Fissured Workers as Demand Creators: Evidence from Social Commerce Platforms

The rise of platform-mediated labor has created a new class of fissured workers, with over 100 million individuals globally earning income through social commerce promotion without traditional employment relationships. We examine how retailers coordinate fissured promotional labor in platform economies where traditional employment relationships are replaced by market mechanisms. Using data from China's Taobaoke system, we analyze how commission rates and product discounts jointly shape the performance of independent promoters who market products without employment contracts. We find that promoter participation increases sales by 53.9%, but effectiveness depends critically on incentive design. Commission and discount function as substitutes for attracting promoter attention but complements for driving conversions-revealing stage-specific coordination requirements absent in traditional principal-agent models. Moreover, while promotions of established products generate neutral spillovers, new product promotions trigger severe cannibalization, transforming positive-sum markets into zero-sum competition. These findings extend fissured workforce theory from task execution to demand creation and demonstrate fundamental limits of price-based coordination in decentralized service systems.

Keywords: Fissured Labor, Platform Operations, Incentive Design, Social Commerce, Decentralized Coordination

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

ZHANG, Fan and Hu, Kejia and Zhang, Jiding and Tan, Tom and Chen, Yao, Fissured Workers as Demand Creators: Evidence from Social Commerce Platforms (August 01, 2025). SMU Cox School of Business Research Paper No. 25-26, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5455174 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5455174