Much has been said about “Sharing economy”, and many people has been using it on several different ways, but maybe without knowing exactly what it means and how it can change the global market.
Sharing economy is an economic business model, defined by P2P (peer-to-peer) which is based on collaboration and exchanging, having a better use of assets without spending so much money. We can say that sharing economy is basically one principle of sharing on constantly evolving, using technology to facilitate its propagation and the exchange of access of goods or services, between people, companies or both.
This model has been growing very fast on the last few years and getting stronger as the users are understanding how it can be beneficial for their personal and global economy and for saving planet’s resources.
This concept is not new (many rural communities lived from exchanging goods and services in the past), however the accessibility of the internet and its use of bigdata allows us to explore this model on an easy and fast way, connecting a huge number of users and companies and creating an incredible network.
The idea is to monetize assets that are unused, for example renting goods with a lower price, which will be affordable for the person who will rent it and also for the renter. Also, for companies who will provide services using goods or services shared. We can have two big examples of companies that were born on the model of sharing economy, which are Uber and Airbnb.
This disruptive model is becoming very powerful and can represent a threat to some traditional business sectors. One good example could be the traditional automotive industry, which has been losing sales, once people who don’t have a car are using services like uber or the ones who have a car are sharing it while they are not using it. This behavior makes many people think twice before buying a car, because they can rent it cheap whenever they need to use. Another important example would be the hotel chain, which has been losing space after the Airbnb launch. Many people want to pay less for accommodation and prefer to rent an Airbnb than one hotel room.
We can see how Sharing Economy is a tendency that can change behaviors, habits and also the global economy. Many innovations come up with this model and also good opportunities to reinvent old business types. Traditional companies and industries are already rebuilding their strategies to reach the actual models and customers behaviors. It’s always necessary to make adaptations according to the trends to keep up and don’t lose market.