SHARING ECONOMY: A QUALITATIVELY BETTER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MODEL, DEFINING THE NEW VOGUE (WITH REGARDS TO AIRBNB)

Abstract: The sharing economy is an emerging economic model in today’s turbulent market conditions. It encourages peer-to-peer consumption by enabling sharing of resources and serves several benefits to the parties involved in this two-sided market. While a lot of researches have dived deep into the benefits that this emerging model has served to consumers, their intentions and motives of participation while having also addressed the concerns that it triggers with regards to safety and trust, limited investigation has been done in this area to rethink the idea of ownership that the sharing economy is bringing about. In view with this perspective, this thesis employs the psychological theory of ownership to study the consumer behavior with regards to Airbnb that has been a disruptor in the hospitality and accommodation industry and has set new benchmarks of customer experiences. Since this new wave of business model is based on ‘access’ over the traditional ‘ownership’ model, through this research we aim to understand the psychological behaviour of a consumer while making a choice of participating in the sharing economy