In only a short year, the face of the sharing economy has proven giant changing to a people’s life. As the industries keep rising at lightning speed and market leaders who are ruling such platforms are Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb have established themselves as a serious player over the decade. Investors and the public seemed to welcome their service enthusiastically.
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What is the Sharing Economy?
In simple terms, the sharing economy is just that you have something more to give and having no problem to share with someone who needs it.
In childhood days, we did not mind to share our toys with our friends and siblings so that both can enjoy and relish the moments. At those times, sharing was not a big deal for us, but now sharing upgraded entirely into a different level. Rising of technology and digitization change the face of sharing or peer to peer services.
The sharing economy is also known as peer to peer service, on-demand service, collaboration consumption, and the gig economy.
Renting a room and transportation service are the parts of sharing assets. The core transportation services like Uber and Lyft are significant players in this industry as their drivers sharing the cab to their customers and giving an indulgent mode of transportation to their customers and earn money from them. Uber and Lyft take 20% commission per rides from their drivers.
What are the benefits of sharing economy?
- The research-proven why drive for Uber and Lyft shows the flexibility to work according to your schedule is the one main reason for becoming part of the ride-sharing industry and working as an independent contractor.
- People prefer to use the goods and services which they can’t afford them and no interest in longer usage.
- Reduce the maximum amount of time and effort.
- Building social communities
- Lower the cost of budgets. Normally yellow taxi cab charges more money if you compare the price with online cabs. Moreover, the ride-sharing industry frequent coupon Lyft and Uber for an existing user.
The Game of You Need… I Have
An economic system that unlocks the value of underused assets through the platform that matches ‘need’ with ‘have’ in ways that create better efficiency and access.
Before money existed, people used to trade things. Offering or exchange was common practice for livelihood. In the world of digitalization, from swapping home to lending, the car turns human life entirely. The idea of idling capacity exists behind the assets, idling capacity divided into three different categories.
- Physical stuff: It represents the physical product such as a home, car, toys, motorcycle, and many more physical falls into the category. Take an example of Airbnb and home swapping where user offers their physical stuff to make money.
- Labor asset: It represents human potential such as skills, time and talent. TaskRabbit and Fiverr set a great model of labor assets. This platform helps to match the demand and supply between users.
- Crowd economy: Anything for P2P(Peer to Peer) such as ride-share industry or on-demand service, and we are making money through this network in the network.
Innovation and ideas rising and accept the new way of living life and people quitting the traditional way of working and work according to their managed time.
Social Media and Digitalization
The barrier between the stranger and the customer is breaking through social media platforms. Trust and identity verification have done while making money through freelance platforms. Thanks to social media in helping in creating genuine social profiles reputation, identity verification, and rating system for us to trust the stranger that has never been possible before.
One more reason I want to include is digitization which made an easy transaction of money through PayPal, Payoneer and many more. Moving ahead sharing could be the new face of the economy and keep growing in other forms of goods and services.