Customer behavior specifics in the access economy: comparison of Russian and Italian carsharing customers

1.

Customer behavior specifics in the
access economy: comparison of
Russian and Italian carsharing
customers
Course: INTERNATIONAL VALUE
CREATION
Student: Ignat Anashin

2.

Master Thesis Topic:
Customer behavior specifics in the access
economy: comparison of Russian and Italian
carsharing customers
Research idea:
Compare factors influencing customers of
carsharing in Russia and Italy.
Term paper topic:
Customer behavior specifics in the access
economy

3.

General focus research questions:
• What are the customer behavior specifics in
the access economy?
• What is the difference between factors
influencing customers of carsharing in Russia
and Italy?

4.

Term paper purpose:
• To describe and compare factors
influencing customers of carsharing
in Russia and Italy.

5.

Term paper tasks:
1. To identify existing approaches to the definition of the sharing economy. Identify
problems using this concept
2. To identify existing approaches to the definition of the access economy. Identify
problems using this concept
3. To identify existing approaches to the definition of the platform economy. Identify
problems using this concept
4. Make a research assumption for integrating concepts into the access economy
model
5. Determine the carsharing business model, its features, and its place in the access
economy model.
6. Defining existing specifications of customer behavior in sharing economy
7. Study the factors influencing the customer in Russian carsharing
8. Study the factors influencing the customer in Italian carsharing
9. Compare factors influencing customers of carsharing in Russia and Italy.
10. Write practical recommendations for companies in the sphere of sharing economy,
explain how to use these recommendations

6.

Justification of term paper relevance:
Relevance to theory (for science)
• - Lack of a common view on the definition of
the concept of sharing economy and access
economy.
• - I will try to clarify the use of terms and
explain how to evaluate companies for
belonging to a certain type of business model

7.

Relevance to the industry
Knowing the differences and similarities
between the factors that affect the consumer
using carsharing in Russia and Italy is very
useful, because it helps to scale the business
faster and enter new markets without
additional marketing research.

8.

Relevance for me as a researcher
Knowledge in this field are very fresh and specific, and probably sharing
economy is the great model for many future companies.

9.

Keywords and search terms
Sharing economy, collaborative consumption, access economy,
carsharing, consumer behavior, carsharing Russia, carsharing Italy
Parameter
Narrow
Broader
Language
English
English and Russian
Subject area
Sharing economy
Business models
Business sector
Service aggregators
Short-term rental of
cars
Geographical area
Russia and Italy
Russia and EU
Publication period
5 years
15 years
Literature type
Refeered journals
and articles
Books, journals and
articles

10.

Term paper structure
1.
2.
Introduction
Sharing and access economy: definition and distinction of concepts.
2.1 Formation of the sharing economy concept
2.2 Current approaches to understanding sharing economy
2.3 Current approaches to understanding access economy
2.4 Current approaches to understanding platform economy
3.
4.
Specifics of customer behavior in sharing economy
Integrating concepts inside the access economy
4.1 Carsharing as a part of access economy
5.
Research design
5.1 Data collection plan
5.2 Reasons for choosing Rome and Saint-Petersburg for conducting survey
6.
Conclusions

11.

List of references to authors who have
published on these subjects
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Acquier A. (2017) Promises and paradoxes of the sharing economy: An organizing framework
Belk R. (2014) You are what you can access: Sharing and collaborative consumption online
Munzel K. (2019) Explaining carsharing supply across Western European cities
Felson M. & Spaeth J. (1978) Community Structure and Collaborative Consumption
Rebiazina V. & Shalaeva A. & Smirnova M (2018) Do Russian Consumers Understand and Accept the Sharing
Economy as a New Digital Business Model?
Rotaris L., Danielis R. (2017) The role for carsharing in medium to small-sized towns and in less densely
populated rural areas
Hamari J. (2015) The Sharing Economy: Why People Participate in Collaborative Consumption
Bardhi F. & Eckhardt G. (2012) Access-Based Consumption: The Case of Car Sharing
Billows G. & McNeill L. (2018) Consumer Attitude and Behavioral Intention toward Collaborative Consumption
of Shared Services
Shaheen S. & Cohen A. (2007) Growth in Worldwide Carsharing
Frenken K. (2017) Political economies and environmental futures for the sharing economy
Lee W. (2018) Why people participate in the sharing economy: an empirical investigation of Uber
Costain C. & Ardron C. & Habib K. (2012) Synopsis of users’ behaviour of a carsharing program: A case study in
Toronto
Luca S. & Pace R. (2014) Modelling the propensity in adhering to a carsharing system: a behavioral approach
Jain T. & Johnson M. & Rose G. (2020) Exploring the process of travel behaviour change and mobility trajectories
associated with car share adoption
Niels T. & Bogenberger K. (2017) Booking Behavior of Free-Floating Carsharing Users
Schaefers T. (2013) Exploring carsharing usage motives: A hierarchical means-end chain analysis
Zoepf S. (2016) User decision-making and technology choices in the U.S. carsharing market

12.

Paper review
• Rebiazina V. & Shalaeva A. & Smirnova M (2018)
Do Russian Consumers Understand and Accept
the Sharing Economy as a New Digital Business
Model?
• Acquier A. (2017) Promises and paradoxes of the
sharing economy: An organizing framework
• Munzel K. (2019) Explaining carsharing supply
across Western European cities
• Belk R. (2014) You are what you can access:
Sharing and collaborative consumption online

13.

Rebiazina V. & Shalaeva A. & Smirnova M (2018) Do Russian
Consumers Understand and Accept the Sharing Economy as a
New Digital Business Model?
• Scientific problem solved in the article - This study fills in the
informational gap about Russian consumer’s perception of the
sharing economy digital business model.
• Research objective - The purpose of this study is to address SE as a
digital business model and its perception by the consumers in a
context of the emerging Russian economy.
• Research methodology - An online survey of 10,000 Russian
consumers was conducted.
• Relevance for me - The study is very useful for me, because it
contains a lot of theoretical information about consumer behavior
specifics in the sharing economy, as well as intermediate results for
further research.
• Issues to discuss: How to overcome trust issues in the sharing
economy? How to overcome the hygiene risks associated with the
sharing economy?

14.

Acquier A. (2017) Promises and paradoxes of the sharing
economy: An organizing framework
• Scientific problem solved in the article - an absence of a clear definition
of the sharing economy and clear conceptual and empirical boundaries.
• Research objective - developing an organizing framework of the sharing
economy that not only shows its core principles – access, platform and
community-based economy – but also reveals its promises, tensions and
paradoxes.
• Research methodology - The Grounded theory research strategy is used in
this case.
• Relevance for me - The study is very useful for me, because it contains a
lot of theoretical information about current approaches on sharing
economy and, also good theoretical base for future research about
platform and access economy.
• Issues to discuss: How can we replace Community based economy in the
current model?
As a result, how to define the sharing economy and which companies can
be attributed to it?

15.

Munzel K. (2019) Explaining carsharing supply across Western
European cities
• Scientific problem solved in the article - question why carsharing
supply differs between cities and countries.
• Research objective - to analyze and explain the supply of shared
cars in all cities with more than 150,000 inhabitants in Belgium,
France, Germany, The Netherlands and United Kingdom (177 cities
in total).
• Research methodology - Authors use explanatory study with
analyzing quantitative data. They measure the supply of shared
cars, as the dependent variable, by counting the number of shared
B2C and P2P cars on offer in each city and dividing it by the
population size
• Relevance for me - It contains some theory about variables of
factors affecting popularity of carsharing in particular cities.
• Issues to discuss: How much does local government support affect
the popularity of carsharing? Would a study of the number of trips
give the same results?

16.

Belk R. (2014) You are what you can access: Sharing and
collaborative consumption online
• Scientific problem solved in the article – lack of knowledge about the
similarities and differences between sharing and collaborative
consumption
• Research objective - seek to assess the similarities and differences
between sharing and collaborative consumption, examine the extent to
which various parts of the “sharing economy” truly involve sharing, and
explain why these developments have stirred so much attention at this
particular time.
• Research methodology - The Grounded theory research strategy is used in
this case. This is a good methodology, given the chosen goal of the study to assess the similarities and differences between sharing and
collaborative consumption.
• Relevance for me - It contains a lot of theoretical information about
sharing, sharing economy and collaborative consumption.
• Issues to discuss: What are the differences and similarities between the
concepts of sharing economy, shared consumption and access economy?
What is more accurate definition for the sharing economy?

17.

Research design
• Research purpose(for practice):
• To show and explain the differences and
similarities between the factors that affect the
consumer using carsharing in Russia and Italy.

18.

Online survey
• The first thing that comes to mind is a survey
of consumers, because if you want to
understand the characteristics of consumer
behavior, you first need to ask them
themselves.
• For example, study the impact of travel time
on public transport to work/school, on the
desire to use carsharing, etc.

19.

Analyze secondary data
• At the same time, accounting the existing
attitude-behavioral gap theory, it would also be
good to study not only what consumers say, but
also the specific actions they take.
• For example, you could analyze consumer
behavior inside the app, car selection and ride
rejection, as well as the length and duration of
the ride.
• Unfortunately, all this information is not public,
so there will obviously be problems accessing it.

20.

Research design for practice
• Explanatory study
• Quantitative research
• Structured questionnaire with nominal and
ordinal scales, because I want to have specific
data from a large number of respondents.
• Cross-sectional study

21.

Research purpose(for theory)
• To clarify the use of terms and explain how to
evaluate companies for belonging to a certain
type of business model.
• Exploratory study, grounded theory, using
many theoretical science sources?

22.

Thank you for attention!