Abstract

The emerging growth of the sharing economy demonstrates the need to understand the factors driving this growth and the business models and practices of sharing economy service (SES) companies. Using case vignettes as the research method, this article analyzes the operations of a large number of these companies and presents a set of building blocks that are useful for generating the business models of SES companies. An examination of the successes and failures in the practices of SES companies provides a number of managerial recommendations.