Showing papers on "Sharing economy published in 2013"

Social Media: A Critical Introduction

Abstract: "Timely new chapters on China and the sharing economy of Uber and Airbnb strengthen an already vital contribution to communication studies. Through the lens of critical theory, Fuchs provides the essential text for students of our new media world." Vincent Mosco, Queens University, Ontario With social media changing how we use and understand everything from communication and the news to transport, more than ever it is essential to ask the right kinds of questions about the business and politics of social media. This book equips students with the critical thinking they need to understand the complexities and contradictions and make informed judgements. This Second Edition: Lays bare thestructures and power relations at the heart of our media landscape Explores thesharing economy of Uber and Airbnbin a brand new chapter Takes us into thepolitics and economy of social media in China Puts forward powerful arguments for how to achieve a social media that serves the purposes of a just and fair world This book is the essential, critical guide for all students of media studies and sociology. Readers will never look at social media the same way again.

Peer-to-Peer Service Sharing Platforms: Driving Share and Share Alike on a Mass-Scale

Abstract: The sharing economy has been growing continuously in the last decade thanks to the proliferation of internet-based platforms that allow people to disintermediate the traditional commercial channels and to share excess resources and trade with one another effectively at a reasonably low transaction cost. Whereas early peer-to-peer platforms were designed to enable file sharing and goods trading, we recently witness the emergence of a new breed of peer-to-peer platforms that are designed for ordinary service sharing. Ordinary services entail intangible provisions and are defined as an economic activity that generates immaterial benefits and does not result in ownership of material goods. Based on a structured analysis of 41 internet-based rideshare platforms, we explore and layout the unique characteristics of peer-to-peer service sharing platforms based on three distinct temporal patterns that entail specific consequences for platform use as well as provide insights about their overall design imperative.

Grassroots digital fabrication and makerspaces: Reconfiguring, relocating and recalbirating innovation?

Abstract: Around the world, diverse groups of people are making things together in community-based workshops and their networks. Equipped with versatile digital design and manufacturing technologies, global networks of workshops, like Hackerspaces and FabLabs, provide facilities for exploring 'comons-based, peer production' in practice; and they are spreading rapidly. Emphasis rests in bringing people into collaborative DIY projects where they innovate and learn together - from making toys and jewellery to solar panels and eco-houses - and use on-line social media to connect to open-source designs, tutorials, and workshops globally. Excited claims are made about workshops transforming practices of design, innovation, production and consumption; 'how you live, work and play in a world where anybody can make anything anywhere'. Excitement includes claims for a 'third industrial revolution' and post-consumer sustainable societies. Less evident, however, are social scientific analyses of the practices and governance arrangements actually emerging in workshop spaces and networks, and which could contribute to debate about their possibilities and limitations for sustainability. Some workshops do enable design and innovation for recycling, re-manufacturing, and feeding user-led prototypes into sustainable local enterprise. They might even reinforce virtues relevant to post-consumption societies through peer production, the sharing economy, and collaborative consumption. However, evidence also suggests a dispersal of production capacity, diminished (resource) scale efficiencies, and intensified consumption through the personalisation of manufacturing. Our paper develops a conceptual framework for analysing workshop. Drawing upon science and technology studies, social movement theory, and material culture, we consider community workshops configuring and performing production and consumption across three inter-connected levels: networked-communities, local-workshops, and user-projects. Relationships across these levels are complex. When combined with contested ambiguities inherent to sustainable development, then static, life-cycle analyses or similar into sustainability potential is misplaced. Rather, workshops constitute dynamic spaces for experimentation, and it is the emerging capabilities and material cultures that are most significant for aspirations to post-consumer societies.

The Shared Economy: It is time to start caring about sharing; value creating factors in the shared economy

Abstract: This research identifies the customer value and drivers of the shared economy. The literature review conducted defines the important terms. Ultimately the factors contributing to the shared economy and its customer value factors are discussed. The 4C model facilitate…. is created including the customers value in regards to those four dimensions. The findings show that there is a shift in what customers value when participating in the shared economy.

Some Obvious Things About Internet Reputation Systems

Abstract: Debates around the “sharing economy” have been driven by personal stories and broad claims. There are no personal stories here. Instead, this essay takes a step-by-step look at the internet reputation systems on which the sharing economy claims are based, and finds them wanting.

Learning to Play in the New "Share Economy"

Abstract: A case study is presented concerning an automobile rental company which has acquired a car-sharing company and is engaged in strategic planning related to integrating the two businesses. It notes concern over the possible loss of customers and over the question whether to maintain the separate identity of the car-sharing brand. Analyses of the situation are presented from Marc McCabe of travel rental website Airbnb and from Andre Haddad of RelayRides peer-to-peer car sharing firm.

Mega and Consumer Trends – Towards Car-independent Mobile Applications

Abstract: The car industry is confronted with fundamental changes in society, technology and economy and forced to rethink its concept of mobility. Through constant strategic foresight, trend management and a holistic mobility vision, car manufacturers must develop innovative strategies that reflect current and future trends, in order to meet customer needs, technological standards and economic imperatives. Therefore, car manufacturers are shifting their value chain more and more towards the aftermarket and information technology (IT). Used as a tool for image branding and innovation monitoring, a closer look reveals that car manufacturers are constantly increasing their investment activities in technology start-ups. This indicates that the car industry is in the middle of a transformation process, transforming from a car producer to a mobility provider. Based on an analysis of future driving factors in the car industry and in-depth interviews, we identified six crucial megatrends: peak oil and global warming, connectedness, safety regulations, sharing economy, urban mobility and aging society. Furthermore, four shaping consumer trends were revealed: ownerless, simplicity, eco-lifestyle and personalization. In summary, the most successful providers in the mobile market might be those who understand thoroughly the consumers’ needs and behaviour, in order to offer the mobility services they desire.

Beyond Data: Building a Web of Needs.

Abstract: The Web as related to commerce suffers from a fundamental asymmetry. While there is a great number of commercial offers available, consumer needs are rarely represented explicitly. Thus, the most widely applied process of connecting the prospective consumer of a resource with its supplier is Web search. In Web search, the user needs are implicit, driving the interaction, and therefore only the interaction partners can try to deduce them. We present an approach for a) publishing needs on the Web of Data and b) building a protocol that allows decentralized matching of needs and communication between need owners. Albeit inspired by the analysis of marketplaces, the proposed framework allows for a much broader range of social applications, such as collaborative problem solving, help organizing the sharing economy or finding interesting people to meet.

The Sharing Economy and Collaborative Finance - Outline of the Problems

Abstract: The revolutionary changes in information technology and the rise of the significance of social networks, stimulate the emergence of the new economic model based rather on the cooperation than on the competition. The indication of these changes is the vast development of co called sharing economy which is now concerning more and more sector and activities – also financial system and finance in general. The sharing economy manifest itself also in finance through so called collaborative finance. The collaborative finance means finance “made” by people – without the intermediation of financial institutions. Participants of the collaborative finance are convinced that by peer-to-peer financial transactions they can create more positive effects and that money becomes “human” again. This article aims, firstly, to introduce the concepts of sharing economy and collaborative finance, and secondly to characterize the emergent forms of collaborative finance. The research methodology is based on a literature review, using descriptive and qualitative methods. It must be underline that in a view of the complexity of the issues raised in this article and a limited volume of paper only chosen problem would be presented.

Sharing Experiences via Social Media as Integral Part of the Service Experience

Abstract: Social media has empowered customers to express their feelings and opinions online and to share their experiences with other individuals through video sharing platforms (e.g., YouTube), photo sharing sites and communities (e.g., FlickR), or virtual opinion sharing platforms (e.g., TripAdvisor or Yelp). Sharing experiences with other individuals online is not only part of the service experience for a multitude of consumers, but enhances the impact of successful service providers on current and potential customers. However, the value of experience sharing activities via social media is less discussed in the literature. In this chapter, we firstly clarify the concepts of sharing, empowerment, and engagement before, secondly, discussing the value of experience sharing from three perspectives: the sharing individual, the individuals consulting the shared experiences, and the service providers. Finally, the importance of experience sharing in what is often referred to as the sharing economy and the problems of marketers’ deceptive behaviors will be addressed in our conclusion.

The Interconnection of Sustainability and Collaborative Consumption - A case study of clothing libraries

Abstract: Collaborative consumption is a recently emerged consumption pattern based on the practice of sharing, swapping, lending, bartering and other similar modes of exchange, practiced instead of the conventional way of buying products and services. The unique character of this consumption practice suggests a shift in the idea of private ownership, where accessing products becomes more important than owning them. The scope of this thesis examines the factors influencing the emergence of these initiatives in relation to sustainability and attempts to recognize the possible changes occurring towards the perception of private ownership. For this purpose a qualitative case study approach examines the concept of clothing libraries in five cities across Sweden.

Community-oriented consumption and opportunities for change in shopping centre/mall design

Abstract: Shopping centres are the bastions of the consumer age, promoting in their design the desire to continue to consume at an unsustainable rate. However there is growing evidence that new paradigms of consumption are emerging in developed countries, led by evolving technologies and online shopping, that are shifting consumer values and behaviours - and the environments in which we shop will need to adapt. Community-oriented consumption paradigms relate to behavioural changes that link people more closely, socially and/or culturally, with each other, providing a sense of community. These can be virtual or face-to-face. Collaborative consumption, the ‘Me vs We’ economies, service economies, the slow movement and prosumption are examples. This paper will discuss the variety of community-oriented consumption paradigms, addressing food as a linking concept, and their influence on shopping centre/mall design.

A Practice Perspective on Websites for the Sharing Economy

Abstract: The sharing economy describes an economic model in which people sell, share, or barter their skills or owned assets directly with others. This economy is facilitated primarily by websites that act as hubs for the visibility and transactions of local assets. Yochai Benkler notes that such peer-to-peer transactions are mediated not by market prices or organizational hierarchies, but by normative frameworks. The ways in which the normative frameworks are produced and perpetuated by transacting parties on the websites has yet to be studied by scholars. This paper proposes a practice perspective as a theoretical framework and Sense-Making as a methodology to explore how users interact with each other on the websites, so as to produce and sustain the normative frameworks critical to the success of the sharing economy.

A Prognosis on Consumerism

Abstract: In this article, we examine several emerging consumer trends and anticipate their implications for the future of the consumerism movement. We identify, discuss, and exemplify the reasons why a growing minority of consumers are resenting, and at times opposing current regulation and/or marketing practices regarding their rights to be safe, to be heard, to be informed, and to choose. We posit that consumerism will be transformed dramatically in the coming few decades as first individual consumers, next marketers, and ultimately the governments adapt to this post-modern societal transformation.

Grassroots Digital Fabrication and Makerspaces: Reconfiguring, Relocating and Recalbirating Innovation?

Abstract: Around the world, diverse groups of people are making things together in community-based workshops and their networks. Equipped with versatile digital design and manufacturing technologies, global networks of workshops, like Hackerspaces and FabLabs, provide facilities for exploring 'comons-based, peer production' in practice; and they are spreading rapidly. Emphasis rests in bringing people into collaborative DIY projects where they innovate and learn together - from making toys and jewellery to solar panels and eco-houses - and use on-line social media to connect to open-source designs, tutorials, and workshops globally. Excited claims are made about workshops transforming practices of design, innovation, production and consumption; 'how you live, work and play in a world where anybody can make anything anywhere'. Excitement includes claims for a 'third industrial revolution' and post-consumer sustainable societies. Less evident, however, are social scientific analyses of the practices and governance arrangements actually emerging in workshop spaces and networks, and which could contribute to debate about their possibilities and limitations for sustainability. Some workshops do enable design and innovation for recycling, re-manufacturing, and feeding user-led prototypes into sustainable local enterprise. They might even reinforce virtues relevant to post-consumption societies through peer production, the sharing economy, and collaborative consumption. However, evidence also suggests a dispersal of production capacity, diminished (resource) scale efficiencies, and intensified consumption through the personalisation of manufacturing. Our paper develops a conceptual framework for analysing workshop. Drawing upon science and technology studies, social movement theory, and material culture, we consider community workshops configuring and performing production and consumption across three inter-connected levels: networked-communities, local-workshops, and user-projects. Relationships across these levels are complex. When combined with contested ambiguities inherent to sustainable development, then static, life-cycle analyses or similar into sustainability potential is misplaced. Rather, workshops constitute dynamic spaces for experimentation, and it is the emerging capabilities and material cultures that are most significant for aspirations to post-consumer societies.