Sharing economy: trends and prospects. Part 1

The principle of "sharing" confessed to us since kindergarten. We all once borrowed toys, notes, tools. Everyone used the library. Many are renting apartments.

With the advent of the Internet, sharing has become easier. The necessary things have become much more accessible. People began to share almost everything: real estate, cars, tools, food, and even a husband. After all, everyone has heard about the service "husband for an hour."

What is sharing economy and how to work with it?

Most market economy in the sphere of sharing economy appeared after the 2008 recession and in 4 years became unicorns, i.e. billions of companies. This was due to the fact that access to big money for venturers was closed, startups were created with personal or family money, and the approach to development was very lean.

The results of this approach are staggering. For example, without owning a single car, the creators of the Uber taxi service managed to unite millions of drivers.

Airbnb has around 1,000 employees, and the Hilton hotel chain has more than 150,000, while the Internet site Airbnb offers many times more housing in major cities than hotel giants, although it does not own any real estate (except for its own office).
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What helps sharing economy marketplaces achieve outstanding results?

In our opinion, the reason for this is self-regulation - the creation of rules by which the system operates. Consider this term by the example of the organization of the service Kabanchik.ua .

• Full Automation
  The service operates 24/7/365 on the basis of websites and / or mobile applications, which allow, firstly, to do without intermediaries, and secondly, significantly speed up the process of ordering services or reservations. For example, on Kabanchik.ua you can find plumbing within 2 minutes after the publication of the task. Who else can provide this speed?
• Crowdfunding rating system
  Firstly, it serves to improve the quality of service. Secondly, it also protects both sides from fraudsters: for example, you can easily send a taxi number to your relatives, you can follow the movement of the car in real time, and at Kabanchik we demand a passport to confirm your identity. Rating on the service determines the place in the TOP of performers.
• Payment for the result
  The contractor pays a commission only in case of receiving money from the customer. Easy start - no investment to start. In fact - reducing costs for salespeople, easy retention, it makes no sense to prove or demonstrate its effectiveness.
• UGC - content management
  Users create their own pages with resumes, customers create tasks. The main task is to build rules that will allow to send this content in the right direction. Namely, to force content to bring traffic that will bring us new content.
• User Moderation
  One of the most important conclusions we made while working on self-regulation is that users are very fond of justice. The rules can be of maximum rigidity, but most importantly - they must be the same for all. There can not be their own and others. That is why user moderation works very well in self-regulation.
• Market formation of tariffs
  Everything is very simple here. With the help of the amount you can adjust the price / quality ratio and, accordingly, regulate the number of potential transactions. Competition holds natural selection.
  Another observation. To select a specialist you need at least 3 sentences, 4 or more - already a lot.

Security for users

In addition to setting up self-regulation, we understood the importance of security. In the West, in a society with a Protestant culture, the level of people's trust in each other is much higher. Therefore, in the west, the sharing economy runs much easier.

We have a very high barrier of distrust. Therefore, we developed the following algorithm for testing our specialists for Kabanchik:

1. After registration, the candidate candidate will be familiarized with the rules of the service and pass an online test.
2. After that, the candidate fills in a questionnaire for verification, where he specifies his personal data up to the residential address and passport number. Also provides links to your social profiles.
3. The last stage of our verification is a videoconference with this candidate in Skype, within which our employee visually confirms the accuracy of the data provided. Only after that the candidate receives the status of a Verified Executive.
4. After this, the crowdfunding system of reviews and ratings is activated. The contractor receives an assessment from the customer after the assignment. Score along with other factors form the rating of the artist in the system. If the performer receives more than two bad ratings, his account is blocked forever.
5. We are also worried about the safety of our performers. This is especially true of virtual tasks (design, copywriting), etc., where the contractor risks not getting paid for his work. To ensure the safety of executors, we introduced the possibility of payment through the site, during which the initially required amount is blocked on the customer’s account for the duration of the assignment. At the time of confirmation of the assignment, the amount is removed from the customer’s balance sheet and split into two parts: we receive our commission, and the performer receives his fee. In this scheme, the service acts as a guarantor for both the contractor and the customer.
6. If all precautions do not help protect the customer from fraud or property damage, we will pay compensation to the customer. All tasks on the service are insured - for these purposes we have allocated our insurance fund.

Power of Word of mouth in sharing economy

The main channel for promoting the marketplace in the sharing economy is word of mouth. And thanks to this - reducing the cost of promotion, the effect of a snowball, etc.

On the Kabanchik, more than 40% of new customers come on the personal recommendation of friends or acquaintances. The marketing budget does not exceed $ 1000 for three years.

On the chart you can see the number of registrations of specialists at Kabanchik.ua per month (this is not a cumulative schedule). Guess what budget we burned for it? The answer is no, the experts came themselves on the recommendation of friends and acquaintances.

In the next part of the article we will look at what the sharing economy will expect in the future. The main trends and general trends in the development of the market of this niche.