Car sharing versus car ownership: An exploratory examination in India

Abstract

Sharing economy is a relatively recent development in emerging economies such as India.Sharing economy has been conceptualized to include integrated collaboration in peer to peer commercial exchange of mostly underutilized goods and services for a fee, on a non-ownership basis (Altinat and Taheri, 2019)[1]; a business model consisting of a firm, primarily a service enabler such as Airbnb that acts as an intermediary between the supplier and customers of such goods and services (Kumar, et al, 2018); often referred to as collaborative consumption facilitated by online platforms (Guyader, 2018) [2]. While enjoyment and economic reward in terms of cost savings have been reported in studies as motivators for the use of such access-based services (Lee et al., 2018) [3], collaborative consumption has also been reported to being considered as an alternative ecological mode of consumption (Gopalakrishnanand Matthews,2018) [4].The two prime factors: supply-side flexibility and technology innovations have been enabling the steep growth of peer-to-peer platforms predominantly. The process of market entry for suppliers has been streamlined effectively by the technology innovations and has also made possible the searchable listings for the consumers resulting in keeping the overheads low and intact. The supply-side flexibility is yet another milestone achievement in terms of these shared platform which enables the Uber drivers to add or remove themselves from the available supply of drivers by a mere swipe of their mobile app. The same is the option for the provider who can voluntarily list or delist the offerings of their goods or services as per their wish. As an optimum solution to these problems, online shopping portals provide customers with reliable replacement policies and often refund cash in case of dissatisfaction. Key Words: E-commerce business, consumer Post purchase, and online shopping Like many other developing countries, India, a major emerging economy has its cities facing heavy traffic congestion on its roads, so much so that, apart from being frustrating to the commuters, these traffic congestions cost India’s biggest cities monetary losses up to $22 billion annually wherein cost of congestion has been calculated based on fuel burned, productivity lost, man hours and opportunity cost, pollution as well as accidents or other health costs incurred on an annual basis (www.scroll.in). This traffic congestion is expected to worsen with rapid urbanization and increase in vehicle ownership (www.economictimes.com).Sharing economy, with various car sharing platforms such as Uber, Ola, Drivezy could be an answer to this increasing burden on the city roads. The market valuation in terms of ridesharing of Uber(MacMillan and Demos 2015)[5] and extent of penetration in the market(DePillis 2013)[6] is an evidence for the growing importance attached to sharing economy in the mobility sector. Uber for instance has made headway entry into more than 60 countries and 400 cities across the globe as of 2018. As per the official announcement of Uber in 2014,the number of drivers (associated with them) who were in their official list (in US) was 160,000 and in 2015 and 2017 the number surged to 3,27,000 and 1.3 million respectively.