Sharing Economy: Efficient Allocation of Resources
小蛮 2017-04-23
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Sharing economy is a decentralized peer-to-peer markets that shift away from the traditional supplier. People get service with a very low price or even near zero. There are debates about if the sharing economy would gradually become the enduring mainstream oppose of traditional model or it’s a short term phenomena that will be excluded by time. The explosive growth rate of people enjoying the sharing economy demonstrates the model’s many advantages. I acknowledge that there are complexities to this issue, like the ownership and the for-profit companies are necessary. But I argue that sharing economy help build up a genuine society that creates win-win situation and lower carbon print.
I came across with the notion of collaborate consumption from my own beneficial experience with Uber. Later I read about the collaborative commons claiming that collaborative sharing of the economy will subvert many of the world's largest operating modes of the company; and the existing energy systems and structures will be replaced by the energy Internet. (Rifkin, 2014, p20)
Collaborative consumption has become the hottest conversation topic now in China with the great social and commercial success of mega companies like Moocs, Didi, Airbnb, Ofo, and Mobike. I am going to do an in-depth analysis of the business models of these companies. Proving its maximizing use of the idle resources, I want to use these evidences further to back up my argument that sharing economy is going to be the future mainstream. I will elaborate on the principles of constructing a sharing economic platform through those examples, following their steps of allocating the resource surplus and ensuring the mutual benefits of all participants.
Sharing economic has a relatively low cost, due to basing on resource redundancy; it can promote the interpersonal relationship closer and hinder isolation. Maximizing the use also means eco friendly and sustainability, especially for the megacities in China which has many different aspects of problems due to overcrowding. It also facilitates a system of credit and promoting the trust among people. I will discuss how those features of the sharing economy leads to the successful implementation of the business model and reciprocal relationships on the platform can create a win-win situation in the whole society. Moreover, as a result of sharing economy, through sharing knowledge, the ordinary average people are empowered.
Some argues that zero cost margin society would be what businessmen were dreadful of. I would also use the examples above to talk about the implications of the sharing economy in terms of aspects of issues privacy and the basic productions. Besides, it wouldn’t impede the creations and inventions; in the contrary, a lot of technology came along after the low cost of sharing economy.
References
Rifkin, Jeremy. (2014). Zero Cost Margin Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Schor, Juliet B.. (2011).True Wealth: How and Why Millions of Americans Are Creating a Time-rich, Ecologically-light, Smallscale, High-satisfaction Economy. New York: The Penguin Press.
Hardin, Benjamin and Luca, Michael. (2014). Digital Discrimination: The Case of Airbnb. Harvard Business School Working Papers.
Puschmann, T. and Alt, R. Sharing economy. Business and Information Systems Engineering. 58, 93-99.
Kathan, W.and Matzler, K. and Veider, V. (2016). The sharing economy: Your business model’s friend or foe. Business Horizons. 59(6): 663-672
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