The Emergence of a Sharing Market: Pricing, Supply, and Consumption

ABSTRACT The emerging sharing economy increases the utilization of existing products/services, reduces the consumption of new resources, and gets more popular in recent years. We consider a market where consumers are differentiated by their preference for the product and develop an analytical model to study how a person-to-person (P2P) sharing market (ideal or imperfect) affects the manufacturer’s pricing strategies, consumers’ consumption time, consumer surplus, and social welfare. Surprisingly, we find that the existence of the sharing market may drive up the selling price of the product if the sharing platform can endogenously determine the commission fee of sharing transactions. Accordingly, depending on the transaction costs and the proportion of high-type consumers, we find that consumers’ total consumption time, consumer surplus, manufacturer’s profit, and social welfare may not improve in the presence of a sharing market. This study also offers guidelines for the sharing platform and optimal pricing strategies for manufacturers.