Collaborative brands – Digital Value Creation in the Collaborative Economy

The collaborative economy is impossible to ignore; it is undeniably a global movement and represents a potential $335 billion market. The collaborative economy represents a new way of thinking about business, exchange, value and community. While its definitions are varied and parameters continue to evolve, activities and models within the collaborative economy enable access instead of ownership, encourage decentralized networks over centralized institutions, provide new models to unlock wealth and often do so to a wider group of stakeholders. They make use of idle assets and create new marketplaces. The burgeoning peer-to peer economy has also disrupted traditional business models and is extending to new and different types of markets and as such provides plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurial activity across different industries and fields. In the new realm, companies can explore how to provide value by enabling peer-to-peer sharing or company-enabled platforms for sharing. First-mover companies can benefit from the collaborative economy trend instead of seeing it as a threat to their existing business. Existing enterprises have clear assets, such as established brands, channels and financial muscles with which they can become the leaders in the collaborative economy if they only manage to rethink their business logic. Brands are understood as “communicative objects that the brand manager wants consumers to buy into a symbolic universe as defined, in part, by the brand identity”. Consumers view brands as a key part of a product as they hold and convey meaning well beyond a product’s physical characteristics. Brands are a key element of the company’s relationships with its customers. This paper will provide an extensive literature and example review of current examples of established brand businesses operating in the sharing economy. The examples will showcase how existing brands can be extended with elements of the collaborative economy. Another result of the paper is to highlight practical examples for existing businesses and brands on how they can start their involvement in the collaborative sphere and what kind of competitive advantage lies therein. We demonstrate that when established brands enter the collaborative consumption space, they can achieve a distinct competitive advantage that is extremely difficult to copy and thus sustains better leading to improved corporate performance and strengthened brand value