Sectoral evolution and shifting service delivery models in the sharing economy
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Sectoral evolution and shifting service delivery models in the sharing economy S. Mahmuda1 • T. Sigler1 • E. Knight2 J. Corcoran1
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Received: 29 November 2018 / Accepted: 9 March 2020 The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The rise of the sharing economy has had transformative impacts on extant service delivery models, with wide ranging implications for existing firms, regulators, and the workforce at large. This paper draws upon firm-level data to better understand how new forms of service delivery have accompanied the diffusion of the sharing economy. Unlike previous waves of technological innovation, sharing economy firms have emerged as digital intermediaries rather than direct service providers driven by shifting consumer practices and attitudes. We apply an innovation diffusion model to trace the development trajectory of the sharing economy across 1000 firms. Our model segments the evolution of the sharing economy into three distinct and overlapping phases, comprising an Embryonic Stage (1995–2008), an Early Growth Stage (2007–2015), and most recently a Late Growth Stage (2014– present). Analysis of the 1000 firms reveals that the sharing economy has rapidly gained momentum across all industry sectors, with its growth trajectory principally tied to the evolution of related financial and technological innovations paralleled by
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s40685020-00110-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & S. Mahmuda [email protected] T. Sigler [email protected] E. Knight [email protected] J. Corcoran [email protected] 1
School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
2
The University of Sydney Business School, Sydney NSW, Australia
123
Business Research
social adoption. We find that service delivery models differ considerably between sectors, with professional services favouring business-oriented models, and consumables oriented more towards peer sharing. Though peer-to-peer (P2P) has been the dominant model, this is changing as larger firms enter the market and existing firms become industry leaders. We argue that while the marginal cost of new transactions within a P2P structure is low, barriers to market entry become everhigher as sharing economy service delivery models are increasingly embedded within the mainstream economy. Keywords Service economies Sharing economy Collaborative consumption Fourth industrial revolution Platform capitalism
1 Introduction The sharing economy (SE) has transitioned rapidly over the past decade from peripheral to the mainstream service economy to one of its most dynamic components (Belk 2014; Leaphart 2016; Stephany 2015). Geographically, firms across the Americas, Asia,1 Australia,2 and Europe3 have made significant economic impacts. The number of billion dollar firms has doubled annually since 2012 (Owyang and Cases 2016), with many providers becoming household names as industry leaders. Airbn
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