When Economy Switches to Sharing

Is the concept of Sharing Economy an answer to economic inequality? Under this shared economy the access to the products and services are shared between the consumers even though the ownership is limited. This opens a new array of opportunities for the sellers and the buyers. When assets and services are digitally available then there is no reason for this new trend to not gain popularity.

Pioneered by eBay in 1995, as a peer to peer auction model, sharing economy or collaborative consumption started off with lot of inadequacies due to the lack of full-fledged support system during those days. The service offered by them was only for an auction of apparels.

Starting from bartering, bike sharing, book swapping to seed swap, share taxi, virtual currency, all are shared in this mode of collaborative consumption. Collaborative lifestyles, product service systems and redistribution channels make this sharing economy lively and innovative.

AirBnB, an online home rental marketplace for individuals, which started off in 2008 has about 500,000 listings in 33,000 cities and 192 companies by now. This website provides home owners to rent out their home for business meetings for short –term stays, which is a unique opportunity for the business networking. This is a kind of broker model; AirBnB provides market, customer support, payment handling and $1 million in insurance for hosts, and take a 3% cut from the renter and 6% to 111% cut from the tenant. This amount totally depends on the price of the property.

UberDriver, a San Francisco based transportation networking company, builds mobile apps to connect passengers and drivers, for ridesharing services. They use cars like Lincoln Town Cars, Cadillac Escalades, BMW 7 Series, and Mercedes-Benz S550 sedans and more. . Lyft is another app with same kind of services. RelayRides give an opportunity for car owners to rent their car. SideCar also works in the same pattern.

Parking Panda gives the customers an opportunity to search the parking spaces and even to rent them out.. The customers can even choose the spot to park.

TaskRabbit, which is an online market place for sharing tasks within the neighborhood, this is also a bidding site where users come and post their task and the amount they are willing to pay when the task is done. The owner of TaskRabbit started this when she found she is too busy to even buy dog food. For each task TaskRabbit cut 12% previously on a sliding 12-20% scale depending on total price. Other services like DogVacay for dog care, Rentoid , where you can rent anything, Liquid, AvisBudgetGroup, GetAround and NeighbourGoods.