Collaborative consumption
Encyclopedia
The term collaborative consumption is used to describe an economic model based on sharing, swapping, bartering, trading or renting access to products as opposed to ownership. Technology and peer communities are enabling these old market behaviours to be reinvented in ways and on a scale never possible before. From enormous marketplaces such as eBay
and Craigslist
, to emerging sectors such as social lending (Zopa
), peer-to-peer travel (CouchSurfing
, Airbnb
) and car sharing (Zipcar
or peer-to-peer RelayRides
), Collaborative Consumption is disrupting outdated modes of business and reinventing not just what people consume but how they consume it.
's Big Ideas
programme included a segment showing Botsman's speech at the TEDx Sydney
conference in 2010, describing collaborative consumption as "a new socio-economic 'big idea' promising a revolution in the way we consume". Botsman sees collaborative consumption as a social revolution that allows people to “create value out of shared and open resources in ways that balance personal self-interest with the good of the larger community”.
In 2010, collaborative consumption was named one of TIME
Magazine's 10 ideas that will change the world.
The concept of reusing or public sharing of products is hardly a new one. For decades, many public and private entities have utilized some variant of public product sharing: libraries, laundromats, private reuse centers (Goodwill Industries
, Salvation Army
), public and private housing collectives, trade and exchange stores, bike-share schemes, and salvage centers. Some maintain a physical space (a reuse center), while others act as a matching service (an exchange).
In recent years, other forms of product sharing have appeared, including Peer-to-peer rental
and neighbourhood product service systems: rather than consumers renting services from businesses, platforms are emerging to facilitate shared usage with each other.
and Lending Club) and the rapidly growing peer-to-peer travel (on Airbnb
and Roomorama)..
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
and Craigslist
Craigslist
Craigslist is a centralized network of online communities featuring free online classified advertisements, with sections devoted to jobs, housing, personals, for sale, services, community, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums....
, to emerging sectors such as social lending (Zopa
Zopa
Zopa is a UK-based company providing an online money exchange service, allowing people who have money to lend it to those who wish to borrow, instead of using savings accounts and loan applications at traditional banks. The process is sometimes referred to as peer-to-peer lending...
), peer-to-peer travel (CouchSurfing
CouchSurfing
CouchSurfing International Inc. is a corporation based in San Francisco that offer its users hospitality exchange and social networking services. It is a for-profit private corporation, planning to go public. With more than 3 million profiles in 246 countries and territories, CouchSurfing has an...
, Airbnb
Airbnb
Airbnb is an online service that matches people seeking vacation rentals and other short-term accommodations with those with rooms to rent, generally private parties that are not professional hoteliers. The site was founded in August 2008 by Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia. In July 2011, the company...
) and car sharing (Zipcar
Zipcar
Zipcar is an American membership-based car sharing company providing automobile reservations to its members, billable by the hour or day. Zipcar was founded in 2000 by Cambridge, Massachusetts residents Antje Danielson and Robin Chase, and is now led by Scott Griffith, Chairman and Chief Executive...
or peer-to-peer RelayRides
RelayRides
RelayRides is a peer-to-peer car rental or carsharing service. It allows private car-owners to rent out their vehicles on a short-term basis, via an online interface....
), Collaborative Consumption is disrupting outdated modes of business and reinventing not just what people consume but how they consume it.
Origin
The term was coined by Ray Algar, a UK-based management in an article entitled 'Collaborative Consumption article by Ray Algar' for the Leisure Report Journal in 2007. The concept has since been championed by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers, co-authors of "What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption". In June 2010, ABC TelevisionABC Television
ABC Television is a service of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation launched in 1956. As a public broadcasting broadcaster, the ABC provides four non-commercial channels within Australia, and a partially advertising-funded satellite channel overseas....
's Big Ideas
Big Ideas (Australia)
Big Ideas is a weekly radio program on ABC Radio National which presents lectures or panels on ideas or issues of particular importance. It is broadcast on Sundays at 5:00 p.m...
programme included a segment showing Botsman's speech at the TEDx Sydney
TED (conference)
TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"....
conference in 2010, describing collaborative consumption as "a new socio-economic 'big idea' promising a revolution in the way we consume". Botsman sees collaborative consumption as a social revolution that allows people to “create value out of shared and open resources in ways that balance personal self-interest with the good of the larger community”.
In 2010, collaborative consumption was named one of TIME
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
Magazine's 10 ideas that will change the world.
Product service systems
Collaborative consumption is based on the concept that some persons will pay for the benefit of having access to product as opposed paying more to own it outright.The concept of reusing or public sharing of products is hardly a new one. For decades, many public and private entities have utilized some variant of public product sharing: libraries, laundromats, private reuse centers (Goodwill Industries
Goodwill Industries
Goodwill Industries International is a not-for-profit organization that provides job training, employment placement services and other community-based programs for people who have a disability, lack education or job experience, or face employment challenges...
, Salvation Army
Salvation Army
The Salvation Army is a Protestant Christian church known for its thrift stores and charity work. It is an international movement that currently works in over a hundred countries....
), public and private housing collectives, trade and exchange stores, bike-share schemes, and salvage centers. Some maintain a physical space (a reuse center), while others act as a matching service (an exchange).
In recent years, other forms of product sharing have appeared, including Peer-to-peer rental
Peer-to-peer renting
Peer-to-peer renting refers to the process of an individual renting an owned good, service, or property to another individual. It is also referred to as Person-to-Person rental, P2P renting, Collaborative Consumption, and Product Service System...
and neighbourhood product service systems: rather than consumers renting services from businesses, platforms are emerging to facilitate shared usage with each other.
Redistribution markets
A system of collaborative consumption is based on used or pre-owned goods being passed on from someone who does not want them to someone who does want them. This is another alternative to the more common 'reduce, reuse, recycle, repair' methods of dealing with waste. In some markets, the goods may be free and in others, the goods are swapped.Collaborative lifestyles
This system is based on people with similar needs or interests banding together to share and exchange less-tangible assets such as time, space, skills, and money. These exchanges happen mostly on a local or neighborhood level, as people share working spaces (for example, on Citizen Space or Hub Culture), gardens (Landshare), or parking spots (on ParkatmyHouse). Collaborative lifestyle sharing happens on a global scale, too, through activities such as peer-to-peer lending (on platforms like ZopaZopa
Zopa is a UK-based company providing an online money exchange service, allowing people who have money to lend it to those who wish to borrow, instead of using savings accounts and loan applications at traditional banks. The process is sometimes referred to as peer-to-peer lending...
and Lending Club) and the rapidly growing peer-to-peer travel (on Airbnb
Airbnb
Airbnb is an online service that matches people seeking vacation rentals and other short-term accommodations with those with rooms to rent, generally private parties that are not professional hoteliers. The site was founded in August 2008 by Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia. In July 2011, the company...
and Roomorama)..
Sectors currently covered by collaborative consumption
Transportation (cars, bikes), apparel (clothing, accessories), food, living spaces, household appliances, money (social lending, virtual currencies, time banks) workspaces, travel, accommodation, space (storage, parking, spare rooms).Category examples
- Bartering
- Bike sharing
- Book swappingBook swappingBook swapping or book exchange is the practice of a swap of books between one person and another. Practiced among book groups, friends and colleagues at work, it provides an inexpensive way for people to exchange books, find out about new books and obtain a new book to read without having to pay...
- CarpoolCarpoolCarpooling , is the sharing of car journeys so that more than one person travels in a car....
/Ride sharing - Car sharing
- Clothes swapping
- Collaborative workspaceCollaborative workspaceA collaborative workspace or shared workspace is an inter-connected environment in which all the participants in dispersed locations can access and interact with each other just as inside a single entity....
- Co-housing
- CoworkingCoworkingCoworking is a style of work which involves a shared working environment, sometimes an office, yet independent activity. Unlike in a typical office environment, those coworking are usually not employed by the same organization. Typically it is attractive to work-at-home professionals, independent...
- Crowd fundingCrowd fundingCrowd funding describes the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money and other resources together, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations...
- Garden sharingGarden sharingGarden sharing is a local food and urban farming arrangement where a landowner allows a gardener access to land, typically a front or back yard, in order to grow food....
- Fractional ownershipFractional OwnershipIn business, fractional ownership is a percentage share of an expensive asset. Shares are sold to individual owners. A fractional owner enjoys priorities and privileges, such as reduced rates, priority access on holidays and income sharing. Typically, a company manages the asset on behalf of the...
- Peer-to-peer lending
- Peer-to-peer rentingPeer-to-peer rentingPeer-to-peer renting refers to the process of an individual renting an owned good, service, or property to another individual. It is also referred to as Person-to-Person rental, P2P renting, Collaborative Consumption, and Product Service System...
- Product service systemProduct service systemA product-service system , also known as a function-oriented business model, is a business model, developed in academia, that is aimed at providing sustainability of both consumption and production.- What is PSS? :...
- Seed swapSeed swapSeed swaps are events where gardeners meet to exchange seeds. Swapping can be arranged online or by mail, especially when participants are spread out geographically. Swap meet events, where growers meet and exchange their excess seeds in person, are also growing in popularity. In part this is due...
- Share taxiShare taxiA share taxi is a mode of transport that falls between taxis and conventional buses. These informal vehicles for hire are found throughout the world. They are smaller than buses, and usually take passengers on a fixed or semi-fixed route without timetables, usually leaving when all seats are filled...
- Time banks
- LETS
- Virtual currencyVirtual currencyVirtual currency is used to purchase virtual goods within a variety of online communities; which include social networking websites, virtual worlds and online gaming sites....
See also
- Peer-to-peer (meme)Peer-to-peer (meme)Peer-to-peer is not restricted to technology, but covers every social process with a peer-to-peer dynamic, whether these peers are humans or computers. Peer-to-peer as a term originated from the popular concept of P2P distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between...
- Clothing exchange
- Clothes swapping
- Collaborative workspaceCollaborative workspaceA collaborative workspace or shared workspace is an inter-connected environment in which all the participants in dispersed locations can access and interact with each other just as inside a single entity....
- Creative CommonsCreative CommonsCreative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
- Crowd fundingCrowd fundingCrowd funding describes the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money and other resources together, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations...
- Co-creationCo-creationCo-creation is a form of market or business strategy that emphasizes the generation and ongoing realization of mutual firm-customer value. It views markets as forums for firms and active customers to share, combine and renew each other's resources and capabilities to create value through new forms...
- Collaborative innovation network
- Libertarian socialismLibertarian socialismLibertarian socialism is a group of political philosophies that promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, stateless society without private property in the means of production...
- Reputation capitalReputation capitalReputation capital is the quantitative measure of some entity's reputational value in some context – a community or marketplace. In the world of Web 2.0, what is increasingly valuable is trying to measure the effects of collaboration and contribution to community...
- Reputation systems
- Social collaborationSocial collaborationSocial collaboration refers to processes that help multiple people interact, share information to achieve any common goal. Such processes find their 'natural' environment on the internet, where collaboration and social dissemination of information are made easier by current innovations.Sharing...
- Social commerceSocial commerceSocial commerce is a subset of electronic commerce that involves using social media, online media that supports social interaction and user contributions, to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services....
- State socialismState socialismState socialism is an economic system with limited socialist characteristics, such as public ownership of major industries, remedial measures to benefit the working class, and a gradual process of developing socialism through government policy...