Different from the traditional hotel industry and car rental industry, sharing economy platform companies do not directly own fixed assets, but get commissions through matchmaking transactions. As Mr. Li Kaifu said, "the world's largest taxi provider has no car, the largest retailer has no inventory, and the largest accommodation provider has no real estate (Uber, Alibaba and airbnb). However, this new sharing economy is sweeping the world.
According to statistics, the market size of the global sharing economy reached 15 billion US dollars in 2014. By 2025, this figure is expected to reach US $335 billion, with an average compound annual growth rate of 36%.
1. Sharing economy is the return of the essence of business
In the primitive times, people's continuously improved labor tools improved productivity, and excessive production resulted in primitive exchange and primitive commerce. In the historical development of commodity exchange, the first commodity exchange is barter, such as one sheep and two stone axes. The reason why barter is successful is that both sides need each other's goods, which is a typical concept of sharing. Now, the sharing economy, which is popular all over the world, is rising rapidly in the wave of Internet. We seem to see a return to the essence of business.
Sharing economy is a business model based on resource sharing to meet the temporary needs of customers. In a narrow sense, it is a business model based on the temporary transfer of the right to use goods between strangers, to achieve the purpose of taking what the supplier and the demander need, and to greatly improve the efficiency of the use of goods. At present, the sharing economy has made remarkable achievements in the fields of Internet information, travel, accommodation, innovative services, etc. It includes Airbnb providing rental services for the travel, providing ZipCar and SnapGoods for car rental services, providing Internet plus enterprise Uber for city convenient car calling services. In addition, eBay, youtube, Google, waze, Wework, Facebook, WhatsApp, OkCupid, as well as Alibaba, wechat, Taobao, and Youke workshop in China are all part of the business transformation under the sharing economy model. Sharing economy has done a great thing, which is to re integrate the media connecting people and things, which is one of the innovations of sharing economy.
We say that sharing economy is born at the right time, because only in web2. In the age of 0, sharing can really move from concept to economy. The improvement of the Internet and the popularization of mobile intelligent terminals have completed the three foundations of sharing: 1) nationwide mobility, especially service providers, such as Airbnb owners, have begun to access the mobile Internet to solve the problem of shared front end supply; 2) mobile payment: the application and popularization of foreign Apple payment and domestic Alipay have solved the problem of interest exchange; 3) The sharing platform provides the mutual evaluation mechanism and dynamic pricing mechanism between the supplier and the demander, which is the most vivid scene of sharing economy.
2. Sharing economy from the perspective of Globalization
Globalization is not only a concept, but also a phenomenal process of human social development. However, there is no doubt that globalization is based on the increasing connection between people who break the geographical restrictions, which contributes to the interdependence of global politics, economy and trade, and then forms a global human consciousness. As long as people have a little understanding of the sharing economy, it is not difficult to understand that globalization has created the basic conditions for the development of the sharing economy. The progress of Internet, communication, transportation and other technologies has provided the material conditions for the development of the sharing economy. Therefore, globalization and the sharing economy promote each other and jointly affect human society.
When we are surprised by Alibaba's inexplicable rise and Taobao's popularity all over the country, wechat has become a daily communication tool for most young people, we can't ignore that foreign sharing platforms such as eBay, Facebook and Google have already been deployed around the world and quietly infiltrated into our lives. Obviously, this is the characteristics of the times. The sharing economy has already risen in the world. Here, we take the global development of two representative enterprises, airbnb and Uber, to see the sharing economy. Airbnb and Uber are revolutionaries and pioneers in the era of sharing economy. They have broken the traditional view of housing use and opened a new era of sharing cars.
Airbnb was founded in August 2008 with its headquarters in San Francisco, California. It is a travel house rental community. Users can publish and search vacation house rental information and complete online booking procedures through the network or mobile app. Airbnb users are distributed in nearly 34000 cities in 190 countries, and the number of house rental information released has reached 50000. Airbnb is called "eBay in the house" by time. The starting point of its establishment came from the founder's idea of "bed + breakfast" during an international design conference at that time. It is designed to help users to book their spare rooms through the Internet. Due to the rapid opening of the supply side, as well as the unique accommodation provided by airbnb, airbnb has sprung up in the accommodation industry, and its reservation volume has begun to match with the housing inventory of Hilton, intercontinental and other multinational hotel groups.
Similar to airbnb, Uber has set off a revolution in the field of transportation since its establishment in 2009. It breaks the traditional car rental field controlled by taxi or leasing companies, rapidly enlarges the supply end of taxi through mobile applications, and improves service standards, such as providing some practical small items such as chargers, mineral water and other services for passengers in taxi, bringing the global car rental industry into a new round of change. At present, Uber has covered 121 cities worldwide, including 25 cities in the Asia Pacific region. In mainland China, it has entered seven cities including Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Chengdu and Wuhan. Shanghai is Uber's first city in China.
As the leader of the global sharing economy industry, Uber and airbnb have developed rapidly in the past three years. The current valuation of the two companies, which have been established for less than 10 years, has reached US $51 billion and US $25.5 billion respectively. Among them, Uber has become the company with the shortest time (5 years and 11 months) when the global valuation reaches 50 billion US dollars, and has surpassed Xiaomi to become the unlisted technology company with the highest global valuation.
Sharing economy is the most magical element in social service industry. In transportation, education, tourism, life, accommodation and other fields, high-quality sharing economy companies continue to grow. New models are emerging, integrating offline resources at the supply side and providing consumers with better experience at the demand side.
The Youke workshop is a sharing platform to solve office space and a series of comprehensive services for start-ups and small and micro enterprises under the sharing economy. At present, it has completed the nationwide layout of 16 cities, 36 venues, with an office area of 120000 square meters, equivalent to 300 basketball courts or 17 football fields. In the field of real estate, the site is called land reserve. In the model of customer-oriented, our pre layout of the site is a kind of resource reserve, and the core is the strategic reserve of the right to use the house. As of January 1, 2016, 206 enterprises have settled in the Youke workshop, with more than 21 industries, mainly including Internet and technology. It can be said that the rise of the sharing economy in the world is a new hotspot of the global economy and a new wave of China's economy under the new normal.
