دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی تقسیم بندی مصرف کننده در اقتصاد به اشتراک گذاری شده - الزویر 2018

ABSTRACT

The sharing economy is a global phenomenon with rapid growth potential. While research has begun to explore segmentation between users and non-users, only limited research has looked at consumer segmentation within sharing economy services. In this paper, we build on this research gap by investigating consumer segmentation within a single sharing economy platform: Airbnb. Utilizing a mixed methods approach, with both a quantitative survey and a qualitative content analysis of Airbnb listings, we compare two different types of accommodation offered on Airbnb: shared room and entire home. Our findings indicate that within a single platform, the variety between offerings can create distinct consumer segments based on both demographics and behavioral criteria. We also find that Airbnb hosts use marketing logic to target their listings towards specific consumer segments. However, there is not, in all cases, strong alignment between consumer segmentation and host targeting, leading to potentially reduced matching efficiency

 Discussion and conclusion

In this paper, we investigated consumer segmentation within one sector of the sharing economy: home sharing. Using the example of Airbnb, we compared the consumer characteristics of guests who stay frequently in shared rooms with the consumer characteristics of guests who prefer to stay in an entire home. Combining quantitative survey data with a qualitative content analysis of Airbnb listings from five major US cities, we found substantial differences between the consumer markets for the two accommodation types. Table 4 summarizes the key findings. In our quantitative data, for both types of listings, we did not find a significant age effect. This is in line with the Pew study, according to which the median age of home-sharing users is 42 (Smith, 2016). However, for gender and socio-economic status, differences between the two accommodation types emerged. Women use shared rooms significantly less often than men, but there are no significant gender differences for entire home users. Income has a positive and significant effect on staying in an entire home but a negative and significant effect on staying in a shared room. Education exerts a positive and significant influence on entire home but has no significant effect on shared room. The findings for income and education indicate socio-economic status differences among consumers. We could not study the underlying causes and mechanisms with the survey data, that is, whether these differences are caused by price sensitivity, different lifestyle choices, and motivations. However, given the substantial cost difference between shared rooms and entire home (Cansoy & Schor, 2016), we would conclude that affordability considerations and budget constraints are certainly important reasons which might explain the socioeconomic status effects. This has important implications for targeting and matching.