The sharing economy is booming. Al lot of start-ups create their business model based on sharing products or services now days. In the Netherlands, there are many examples of Business-to-Peer (B2P) or Peer-to-Peer companies. Swapfiets is one of these B2P examples. It is a monthly bicycle subscription service, which offers (almost) all the service for free when the bike is broken. Another B2P example is Felyx. This electric scooter sharing company has disrupted the transportation industry. Not many people drove a scooter before, but now it’s one of their primary ways of transportation.
The role of young people in the economy facing rapid development of the Internet and ICT techniques and technologies, in particular e-skills, is very important. Young people with e-skills become the main consumers in the sharing economy (Budziewicz-Guźlecka, 2017). Both Swapfiets and Felyx created an application to provide their services.
These companies cause a change in the perception of the possession of products and services. As stated above, the primary users of these shared consumables are young adults. They pay a small amount of money when they used the products or services, or sign up for a (monthly) subscription. In this way, goods become something low valued, because people don’t see the real amount of money deducted from their bank account. Overall, these subscriptions are (in long term) more expensive than buying the product or service.
On the other hand, a huge advantage of the sharing economy is sustainability, while people are reusing the same products, the total amount of used products will drop (Harald, 2018). In this way, there will be less pollution with the production of these products.
In conclusion, the shared goods give us a lot of extra options while we don’t need to pay them at ones. However, we have to be aware that we don’t lose the sight on the long term expenses while using the shared products.
References:
Budziewicz-Guźlecka, A. (2017). Role of the sharing economy in the contemporary economy. Ekonomiczne Problemy Usług. Published. https://doi.org/10.18276/epu.2017.126/1-03
Harald, H. (2018). Sharing Economy: A Potential New Pathway to Sustainability. Ecological
Perspectives for Science and Society, 22(4), 228–231. Retrieved from https://www.proquestcom.eur.idm.oclc.org/docview/1471962034/fulltext/8C8BBBE5B7FD42C0PQ/1?accountid=3598
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