COLLABORATIVE CONSUMPTION: AN ANALYSIS OF THE TREND AND ITS IMPLICATIONS

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Authors Senne, Sarah

Citation Senne, Sarah. (2020). COLLABORATIVE CONSUMPTION: AN ANALYSIS OF THE TREND AND ITS IMPLICATIONS (Bachelor's thesis, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA).

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COLLABORATIVE CONSUMPTION: AN ANALYSIS OF THE TREND AND ITS

IMPLICATIONS

By

SARAH KATHRYN SENNE

______

A Thesis Submitted to The Honors College

In Partial Fulfillment of the Bachelors degree With Honors in

Marketing

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

MAY 2020

Approved by:

______

Dr. Hope Jensen Schau

Table of Contents

Abstract 2

Literary Review 3

Defining Collaborative Consumption 3

History 5

Drivers 7

Business and Societal Implications Discussion 12

Conclusion 20

References 21

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Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to explore and analyze a growing trend in the global economy: collaborative consumption, also referred to as the sharing economy. 52% of Americans have rented, borrowed or leased the kind of items usually owned, and 83% would do so if this was easy (Wise, 2013). In this paper I seek to address the trend and its implications through scholarly research and conceptual analysis. I review several works by others and draw from numerous studies conducted related to and based on the sharing economy phenomenon. I begin with an in- depth literary review, which includes an exploration of the definition, history, drivers, and evolution of the trend. Following the literary review, I closely analyze and discuss the business and societal implications of the topics.

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Literary Review

Defining Collaborative Consumption

There are many terms which can be used interchangeably to refer to collaborative consumption, ranging from sharing economy, liquid consumption, peer economy, access economy, and consumption communities. Collaborative consumption provides peer-to-peer marketplaces where unused resources can be shared and it is part of a wider “sharing economy” (Buczynski, 2013;

Gansky, 2010) where the focus of consumption is shifting from product ownership to product access (Bardhi and Eckhardt, 2012; Rifkin, 2000). As a business model and trend, it can be defined as the peer-to-peer based activity of obtaining, giving, or sharing the access to goods and services, typically coordinated through community-based online services. This sharing-style economy enables people to share their goods and services through easily accessible platforms created by hundreds of companies in many sectors. These platforms encourage the sharing of goods and services, as well as the cost, between individuals rather than from business to consumer. Access over ownership and consumer-to-consumer transactions are some of the key elements of collaborative consumption in a business context. The model gives consumers the benefit of ownership with reduced personal burden and cost. Owyang (2013) describes it as “an economic model where ownership and access are shared between corporations, startups, and people. This results in market efficiencies that bear new products, services, and business growth”

(p. 4). A collaborative economy includes the scope of online marketplaces and platforms, as well as online communities like consumption communities and consumer collectives where thoughts and ideas are shared, and value is created through collaboration. Schau, Muñiz, & Arnould

(2009) state, “Research across disparate streams of management literature—from new product Senne 4 development, to services-dominant logic, to consumer culture theory—leads to the view that customers can co create value, cocreate competitive strategy, collaborate in the firm’s innovation process” (p. 1).

Collaborative consumption can blur the line between products and services and transform what consumers would initially consider a product-need into a service-need. Instead of needing to purchase and own a product, the consumer is able to rent/pay for the product as a service. For example, the traditional trigger event of needing to get from point A to point B would cause the consumer to purchase a car. Now, this same trigger event can cause a different reaction, of purchasing the service from someone else who has a car to get from point A to B, through ride sharing via platforms. “Innovations like Uber, ZipCar, and Lyft have given commuters far more transportation options and the choice to opt out of owning a car at all” (Neck et al., 2017, p. 151).

This trend has appeared in almost every industry sector, including the fashion industry. Platforms such as Girl Meets Dress and Rent the Runway provide consumers the capability to rent clothing and accessories, with options to pay-as-you-go or subscribe to a monthly membership. Instead of having to purchase clothing for one event and never wear it again, consumers can rent from each other. In 2004, Blockbuster had upward of 9,000 stores worldwide. Sixteen years later, there is one left. Traditional cable television has lost over 10 million subscribers over the past decade.

These occurrences are undoubtedly the result of streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon

Prime Video, Sling TV, and dozens more. These subscription based services offer a substantial amount of variety over traditional methods of entertainment and offer the consumer an alternative from buying a physical copy of a movie or show only to watch it once and then take up space on a shelf, “if you don’t need to own the assets you use, not only do you spend smarter, Senne 5 but your product variety and quality options expand quite dramatically” (Sundararajan, 2013, para. 9).

Consumers in a collaborative economy are sometimes called prosumers, as they are both the producer and the consumer. Consumers involved in this trend share goods and services with each other, which benefits both parties. When a resource or asset is not being used, there is opportunity to benefit not only the owner, but others in the economy as well. For example, when an item of clothing is not being worn, a car isn’t being used, or an apartment is vacant for the weekend, the owner can rent that asset to someone else. This transaction benefits the owner in that their dormant item is now a source of income and the user benefits from not having to pay a high price and own the item when it benefits them more to just rent it.

History

Individual-to-individual exchange has been prevalent for thousands of years, in forms of bartering, trading, and swapping. These types of exchanges became increasingly niche as time went on, with the introduction of liquid currency and the emergence of large firms. One of the first industries in the United States where the beginning of 20th century collaborative consumption can be seen is transportation. Car rental services began in the early 1900’s, with the first instance often tied to Joe Saunders starting his own car renting business in 1916 by renting his Ford Model T to traveling businessmen. Soon after, Hertz began operations and the car rental industry strayed away from what would be considered collaborative consumption, as the original peer-to-peer model turned into large companies with car inventories for consumers to rent. Still, this concept of renting an asset rather than purchasing it was the start of the evolution to Senne 6 collaborative consumption today. Another one of the first industries that featured collaborative consumption practices is housing and hospitality. Hotels, hostels, and bed & breakfasts date back centuries and continue to grow due to growth within the travel industry. Similar to the transportation industry, the history of the hospitality industry has collaborative consumption elements, such as people during the Great Depression hosting travelers in their homes to bring in additional money for their families (Schultz, 2005).

Both the transportation and hospitality industries are seeing huge growth in terms of collaborative consumption practices. PwC (2015) estimates that five main sharing sectors (car sharing, staffing, music video streaming, accommodation and finance) will increase in global revenues from around $15 billion in 2013 to $335 billion by 2025, the most notable growth being within the car sharing and accommodation sectors. Traditional models like hotels and car rental services share aspects of collaborative consumption, i.e unused resources being shared, but ultimately, collaborative consumption platforms like Airbnb and Uber are a progression of the industry standard. A few key factors illustrate the growth from traditional models into the collaborative consumption trend. First, traditional car rental companies and hotel corporations participate in the business-to-consumer (B2C) model, while collaborative consumption focuses on the scope of peer-to-peer marketplaces. Another factor that sets collaborative consumption businesses apart is accessibility. Companies such as Lyft and Airbnb provide platforms for consumers to reach each other. For someone who wants to rent out their apartment or provide a driving service, it is much easier to sign up on an already existing platform and reach a customer base, in comparison to having to start an entirely new business. Collaborative consumption Senne 7 platforms enable the average person the ability to participate in a market that previously would not have been available to them without a much higher level of commitment and risk.

The consumer of these services also receives an advantage of greater accessibility, in that they can just log onto the application on their smartphone and have a custom Airbnb booked or Uber driver at their door within minutes. Not only does the evolution of collaborative consumption offer greater accessibility, there is also more variety than ever before. For example, at the beginning of the hotel industry, there were not nearly as many options as Airbnb offers today.

Consumer options ranged from essentially how big of a room they needed and how long their stay would be. Now, consumers' ability to customize the offering is far greater than the standard hotel room. Airbnb options range from a bungalow in the middle of a forest in Australia to a luxury cave in Sedona. Collaborative consumption continues to evolve and grow, providing enormous benefits to consumers on both ends of the exchange. Platforms with collaborative consumption business models provide accessibility, variety, and speed to consumers.

Drivers

There is a variety of work looking at what has caused this shift in the traditional business model to modern day collaborative consumption and the growth of this trend. Studies show there are a wide range of forces which drive the trend, from economic to technological. Belk (2013) explains two of the main factors that drive collaborative consumption are “...1) their use of temporary access non-ownership models of utilizing consumer goods and services and 2) their reliance on the Internet, and especially Web 2.0, to bring this about” (p. 3).

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The Altimeter Group (2013) conducted a report based on interviews with startups, industry leaders, investors, brands, and executives. According to the report, there are three primary categories of drivers: societal drivers, economic drivers, and technology drivers, shown in Figure

1. Societal drivers include the increasing population, the growing drive for sustainability, a desire for community, and generational altruism. Economic drivers are the monetization of idle inventory, an increase in financial flexibility, access over ownership, and an influx of investor funding. Technology drivers include social networking, mobile devices/platforms, and payment systems.

Figure 1: Driver Categories

The Altimeter Group elaborates on how the internet has driven the trend through an analysis of three phases of time. The first is the Brand Experience Era (Web), which says the internet makes Senne 9 information broadly accessible, but the media and the corporations are the posters of content.

They speak “at” customers through websites and the power lies with the companies. The second is the Customer Experience Era (Social Media), where consumers are able to share opinions and speak “with” brands and the power is now distributed among both the companies and their consumers. The third phase is the Collaborative Economy Era (Social, Mobile, and Payment

Systems), described as consumers sharing goods and services with each other. The power has gradually shifted from producers to consumers and companies are disrupted as consumers buy from each other over traditional institutions. Phase two, the Customer Experience Era, describes what is known as Web 2.0, which “…refers collectively to websites that allow users to contribute content and connect with each other” (Carroll and Romano, 2011, p. 190).

A four-stage Delphi study conducted by Stuart J. Barnes and Jan Mattsson in 2016 found similar drivers to the Altimeter Group and placed them into five main areas and notes that the drivers have begun to converge to some degree. Researchers collected data from 25 experts in the collaborative consumption domain through four phases of questionnaires, combining Likert and ranking questions and open response survey questions. The five main driver areas that the study found were political, economic, environmental, social, and technological. Of these areas, resulting data concludes that the largest drivers are economic (economic problems and need to economize) and technological/socio-cultural (mobile devices, social media, and the Internet).

In both of the studies described, researchers identify a newfound desire for access over ownership in society as a main economic driving force of the growth in collaborative Senne 10 consumption. The idea of “you are what you own” is no longer completely agreed upon in an economy rich with collaborative consumption. Belk (2013) says,

One Toronto-based car sharing organization called AutoShare transforms the old

home pro-ownership question, “Why rent when you can buy?” into an updated

equivalent within the emerging sharing economy, “Why own when you can rent

by the hour?” With short term rental becoming more common, we are

increasingly uncertain whether or not another consumer owns the car, house,

handbag, jewelry, mobile phone, or dress that we see them using. (p. 15)

Gradually, people are losing the desire and perceived need to own assets and through that ownership, show status. Lisa Gansky said, “We’re moving from a world where ownership was something we aspired to, to a world where access to goods, services, and talent triumphs ownership” (Owyang, 2013, p. 7). When asset ownership loses its position as a status symbol, society is free to act in ways which favor convenience, where renting is a viable alternative to asset acquisition. In Bauman’s (2000; 2007a, 2007b) theorizing of liquid modernity, he explains that everyday life has moved from being stable and secure to being more uncertain and rapidly changing. “Liquid consumption is needed to explain behavior within digital contexts, in access- based consumption, and in conditions of global mobility. It highlights a consumption orientation around values of flexibility, adaptability, fluidity, lightness, detachment, and speed” (Bardhi et al. 2017, p. 1). In this type of ever-changing society, it is more rational for the consumer to have access to non-permanent assets to keep up with the unexpected occurrences of day-to-day life.

Arun Sundararajan (2013) writes,

... “peer economy” marketplaces transcend the simple trade conducted on eBay

and are instead inventing an entirely new asset-light supply paradigm. They Senne 11

enable the disaggregation of physical assets in space and in time, creating digital

platforms that make these disaggregated components — a few days in an

apartment, an hour using a Roomba, a seat in your drive from Berlin to Hamburg

— amenable to pricing, matching, and exchange. (para. 5)

The extinguishment of asset ownership as a status symbol paves the way for an asset-light lifestyle and the economic benefits in terms of cost savings drive it as well. Renting a product through a collaborative consumption platform saves the consumer money where instead they would traditionally have to purchase and own the product to only use it once or on infrequent occasions. An Airbnb-sponsored study found that 6 out of 10 adults agree that “being able to borrow or rent someone’s property or belongings online is a great way to save money” (Owyang,

2013). Not only is access over ownership more convenient to consumers, it makes sense financially as well.

In addition to economic factors, collaborative consumption is largely driven by technological advances, specifically the internet’s growth into Web 2.0. Both a driver and result of the collaborative consumption trend is the network effect that is created from the increasingly social nature of the internet. The network effect is described as “...a phenomenon whereby increased numbers of people or participants improve the value of a good or service” (Banton, 2019, para.

1). Each additional user, for example of the internet and social platforms, creates value. The more users that platforms like Airbnb and Uber gain, the better it becomes. There will be a higher number of options, an increased variety of options, and likely they will be easier to access. The better the platform becomes, the more users it will attract. The network effect encourages more people to utilize collaborative consumption platforms, therefore it can be Senne 12 considered a driver of the trend. The network effect is also, in turn, a result of collaborative consumption, from the increased number of people participating in the exchange.

Another significant technological driver in the success of collaborative consumption is the prevalence of customer review and rating platforms provided by the internet. “If the fears that drove hitchhiking out of common practice were those of dangerous strangers driving or seeking rides, one way around this is through reputation systems” (Belk, 2013, p. 14). Yelp, Google

Reviews, and other in-app rating systems allow consumers to provide testimonials which build reputations for particular people and businesses. The internet enables transactions between strangers, but the use of reputation systems is what creates the trust and confidence needed for strangers to participate in the transactions. Many collaborative consumption platforms readily provide reviews for users to read and research shows they have good reason to do so: 70% of customers consult reviews or ratings before making a final purchase and 63% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a site if it has product ratings and reviews (Scalco, 2017).

Business and Societal Implications Discussion

When consumers connect with each other and share or trade products amongst themselves, traditional businesses risk disintermediation. There is a shift in control occurring from businesses to consumers. Fewer people may purchase products from the traditional retailers, as seen in the auto industry: “Every car-sharing vehicle reduces car ownership by 9-13 vehicles; a revenue loss of at least $270,000 to an average” (Owyang, 2013, p. 1). Consumers renting already purchased products from others, rather than going out and buying the item themselves, ultimately decrease Senne 13 revenue to the original retailers. In addition to transportation, many other institutions are being disrupted by the collaborative economy, ranging from products and apparel to banking.

Consumers are bypassing traditional banking systems through platforms like Kickstarter, which helps entrepreneurs fund their businesses through crowdfunding. Sundararajan (2013) warns,

For companies in a growing number of industries, it’s no longer sufficient if you

leverage digital technologies to rationalize and optimize your internal production.

If your business relies on a model of consumption that is inefficient for your

consumers, chances are that there’s already a new sharing economy marketplace

that is looking to streamline it for them. (para. 10)

Traditional businesses are faced with a new marketplace and their ability to adapt to the challenges will be crucial to remain competitive and successful.

In contrast to the drivers of collaborative consumption, the Delphi study by Stuart J. Barnes and

Jan Mattsson also looked for possible inhibitors of the trend. Politics and the behavior of government/businesses ranked highly as being problematic to the growth and development of the sharing economy. Some businesses that feel threatened by entrants with new models are seeking to stop the trend all together, through a variety of measures, such as Microsoft Xbox’s DRM system preventing customers from playing used games and local governments fighting back with regulatory barriers and legal battles, making it increasingly difficult for ride sharing services to enter the market. Additionally, “Hotels are pressuring municipalities to enforce hotel or bed and breakfast regulations on those who would offer short-term rental services through the likes of

Airbnb, HouseTrip, Windu, and 9flats to rent all or a portion of their home” (Belk, 2013, p. 15).

The rise of Airbnb and similar platforms are impacting not only the hospitality industry, but also Senne 14 the housing market, “some fear that as building owners gain a new, more intensive means of making profit (namely, renting rooms for highly profitable short-term stays), housing stock is being taken off the long-term rental market and converted to ‘hotel stock’ for tourists” (Rauch,

2015, p. 920). Fighting the collaborative consumption trend rather than adapting to it is likely only postponing the inevitable, but as oDesk CEO Gary Swart said, “It’s hard for businesses to think of shooting their existing business model.” For companies that are willing to adapt their businesses to include qualities of collaborative consumption, not only will they remain competitive with the market, they also have the opportunity to reap the rewards which these business models bring.

The collaborative consumption business model is attractive in a variety of ways, for both existing companies and new entrants alike. The structure of collaborative consumption businesses provides efficiency gains, economies of scale, and an asset-light supply model. Using car rental platforms as an example, Sundararajan (2013) emphasizes,

... peer-to-peer car rental marketplaces which tap into the existing (and massive)

installed base of cars that people already own. These marketplaces don’t need to

carry inventory. Their business model advantages are clear — the “fleet” renews

itself naturally, there are no parking or logistics issues, geographic expansion and

scaling is more seamless. (para. 3)

The network effect created by some platforms allows for low/no marginal cost, taking advantage of economies of scale. Collaborative consumption models utilize the ultimate form of leverage, where users add value for each other with little to no help from the company itself. The company essentially benefits from the work of the users, as the users provide a service to each other, in Senne 15 comparison to the traditional model where the company directly delivers the value to the consumers. Going a step further, value is also created through the user-generated content and brand communities established in a collaborative economy. Since consumers are more likely to trust recommendations from people than from brands (Nielsen, 2015), user-generated content is extremely beneficial to companies. Word-of-mouth and referral marketing have long been recognized for their attractiveness, due to their lack of cost and more importantly, their effectiveness. User-generated content takes these traditional strategies to the next level in the

Web 2.0 era where millions of people collectively gather. Company social media accounts simply reposting or displaying testimonials posted by consumers’ profiles not only increases brand awareness, it provides potential customers with an advertisement that they trust, since it comes from an ‘average’ person rather than a faceless brand. Moreover, little time nor money investment is needed by the company to market using this strategy. In addition to simply reposting testimonials that have been uploaded by users, companies can initiate and encourage brand engagement on social media through asking consumers to post specific content, for example through use of a hashtag or photo competition on Instagram. In their 2008 paper,

Kozinets, Hemetsberger, and Schau discuss the impacts of these types of actions by consumers:

...small actions by individuals—hyperlinking, going to a popular Web site or

portal, rating or commenting, and tagging—all have dramatic innovative effects

when aggregated by software, site, and competitive marketing strategy. All have

become signature elements of the companies that have managed to create value

and viable business models from the activities of Swarms, a specific kind of

innovative online consumer community. (p. 350) Senne 16

An example of a tagging campaign comes from Wayfair, an online furniture store. They invite consumers to post pictures of their Wayfair furniture with the hashtag #WayfairAtHome and then the company account reposts the photos with direct links to the items for other users to easily purchase. This type of strategy not only motivates consumers to purchase Wayfair products, it also fosters communication between the brand and the user, which has a direct positive impact on brand loyalty (Schivinski & Dabrowski, 2015). A notable example of a highly successful user-generated content campaign is from British clothing company Burberry. In 2009, new CEO Angela Ahrendts launched The Art of the Trench website, where users were given the ability to upload pictures and comment on people wearing Burberry products. After the launch of the website, the company’s sales surged 50% year-over-year.

Strong brand communities enable consumer practices that create value and are favorable for the company. These consumer groups that collaborate on the basis of a brand and act as a collective hold significant marketing implications. Schau, Muñiz, and Arnould (2009) identify 12 value- creating practices common in most brand communities, organized into four categories: social networking, impression management, community engagement, and brand use. The 12 practices all work together and drive one another as the process of collective value creation, shown in

Figure 2. The practices have a number of powerful effects: they endow participants with cultural capital and create brand devotees, enhance brand experience, create new opportunities for consumption, indicate brand community vitality, and of course, create value. These practices benefit not only the company, but the consumers in the brand community as well, “...we may infer that in addition to firm benefits, participants derive social and hedonic value from the experience” (Schau, Muñiz, & Arnould, 2009, p. 31) Senne 17

Figure 2: Collective Value Creation Process

Just as we are seeing a shift in control from companies to consumers in regard to the products and services themselves, there is a similar shift in control with regard to advertising and marketing. Collaborative consumption is changing the way that businesses advertise and communicate with consumers. Consumer evangelism in user-generated content, also called vigilante marketing, is defined as “unpaid advertising and marketing efforts, including one-to- one, one-to-many, and many-to-many commercially oriented communications, undertaken by brand loyalists on behalf of the brand” (Muñiz & Schau, 2007, p. 1). From research done on the

Apple Newton brand community, Muñiz and Schau found that vigilante marketing has some noteworthy implications for marketers, especially within brand communities. First, brand communities are shifting power away from advertisers and giving it to consumers. Muñiz and

Schau advise, “it may be time to develop a new definition of advertising, one that accommodates Senne 18 user-generated content” (p.12). Second, unique and powerful brand meanings play an important role in fostering vigilante marketing, in that when consumers are inspired, they will strive to build on the meanings. Third, it is essential that marketers listen to what their consumers are saying, to ensure that their desired positioning aligns with consumer perceptions about the brand.

Brands who pay attention to user-generated content and brand communities can tailor future ads to resonate with and appeal to their consumers. Moreover, companies can benefit from giving consumers the capability and encouragement to create advertising content for the brand, for example when Converse used consumer-generated commercials in their successful 2005 campaign (Bosman, 2006).

Not only is it effective for consumers to create advertising content for brands, but also for consumers to collaborate in the actual creation of products and services. The collaborative marketspace encourages and is causing substantial increases in innovation and creativity across all sectors. Companies like LEGO provide the community with an area on their website to submit product ideas and participate in contests and activities relating to the toys. In the clothing realm, threadless.com encourages artists to upload their clothing and product designs which are then chosen by the online community to be sold on the e-commerce site. In food, Campbell’s soup used crowdsourcing to improve their soup can label design as well as the recipes themselves. In entertainment, the popular trilogy, Fifty Shades of Grey, originated from a fanfiction platform for the Twilight series and the 2006 thriller movie Snakes on a Plane incorporated online user feedback into its production. Citizens are even getting involved in crafting a vaccine for COVID-19, a global pandemic, through an online video game: Foldit. The game was developed by the University of Washington’s Center for Game Science and Senne 19

Department of Biochemistry. Players work alone or in online teams to develop new protein structures which can then be tested by biochemists in a lab to produce an antiviral drug. In 2011,

Foldit players successfully puzzled together the protein structures which helped solve the Mason-

Pfizer monkey virus (Brown, 2020). This revolutionary crowdsourcing project allows an enormous amount of people, all over the world, with a variety of different backgrounds to collaborate and solve groundbreaking crises.

Kozinets, Hemetsberger, and Schau (2008) expand on the phenomena of consumer collaboration with brands in the theorizing of collective consumer creativity, and state that “more consumers, coming from diverse backgrounds, bringing to bear different experiences, are going to offer a greater variety of ideas to use for ideation, increasing the variance of the ideas proposed as the solution” (p.341). Further, creative online cultures establish a peer review system, where online work is constantly challenged through peer and public evaluations, producing high quality work.

Because of the great value that online consumer communities add to society and organizations, it is essential that firms guide online collective consumer creativity through new approaches,

They must begin to systematize the ways that online consumer communities

respond to their invitations to participate. These invitations can be overt, such as

contests, or formats that lead to high visibility and status, or subtle, such as

delicate system architectures that measure clickstreams or amount of time spent

on particular pages. (Kozinets, Hemetsberger, & Schau, 2008, p. 353)

Both firms and consumers benefit greatly when consumers have the capability to be a part of product and service innovation: consumers are granted better product offerings which align with Senne 20 their needs, and firms are able to produce innovative offerings that will have the greatest customer demand and satisfaction. On a larger scale, collaborative consumption shows that businesses can facilitate coming together as a society and linking business communities with consumer communities fosters a new participation which creates value beyond only economic implications. When a society utilizes sharing, communication, and working together towards a common goal or solution, everyone has the opportunity to gain.

Conclusion

The collaborative consumption trend continues to grow and evolve as more and more people participate in sharing their ideas, products, and services with each other. From the first peer-to- peer car rental service in the early 1900’s to the massive ride-sharing platforms available today, collaborative consumption has come a long way. This evolution is driven by a wide range of forces, both economic and technological, and the trend has many significant implications for businesses and society.

Both firms and consumers, and society as a whole, can benefit from collaborative consumption.

For the consumer, there is a greater number of products and services that meet their needs, a larger variety of products and services, and greater accessibility and speed, lower costs, and streamlined processes. Firms seek to gain greater efficiency, economies of scale, an asset-light supply model, the network effect, lower costs, and a satisfied customer base who acts as free advertisement. Society and the economy at large reap higher levels of innovation, collaboration, and efficiency. Senne 21

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