The Conceptualization of the Sharing Economy as a Business Model

Abstract

The phenomenon of sharing economy originated as a response to the intensifying globalization, misallocation of resources, rising levels of poverty and inequality. The spread of information and web technologies forced the society and existing businesses to take a look at the concept of ownership from another viewpoint and revealed a new truth: what we own is not more important than what we share.

Today the world observes not only a rapidly growing number of new sharing economy initiatives, but a considerably wider variety of sectors the platforms emerge in as well. However, an extensive amount of scientific publications disregard this fact and apply a simplified business model to all sharing economy initiatives despite their evident differences. The assessment of the recently emerged phenomenon was based on a theoretical analysis of scientific literature. The paper provides a chronological process of sharing economy development as well as examines the formation and disclosure of the concept itself. Moreover, the research also presents the peculiarities of the sharing economy as a new business model by defining the characteristics and dimensions of the sharing economy and describing the key factors and drivers of the phenomenon. A conceptual business model of sharing economy based enterprises is provided as a final result of this paper.

Sharing Economy, Collaborative economy, Business Model, Digital Platforms, Users, Peer-to-peer