Quality Management in the Service Industry : A comparative study between sharing economy companies and traditional companies

The biggest barrier for expansion and adoption in the field of sharing economy is risk and fear regarding safety. This new company form has resulted in higher competition in the service industry, resulting in increased focus on high quality. Since sharing economy is a new phenomenon a comparison with traditional companies has been made in order to see how the different forms of companies work with quality management. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how sharing economy companies within ridesharing and on demand rides, compared to traditional taxi companies, work with quality management. The thesis answers three subordinate questions: 1) How do companies work with quality assurance during the recruitment process? 2) How do companies work with continuous quality control and evaluation? 3) Is there a difference between the investigated industries within sharing economy and traditional taxi companies? Based on theories from management control and service quality management a theoretical framework was designed which provides guidance as to how researchers and managers can work with quality management in the service industry. A qualitative study was further performed through semi-structured interviews, where the gathered empirical material was presented through the theoretical framework. One conclusion that can be made in this thesis is that sharing economy companies have automated their services, as well as big parts of their quality management. Traditional companies seem to move more towards automating their services, as well as some parts of their quality control, but many parts are still handled manually. Another conclusion is that both types of companies have differences that lie in the nature of being a traditional company versus being a sharing economy company, and at the same time they have some fundamental similarities