Optimal pricing strategy and economic effect of product sharing based on the analysis of B2C sharing platform

The emergence of sharing economy implies that consumers tend to pursue a product's value in use rather than its ownership. Therefore, the sharing economy is changing people's consumption habits and raising the new theoretical questions to operation management. Since the sharing economy has subverted the traditional industrial economic pattern, this paper studies consumers' decisions and the sharing platform's pricing strategies with a particular attention to the B2C sharing platform. To this end, this paper conducts two models to investigate the optimal pricing strategy and economic effect of product sharing. A basic model is developed to analyze the economic impact of the sharing economy by comparing with the traditional market, and then, an extended model is studied taking moral hazard of consumer under consideration. finally, numerical experiments are conducted to derive some managerial insights.