The Paradigm of Sharing: A Unifying Conceptualization: An Abstract

Abstract

Sharing economy is now a worldwide phenomenon that describes economic activities to connect interdependent economic actors as “sellers” and “buyers” in the marketplace. Despite the remarkable growth of sharing economy, a review of the academic literature and business press indicates two major gaps: (1) There is a lack of clear conceptualization of the definition and domain of sharing; and (2) there is an absence of a unified typology to explain varied sharing activities and delineate managerial guidelines from their nuanced differences.

Phrases such as “sharing economy” and “collaborative consumption” are in their nascent stages of development of the lexicon to represent some new and emerging business models. The exact definition and meaning of these terminologies require refinement as more and more enterprises come under this “sharing economy” umbrella. For example, Zipcar, Bikeshare, Uber, and Turo all call themselves sharing economies while there are inherent differences in what is being delivered and how it is being delivered.

This diversity of examples under “sharing economy” necessitates a more precise conceptualization of the definition and domain of sharing economy, and a unifying typology to capture the nuances, similarities, and differences among the various examples. This article aims to address these research needs by (1) providing a definition of sharing, clarifying its conceptual domain, and differentiating it from other related constructs such as renting, leasing, etc. and (2) developing a comprehensive typology of sharing to classify various sharing activities based on two dimensions: nature of the service provider (who provides the service, the company or the peer who are also regular customers in other times) and nature of the interaction (who controls the interaction, service provider-controlled vs. 3rd party platform mediated). Such a conceptualization results in three types of sharing: company-owned sharing, freelancer-based sharing, and peer-to-peer sharing. Our inclusive framework covers a broader domain of sharing than existing literature and the typology suggests the importance of adjusting managerial practices accordingly when dealing with different sharing activities. We then discuss the theoretical connections of the typology to other constructs and research streams, managerial implications of the research, and future research directions emanating from the typology.

Following MacInnis’ (2011) delineation of the ways of making a conceptual contribution to marketing, our work contributes toward identifying (what is and what is not sharing), delineating (describing the characteristics of sharing and related terminologies and increasing conceptual clarity), differentiating (differentiating sharing from other similar constructs, differentiating various sharing examples), integrating (providing an inclusive framework to cover a variety of sharing activities), and advocating (justifying the appropriateness of using “sharing” over other terms such as “collaborative consumption”).