In the peer to peer marketplace, there are no insufficient layers of the middlemen and the sharing economy creates a value among the place and hence one can identify an economic and social shift. With the existence of this collaborative consumption, the concept of middlemen, permission, control and command and decision making have diminished and has introduced a transparent, decentralized communities to build a trust among the strangers and providing efficient goods and service.
The sharing economy refers to the type of business that was built on the basis of sharing the resources like Uber, TaskRabbit, Ecomodo and Airbnb. Initially it was a community process which later turned into a business opportunity. The sharing economy is also referred as the access economy, peer to peer network or the collaborative consumption. There are some companies in the access economy that offer service to the producers like the ZenDrive, YardClub, Breeze and Pillow and are considered as the entrepreneurial middlemen. But in the real time they are not the middlemen, they are the additional packages on the sharing economy platform.
Removing the middlemen from the marketplace is not a better option[/b]
Many people often say that the middlemen must be eliminated from the screen, but in the real time they have only helped in making the job easy for the people in the market. The middlemen help in finding better furniture, a helper or a ride. During war, they have even helped the prisoners to make the best out of the circumstances.
The elimination of the middlemen in the collaborative consumption does not make the business better; instead it has built an intermediary layer that was not available earlier in the marketplace. Because earlier, the service was provided from the hotel, but with the rise of the middlemen the services are received from the host.
The companies under the peer to peer are aware that they can become successful only when the entire job is not loaded to the participants and think that the marketplace will function efficiently. With this concept, many were able to transform from the back office to the active role. They are aware that they have to be perfect in their work as a facilitator, apart from offering a good user experience.
The companies under the access economy face many challenges. Even though the companies provide value depending on the uniqueness, they have to have to maintain their consistency in their platform to make sure that they offer the same user experience in the future. And to maintain this credibility among hundreds and millions of competitors is quite a difficult task. In this digital world, people become the new business within one minute, but becoming a good service provider is the primary role.
To become a good service provider, people require assistance that helps in providing the hosts with the services that enables them capture and create more value to the service and business in the marketplace.
Sharing economy and the way they create value[/b]
The companies under the access economy are the developers of the business to peer and peer to peer marketplace in which they create the markets for sharing by the means of facilitating the exchanges and in some process, make use of the underused resources. The evolvement of the companies like RelayRides, Airbnb, Ecomodo, Zipcar, TaskRabbit and Uber as middlemen, facilitator or an intermediate is unique.
The peer to peer economy is more professionalized, in such a way that once it was considered as a secondary income and now turns out to be the primary job. Many people are willing to participate in the sharing economy either by sharing their asset or by renting others possessions.
The entrepreneurial middlemen are categorized into power organizer, power operator and power sharer.
Organizing the community and building the trust[/b]
One of the biggest dark sides of the sharing economy is that an individual has to identify and learn on their own to find out which kind of business model works for them and which does not. There are no managers to identify the most profitable opportunities or there is no union that takes care of the safety. But the requirement of communities is necessary because the sharers must exchange their knowledge with the others. A ride sharing guy offers advice to the drivers on how to optimize their income from many ride sharing companies present in the marketplace. Peer.org is a power organizer moves to the next level by providing a place to organize, moderate the participants and curate in the shareconomy.
Empowering the freelancers with the best tools[/b]
Many collaborative consumption marketplaces serve to the large population of the sharers, because the sharers are not aware of the ideas on how to run a business nor have the desire to learn the technique or the time to learn them. For example, a person moves out of the country for a job and wishes to rent the apartment by partnering with HomeAway or Airbnb rather than selling the property. In this case, they have to screen the apartment after each guest, but these sharers do not have the required tools that help in operating the business efficiently like maintaining an inventory system to manage the applicant details, an automated to tool for pricing, analytics engine and others.
There are few power operators like the ZenDrive, for a minimal monthly fee screens the drivers before getting into a job and once when they get into the job, they monitor the performance and Pillow, optimizes the price, clean after each guest and the occupancy rate in exchange for the commission amount generated through the rental app.
Optimizing the asset utilization and selection[/b]
There is a lot of demand in the sharing economy, so many power sharers buy assets and rent them to the participants in the access economy. For example, the YardClub offers power sharers with a range of interesting variations, like renting their equipments and tools to the contractors to screen the renters and at the same time provide them with the insurance. The tools and equipments are rented on an hourly basis, thus the contractors can use it for their personal reasons or perform the job for another business in the access economy like the TaskRabbit. Breeze is a car rental company that leases cars on weekly or monthly basis and use it for their business purpose, they can be a shopper from the Instacart or the driver for Lyft or may be a cleaner for Homejoy. The main possibility is that, a person can cancel the car within two weeks of notice.
This collaborative consumption created a lot of disruption in the marketplace; even then the business under this platform can be benefitted if they make the necessary changes to compete with others in the market. And one can expect many innovative ideas unleashed by the businesses to provide the consumers with their requirements and needs. The access economy is a big source of financial wealth and social stability and has the support of the social networks, but if the large incumbents place their bets in the marketplace before it moves into the mainstream, then the ambitious and clever entrepreneurs have the possibilities of obtaining some of the meaningful shares in this competitive marketplace.
Author Bio : Anand Rajendran is CEO and Co-Founder of Dectar, best PHP scripts development company located in India. I’m a Tech geek, Digital marketing expert, Entrepreneur, and Atheist who loves to write everything about PHP Scripts and mobile application development.