Question

The chapter highlights several firms that are developing business models around a “sharing economy.” This includes ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft while Airbnb has disrupted the hotel-motel industry. Provide 1 other example of a current company that is disrupting the "sharing economy" business model.

Answer 1

Sharing economy has been the trend that is on the rise and more or less we all have participated in the sharing economy, if you are surprised to hear this then think about a situation when you booked an Uber, you have done that so we know that sharing economy is a concept that has developed recently may be in the last 5 years or so and this is actually creeping in to the industry and causing disruptions in a total industry. For example Airbnb has actually made an impact in the hotel industry by providing consumers the convenience to rent a room or a whole home based on shared economy. Uber is also not an exception and because of Uber millennial today do not think of buying a car very early which is totally different from what it was few years back.

If we look at the sharing economy industry today, we will observe that the industry is no more amateur, rather the professionalism the industry has displayed is actually threatening the existence of dedicated industries. To name another organization which has been doing good is Turo, formerly known as RelayRides is an organization which is allowing individuals to rent car provided by private car owners and the booking and renting out is done online via web or mobile web. The unique idea of a car sharing marketplace made it the hottest on demand startup in the year 2015 rolled out by Forbes. The process is simple where owners rent out their car and individuals requiring that needs to select and book it through the application of the organization, just like Amazon Turo is the platform and they neither own the cars nor maintains them. The pricing strategy used is dynamic and can be set by the owner of the car or the organization itself and Turo gets 25% of the price and the customers actually save more than 30% compared to normal rental services. So it is clear that the organization is actually disrupting the automobile industry by providing options and convenience at a lower cost.