offering platform assistance and guidance related to customization options could enhance the potential for sale success (Kuo and Cranage, 2012).

Fourth, managers should take into account that utilitarian gratifications are more important for improving consumers’ WTP. Thus, they should focus on these attributes of platforms, as well as including them prominently in their communication strategy.

Finally, a number of limitations of the present study should be noted, as they allow us to propose interesting future lines of research. First, because the data were obtained through a survey conducted among Spanish consumers, care should be taken when extrapolating the findings to other contexts. Cultural and social factors can make consumers behave and experience selling differently in C2C platforms (Rose et al., 2012).

Second, this research has focused on utilitarian and hedonic gratifications sellers can obtain from C2C platforms’ services that are easily controllable. The low value of R² indicates that there may be other factors that are relevant to increasing sellers’ WTP a membership fee, such as a large customer base (Lee et al., 2018). Future research should seek to identify such factors.

Third, the data used in the study were obtained in 2021. The C2C market has been growing steadily since then, and future research with more up-to-date data should be used to confirm the results presented here.

Fourth, the findings indicate that customization is not important for inducing sellers to pay. However, it remains possible that C2C platforms can increase their relevance by providing business support to sellers and educating them in how to use customization attributes. Future research should consider this possibility. Similarly, C2C e-commerce platforms may soon be able to incorporate AI tools that enable sellers to increase their performance, for example by providing help with ad writing, product positioning and customization. Further research should take into account these future developments and their likely impact.

Fifth, future research could examine the role of sellers’ demographics as moderating variables that may affect the stability of the relationships between platform attributes and WTP. For example, older individuals may exhibit greater WTP for platform support to foster security and confidence (Bordonaba-Juste et al., 2020).