Start Date

11-12-2016 12:00 AM

Description

The sharing economy is significantly growing and business-to-consumer (B2C) sharing platforms are expected to be an important enabler of this growth. In our research, we aim to theorize the ecosystem of B2C sharing platforms by predicting their economic effects using an analytical model. In this research-in-progress we focus on producers that decide whether to sell or share their produced durable goods, the latter via a B2C sharing platform. We find that producers of high quality goods share and producers of low quality goods sell. Consequently, the average quality of sold products decreases through establishing B2C sharing platforms. Based on this finding, we aim to extend our model in future research. First, we aim to include a profit maximizing calculus of the B2C sharing platform to find an optimal pricing scheme. Second, we aim to perform a social welfare analysis to analyze policy measures for governing the B2C sharing ecosystem.

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Dec 11th, 12:00 AM

Economics of B2C Sharing Platforms

The sharing economy is significantly growing and business-to-consumer (B2C) sharing platforms are expected to be an important enabler of this growth. In our research, we aim to theorize the ecosystem of B2C sharing platforms by predicting their economic effects using an analytical model. In this research-in-progress we focus on producers that decide whether to sell or share their produced durable goods, the latter via a B2C sharing platform. We find that producers of high quality goods share and producers of low quality goods sell. Consequently, the average quality of sold products decreases through establishing B2C sharing platforms. Based on this finding, we aim to extend our model in future research. First, we aim to include a profit maximizing calculus of the B2C sharing platform to find an optimal pricing scheme. Second, we aim to perform a social welfare analysis to analyze policy measures for governing the B2C sharing ecosystem.