21.08.17 – The latest issue of the Journal of Management Information Systems, on the FT50 list of top journals, features Prof. Weber’s latest paper on the sharing economy, his third on the topic in JMIS since 2014. The paper details how product intelligence can help companies generate economic value, despite of or simply because of their products being shared on peer-to-peer markets.

Abstract

Sharing markets create mutual insurance for consumers who are unsure about their future needs for goods, thus rendering products more valuable both before and after the purchase. By embedding intelligence in their products and enabling them to sense, monitor, and authorize transfers between users, firms can economically participate in the collaborative consumption of their goods after they have been sold. Building on a dynamic model with overlapping generations of heterogeneous agents, we determine a firm’s jointly optimal product price and sharing tariff. The active use of product intelligence as a gatekeeper for collaborative consumption can narrow the gap between the retail and the equilibrium price in the sharing market. Because of its tendency to decrease the demand for ownership, the use of smart products with a positive sharing tariff does not always maximize the firm’s overall expected profits. A positive sharing tariff tends to be profitable with relatively high unit production cost and impatient consumers.

The paper is available freely via open access, for sharing with others.

Reference

Weber, T.A. (2017) “Smart Products for Sharing,” Journal of Management Information Systems, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 341—368.

[Available for free at: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2956518 & http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07421222.2017.1334466 ]