What about sharing between firms? : an explorative study on the potential value of sharing assets between firms via a digital platform

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1102SR Amsterdam

Master of Business Administration

Specialization in Entrepreneurship & Innovation

What About Sharing Between Firms?

An Explorative Study on the Potential Value of Sharing

Assets Between Firms via a Digital Platform

Submitted by Natalie Christine Wodrich

First supervisor: Dr. Wietze van der Aa

Second supervisor: Bram Kuijken MSc

Amsterdam, August 31

st

, 2015

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Management Summary

Introduction

The sharing economy has become a substantial trend in the private customer segment. Indi-viduals have started providing excess private assets via digital platforms like Airbnb and Uber to other individuals. What started as a niche phenomenon has revealed to have had a big eco-nomic impact. PwC assesses the sharing economy market to become a $335-billion market by 20251_{. The question arises whether this massive trend is restricted to the private consumer}

context, or whether there might be an opportunity in the business context, as firms could also share their valuable excess assets. So far, the potential that sharing might have when firms start to share their excess assets via a digital platform with other firms has not been examined. Therefore, the objective of this master thesis is to answer the following research question: What potential value do firms perceive in sharing assets with other firms via a digital plat-form? The potential value comprises firms’ demand for using a digital business-to-business platform as well as the underlying motives and barriers firms perceive when they engage in asset-sharing.

Methods

After analyzing the existing literature about sharing in the consumer context, we identified the main motive and the main barrier as respectively the economic motive and the trust barrier in the consumer context. According to these results, we expected to find an economic motive and a trust barrier in the perceptions of firms to share assets with other firms via a digital plat-form as well. By conducting eleven interviews with managers from a variety of firms, we tested our assumption, and explored additional motives and barriers that firms perceive with regard to business-to-business asset sharing via a digital platform. To assess the demand of firms for using a digital business-to-business platform, a survey involving 505 firms was car-ried out to obtain results that allow generalizability.

Findings

The study provides three main findings. First, the research findings show that firms perceive a demand to share assets via a business-to-business sharing platform, since approximately half of all surveyed firms would be very, or rather, likely to use such a platform. Second, as ex-pected, the main motive for firms to engage in sharing assets via a digital platform is because

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of financial motives. Apart from the financial motive, five other motives could be explored. These are – in descending order of importance – additional flexibility, new contacts, a simpli-fication of processes, transparency over available assets and optimization of own assets. Re-garding the five barriers found, the expected main barrier ‘trust’ proved to be less important compared to related costs that arise from the sharing activities and inconvenience of the shar-ing process. These barriers apart, liability issues and missshar-ing reciprocity can hinder firms from engaging in asset sharing via a digital business-to-business sharing platform.

Managerial implications

Based on the findings, recommendations can be provided to two target groups. Firstly, for platform providers who want to implement a business-to-business sharing platform, they may:

• Benefit from a first-mover advantage

• Treat the barriers as guidance for the priority of implementing features – systems on the platform that establish trust are less important than systems that establish lower costs or higher inconvenience

• Use all identified motives for marketing activities to attract the highest number of firms

Secondly, for firms interested in sharing assets via a digital business-to-business platform, it is essential to:

• Conduct an analysis to detect all excess assets and assess the possibility of providing them via a business-to-business sharing platform

• Conduct an analysis to detect all assets that are only needed for a limited time, and as-sess the possibility of receiving them via a business-to-business sharing platform • Consider the identified motives and barriers and evaluate their impact on the firm • Change the long-term procurement strategy from owning to accessing assets

Conclusion

This is the first study that provides insights into the potential value that firms perceive regard-ing business-to-business asset sharregard-ing via a digital platform. Most importantly, the study re-veals that firms perceive business-to-business asset sharing via a digital platform as a valuable opportunity. The demand for sharing assets via a business-to-business platform is actuated by six main motives. Moreover, firms perceive five main barriers that can hinder them to engage in sharing assets. Knowing these barriers will help platform providers to create successful business-to-business asset-sharing platforms.

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List of Tables and Figures

Table 1: Overview of usage of different definitions within the main publications ... 13

Table 2: Summary of the Literature Review on publications about consumers’ motives for participating in sharing activities ... 19

Table 3: Synopsis of sharing motivations dimensions ... 21

Table 4: Motives for firms to engage in business-to-business sharing via a digital platform .. 34

Table 5: Barriers for firms to engage in business-to-business sharing via a digital platform .. 37

Figure 1: Design of a business-to-consumer model ... 15

Figure 2: Design of a consumer-to-consumer model ... 15

Figure 3: Design of a business-to-business model ... 24

Figure 4: Conceptual Model ... 25

Figure 5: Experience with renting and lending ... 38

Figure 6: Frequency of current renting and lending activities ... 39

Figure 7: Likelihood of firms to use a business-to-business sharing platform ... 40

Figure 8: Assets that firms are willing to rent via a business-to-business platform ... 41

Figure 9: Assets that firms are willing to lend via a business-to-business platform ... 41

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List of Abbreviations

B2B business-to-business B2C business-to-consumer C2C consumer-to-consumer cf. confer (compare)

e.g. exempli gratia (for example) i.e. id est (that is)

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1 Introduction

“[Sharing is] the most universal form of human economic behavior, distinct from and more fundamental than reciprocity. (…) Sharing has probably been the most basic form of econom-ic distribution in hominid societies for several hundred thousand years” (Preconom-ice, 1975, p. 3) An electric drill is used on average 6 to 13 minutes during its life span (Belk, 2014). That is where the sharing economy steps in. The sharing economy has flourished in the last years by providing two-sided digital platforms between individuals to share peer-to-peer services. This rather new phenomenon has changed something about consumer markets that for the longest time was well established, namely the dominance of ownership. Today, ownership represents not the only viable way any more to solve individuals’ needs (Lovelock & Gummesson, 2004). Rather, consumers can access on-demand whatever needed for a specified period of time and provide access to own underutilized assets (Bardhi & Eckhardt, 2012). This form of sharing that is characterized by receiving assets from others and/or providing access to own assets has already resulted in global companies like Airbnb and Uber, where individuals can monetize the unused capacity of their flats or their cars respectively. The question arises whether firms cannot do the same. Since individuals can share things and services on a peer-to-peer basis, can companies do the same by sharing excess capacities and assets through to-business linked platforms? To find out the potential value of such a business-linked form of sharing will be the research objective of this thesis.

In 2011, the Time magazine called sharing of goods one of “10 ideas that will change the world” utilizing the headline “Today’s smart choice: Don’t own. Share” (Walsh, 2011; Albinsson & Perera, 2012). And it seems obvious why sharing could change the world, look-ing at the variety of advantages abound. Sharlook-ing compared to ownership seems to be more economical. Also, it shows to increase sustainability since every car-sharing vehicle reduces car ownership by 9-13 vehicles (Owyang, 2013, p. 1). Moreover, sharing provides access to a wide range of assets and in some cases creates a community feeling (Belk, 2014, p. 1597). The sharing trend has reached the consumer, but it has not yet reached the business level, even though it might be advantageous for firms as well. So far it remains unclear whether business-to-business sharing may be a valuable additional possibility for firms to use their excess assets.

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1.1 Theoretical and practical relevance

The sharing economy literature has been increasing steadily over the last couple of years. We expect our research to yield insight into sharing assets beyond what is currently available in the existing literature because to date, to our knowledge, the sharing economy is investigated from a consumer perspective and not yet from a business perspective. Thus, this study ex-pands the existing literature and the investigation of sharing into a related but unexplored field, namely to sharing between firms. This might provide interesting insights for future shar-ing possibilities by extendshar-ing the concept of rentshar-ing and lendshar-ing excess assets to a firm level. Furthermore, we contribute with our research to the need to better understand the growing demand for corporate non-ownership services (Wittkowski, Moeller & Wirtz, 2013, p. 171).

Investigating the potential value of sharing is also relevant from a practical point of view. Firms are increasingly looking for innovative options to optimize their operations so it will be interesting to find out what potential managers see and whether they perceive sharing as an opportunity to efficiently use excess assets. A better understanding of the potential value of business-to-business sharing is also interesting with regard to the possibility that sharing might provide a well-suited solution for problems like limited resources and environmental pollution (Leismann et al., 2013, p. 184).

1.2 Research question

This study aims to identify the potential value for firms to share assets via a digital platform with other firms, thereby obviating resource shortages of one firm and increasing resource utilization by another firm. To accomplish this objective, this study will address the subse-quent research question:

What potential value do firms perceive in sharing assets with other firms via a digital plat-form?

In order to answer the research question, the following sub-questions will be answered within the scope of this thesis:

1. Do firms experience a demand to share assets with other firms via a digital platform? 2. For which underlying motives do firms want to engage in business-to-business asset

sharing via a digital platform?

3. Which barriers exist for firms to engage in business-to-business asset sharing via a digital platform?

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Thus, in the context of this study, the potential value of sharing assets will be determined based on the perceived demand of firms for sharing assets via a business-to-business sharing platform. Moreover, the motives as well as the barriers for firms to engage in sharing activi-ties will be taken into account to determine the potential value for sharing between firms. Pos-sible analogies with the consumer-to-consumer context will be identified and analyzed.

1.3 Structure of the thesis

After showing the relevance of the topic of sharing assets between firms within the introduc-tion and the research focus being depicted, it is crucial for the succeeding explanaintroduc-tions to de-fine the most important concepts in the theoretical framework. For this purpose, first the defi-nition of sharing is provided and a demarcation is being made in terms of the variety of dif-ferent types of sharing. Moreover, the theoretical framework elaborates the underlying mo-tives for sharing assets on a consumer-to-consumer basis and describes the current state of research regarding existing barriers concerning sharing activities. In a next step, the consum-er-to-consumer sharing concept is transferred to the business-to-business context.

In the following, the research design is presented and the process of data collection and analysis explained. Subsequently, we describe our findings and elaborate on the emerging patterns, which provide the basis to understand the potential value of sharing assets between firms. Based on these findings, we discuss the relationships between the arising themes. Man-agerial implications are given and the strengths and limitations of this study are presented. Following the provision of avenues for future research, this study ends by providing a conclu-sion of the main findings and implications.

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2 Theoretical Framework

This chapter provides the relevant background of past studies and research on sharing assets to gain insights and guidance. First, sharing practices in the consumer-to-consumer field are being examined by outlining the rise of the sharing economy, clarifying definitional ambigui-ties and characterizing the different sharing business models. The state of the research con-cerning motives and barriers for consumers to engage in sharing assets will be presented. Subsequently, we turn to the business side and in a final step provide our conceptual model.

2.1 Emergence of the sharing economy

The advent of the so-called sharing economy is quite recent. It was not until October 2007 that two young people came up with the business idea to match visitors who were searching for hotel rooms with locals who had extra space to rent out (Botsman & Rogers, 2010). This is being said to be the beginning of the sharing economy. Although the topic of the sharing economy started as a niche phenomenon, it has evolved to be a relevant economic subject nowadays (Forbes, 2013).

In the last two decades the sphere of consumption has been transferred. Increasingly, consumers are not concerned with the question whether to own but how to consume desired items (Baumeister & Wangenheim, 2014, p. 3). The first to start this trend of consumption mode choice were the peer-to-peer platforms that enabled file sharing (as for example Nap-ster). In 1995, trading platforms, like eBay and Craigslist were founded and started to become popular (Schor & Fitzmaurice, p. 6). By providing online market places where individuals could re-circulate owned goods eBay and Craigslist went from niche to mainstream market-places.

In 1999, a digital platform named Couchsurfing is established. The purpose of the website is to connect travellers with hosts all over the world so that travellers could find a free place to sleep on their journeys (Rosen, Lafontaine & Hendrickson, 2011, p. 983). Couchsurf-ing starts as a non-profit organization and is one of the first to follow the approach of optimiz-ing the usage of private underutilized assets, which in the case of Couchsurfoptimiz-ing refers to ex-cess space in form of sleeping accommodation (Schor & Fitzmaurice, 2015, p. 10).

In 2000, Zipcar, one of the very first car-sharing offerings, was set up (Cohen & Kietzmann, 2014, p. 292). While it is a for-profit company, it still incorporates common ad-vantages as parking lots for free. By and by car-sharing becomes known and Zipcar expands rapidly within the next decade (Schor & Fitzmaurice, 2015, p. 8). In 2008, Airbnb joins the

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online sharing offerings and with the financial crisis as a catalyst and the rising digitalization the sharing economy picks up steam.

Summarized, it can be seen that the sharing era started with providing large-scale file sharing platforms (e.g. Napster), went on to provide physical goods trading platforms (e.g. eBay) and recently developed into peer-to-peer platforms that facilitate service sharing (e.g. Airbnb) (Andersson, Hjalmarsson & Avital, 2013, p. 3).

2.2 Definition of sharing

The fast emergence of the sharing economy resulted in an advent of a variety of different terms trying to describe the underlying phenomenon. ‘Connected economy’ (Schor & Fitz-maurice, 2015), ‘collaborative consumption’ (Botsman & Rogers, 2010), ‘access-based con-sumption’ (Bardhi & Eckhardt, 2012), ‘commercial sharing systems’ (Lamberton & Rose, 2012) and ‘peer-to-peer renting’ (Philip, Ozanne & Ballantine, 2015) are only a few designa-tions that have appeared in the last decade to describe the rising sharing trend.

Two dimensions can be distinguished. ‘Collaborative economy’, ‘sharing economy, ‘connected economy’ and ‘commercial sharing systems’ refer to the overall dimension of sharing. This represents according to Botsman (2013) the “economy built on distributed net-works of connected individuals and communities as opposed to centralized institutions, trans-forming how we can produce, consume, finance and learn”. ’Peer-to-peer renting’, ‘access-based services’, ‘sharing’, ‘access-‘access-based consumption’ and ‘collaborative consumption’ are seen as subgroups to this economy. For the differences in the definitions, an overview can be found in table 1.

Even though there exist a lot of terms referring to this new era of sharing, the term “sharing economy” is the most known and most used. Eckhardt & Bardhi (2015) claim that the more appropriate name for this new era of sharing should rather be ‘access economy’ since what typical sharing firms as Airbnb and Uber do, is providing access to assets. The disagreement arises due to the fact that sharing is most often associated with a social ex-change and reciprocity, which also exists in a modest amount in social non-monetary sharing offerings (McArthur, 2014), yet most often the social exchange is replaced by an underlying economic exchange as it is the case for Airbnb, Uber and Zipcar (Bardhi & Eckhardt, 2012). Even though ‘access economy’ might be the more appropriate term, in this study we will use the term ‘sharing economy’ interchangeably with the others mentioned.

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Table 1: Overview of usage of different definitions within the main publications

Publication Phrasing Definition

Albinsson & Perera (2012)

Sharing as an element of collaborative

con-sumption

“Sharing is a key element of collaborative con-sumption. Belk (2007: p. 126) defined sharing as, “the act and process of distributing what is ours to others for their use and/or the act or process of receiving or taking something from others for our use.””

Bardhi & Eckhardt (2012) Access-based con-sumption

“We define access-based consumption as transac-tions that may be market mediated in which no transfer of ownership takes place. The consumer is acquiring consumption time with the item, and, in market-mediated cases of access, is willing to pay a price premium for use of that object” (p. 881)

Belk (2007) Sharing

Sharing is defined ‘as the act and process of dis-tributing what is ours to others for their use and/or the act or process of receiving or taking something from others for our use’ (p. 127)

Botsman & Rogers (2010) Collaborative con-sumption

“Collaborative consumption occurs when people participate in organized sharing, bartering, trad-ing, renttrad-ing, swapptrad-ing, and collectives to get the same pleasures of ownership with reduced per-sonal cost and burden, and lower environmental impact” (p. 71)

Hamari, Sjöklint, Ukkonen (2013)

Collaborative con-sumption

“Collaborative Consumption: The peer-to-peer-based activity of obtaining, giving, or sharing the access to goods and services, coordinated

through community-based online services.“ (p. 1) Lamberton & Rose (2012) Commercial sharing

systems

“Systems that provide customers with the oppor-tunity to enjoy product benefits without owner-ship.” (p. 109)

Philip, Ozanne & Ballantine

(2015) Peer-to-peer renting

“We define P2P renting as an exchange whereby one individual makes available their physical possessions temporarily to another individual for a rental fee in order to meet the temporary needs of the renter without a transfer of ownership” (p. 2)

Schaefers, Lawson &

Kukar-Kinney (2015) Access-based services

“…we define access-based services as market-mediated transactions that provide customers with temporally limited access to goods in return for an access fee, while the legal ownership re-mains with the service provider. At the core of an access-based service is thus an asset that is suc-cessively used by multiple individuals (i.e., shared) over time. Instead of satisfying one indi-vidual’s (i.e., the owner) need for unlimited ac-cess to an asset, acac-cess-based services satisfy multiple individuals’ need for temporary access.” (p. 3)

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The term ‘sharing’ itself is most often defined as “the act and process of distributing what is ours to others for their use, and/or the act and process of receiving or taking something from others for our own use” (Belk, 2007, p. 126). Thus, sharing can be described as the systematic sharing of tangible or intangible objects where the joint usage of the objects is the essential element (Belk, 2010; Bruhn et al., 2015). However, when the sharing phenomenon is ex-plored, the term “collaborative consumption” will be found in almost equal quantities. The closest definition for collaborative consumption is the following: “collaborative consumption occurs when people participate in organized sharing, bartering, trading, renting, swapping and collectives to the same pleasure of ownership with reduced personal cost and burden, and lower environmental impact” (Botsman & Rogers, 2010, p. 21). The definitions have been criticized as blurry (Arnould & Rose, 2015) and also Botsman (2013) claims that a proper definition of sharing and all the belonging concepts is both missing and needed. The reason for not agreeing on a common terminology can be found in three essential differences within sharing activities (McArthur, 2014, p. 3). The first difference refers to reciprocity. Some shar-ing systems platforms require a reciprocal basis (e.g. Airbnb) whereas other sharshar-ing systems also work one-way (e.g. open source software sharing). Another differentiation is the underly-ing profit mechanism that is not ubiquitous. Couchsurfunderly-ing is one example where profit-making is not the main goal, whereas other sharing platforms are highly commercialized (e.g. Uber). The diverse array of products and services that is being shared or traded is the last dis-tinctive criterion that exerts a high impact on the boundaries of the sharing concept (McAr-thur, 2014, p. 4).

There exist different types of sharing activities that vary according to the extent of how sharing is defined. As to our knowledge there exists no consistent classification of ing activities yet. The literature provides classifications into monetary and non-monetary shar-ing (Albinsson & Perera, 2012). Moreover, a classification between online and offline sharshar-ing is becoming more common (John 2013; Bruhn et al., 2015). Online sharing refers to spatial and temporal independent sharing processes, as well as the sharing of intangible assets (e.g. music file sharing or knowledge sharing). Whereas, within the scope of offline sharing tangi-ble assets (e.g. cars or rooms) are being exchanged.

Due to the variety of meanings that the sharing term can convey, we demarcate the sharing term at this point to facilitate the understanding of the sharing term used in this study. Thus, in the following of the thesis any reference to ‘sharing assets’ refers to sharing that is based on a monetary exchange and relates to offline sharing, as the focus of this study being on sharing activities that involve tangible assets.

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2.3 Basic functioning and characteristics of sharing

There exist two well-known general business models for sharing assets. Both of them are multi-sided platforms. Electronic multi-sided platforms include an internet-based intermedi-ary platform bringing together users with different functional roles (e.g. buyer and seller) and this intermediary platform ensures that the users’ participation leads to generate any economic value (Chakravarty, Kumar & Grewal, 2014, p. 1). The first business model platform refers to the business-to-consumer (B2C) model. The B2C model resembles more a traditional busi-ness activity because the busibusi-ness that provides the platform also makes available the supply of the shared asset, as can be seen in figure 1 (Demary, 2014, p. 5). This business model can be found in the car-sharing industry, e.g. the firm Zipcar. Zipcar provides the car fleet that any member can get on demand, as well as the platform to book the car (Bardhi & Eckhardt, 2012, p. 886). The cars that are shared by the consumers belong to Zipcar, hence are a corporate good (cf. figure 1).

Figure 1: Design of a business-to-consumer model

Better known is the second model, the consumer-to-consumer (C2C) model, often also called peer-to-peer model (Philip, Ozanne & Ballantine, 2015; Andersson, Hjalmarsson & Avital, 2013). In comparison to the B2C model, within the C2C model, the platform only interacts as an intermediary and the supply is not provided by the business but also by another consumer (cf. figure 2).

Figure 2: Design of a consumer-to-consumer model

Demand of consumer

Platform provided by business (e.g. Zipcar)

Supply provided by

business

Demand of consumer

Platform provided by business (e.g. Airbnb)

Supply provided by

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How C2C models operate is considerably straightforward. It can best be illustrated by means of two hypothetical individuals, A and B. The first requirement is that both individuals have access to an online C2C platform. Individual A makes any excess physical possession tempo-rarily available through the online intermediary platform. Individual B can access the availa-ble offerings for a fee and a short-term collaborative exchange transaction takes place (Weber, 2014, p. 36). This serves individual A, the provider, to monetize on excess goods and individ-ual B, the renter, to obviate any costs that arise through the “burdens of ownership”, which refer to risks and responsibilities that stem from possessing a good, i.e. maintenance or repair-ing costs (Schaefers, Lawson & Kukar-Kinney, 2015, p. 2). This explains why usually expen-sive, high-involvement items (e.g. cars or accommodation) are shared, since these result in the highest earnings and savings for providers and renters (Philip, Ozanne & Ballantine, 2015, p. 8). Since usually costly products are being exchanged through consumer-to-consumer plat-forms, sharing represents a powerful and prevalent challenge to traditional businesses in the recent past (Plouffe, 2008, p. 1180). Despite the fact that individuals always had the possibil-ity to share valued goods, this type of consumer-to-consumer sharing seems to have a differ-ent impact than ads and garage sales. There exist three main distinguishing characteristics that can be found to differentiate the new era of sharing with former sharing activities (Schor & Fitzmaurice, 2015, p. 17).

A first characteristic is that for the longest time, sharing has taken place among family members and within communities (Belk, 2010, p. 724). The form of sharing that takes place within the sharing economy and collaborative consumption refers to a great extent to sharing with strangers (Bardhi & Eckhardt, 2012, p. 884). Sharing platforms enable individuals to share objects (as rooms in the case of Airbnb) or services (as rides in the case of Uber) with other individuals that were formerly unknown to them. In comparison with family members and communities, exchange among strangers frequently lacks trust, since required information or previous experience is missing (Schor & Fitzmaurice, 2015, p. 17). Due to the fact that traditional factors of trust, as for example eye contact are hard to establish online, other tech-nological elements like self-disclosing profiles, digital photographs or online reputation sys-tems have facilitated sharing among strangers by creating the missing trust (Molz, 2013, p. 221).

The second characteristic of the sharing economy compared to previous forms of shar-ing refers to the reliance on digital technologies (Schor & Fitzmaurice, 2015, p. 17). Digital platforms have enabled physical and digital goods to be distributed on a large scale (Anders-son, Hjalmarsson & Avital, 2013, p. 2; Zervas, Proserpio & Byers, 2014, p. 2). In contrast to

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sharing between family members, nowadays sharing is easily possible with anyone in the world who is willing to share. Moreover, digital platforms have facilitated sharing among strangers by keeping the coordination costs between sharing partners low. Digital platforms provide information, reputation indicators and payment opportunities at low cost (Schor & Fitzmaurice, 2015, p. 17).

The last characteristic that draws a distinction on the sharing economy in comparison to former sharing activities is the involvement of high cultural capital consumers in sharing activities (Schor & Fitzmaurice, 2015, p. 18). Sharing out of necessity has dominated the re-search while anthropological studies also referred to the social roles of sharing beyond providing out of necessity (Belk, 2010, p. 715). However, in the sharing economy, consumers increasingly opt for sharing as a distinctive consumption preference (Carfagna et al., 2014, p. 175). The examination of why individuals elect to participate in sharing activities will be the focal point of the following section.

2.4 Motives for sharing in the consumer context

Literature examining the motives of participants for sharing is increasing in the recent past, yet it remains rather scarce (Philip, Ozanne & Ballantine, 2015, p. 3; Wittel, 2011, p. 4). There exist several studies that focus on finding out the underlying motives for why consum-ers want to participate in sharing activities. An alphabetically arranged overview of these studies can be found in table 2.

Looking chronologically at the advances of research related to motives of consumers to share assets, it becomes apparent that there exists one study that has examined the motives for renting relatively early. Durgee and O’Conner (1995) explore by means of a qualitative study the motives for renting and find that the main reasons for renting are a temporary need and the fact that renting is perceived to be more economical. Further they found evidence for the fact that renters are personally less attached to rented goods than to purchased goods.

Moeller and Wittkowski (2010) take a different perspective and investigate the influ-ence of personal determinants on consumers’ decision to rent rather than to buy in a quantita-tive study. The six possible determinants they explore are: importance of possession, experi-ence orientation, price consciousness, conveniexperi-ence orientation, trend orientation and envi-ronmentalism. Three of these personal factors show to have a significant influence (R2 = .19) on the preference for non-ownership. Convenience and trend orientation are positively related to preference on non-ownership, whereas the personal importance of possession correlates

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negatively. The other factors showed non-significant estimates, most surprisingly the factor price consciousness.

Also Lamberton and Rose (2012, p. 116f.) use three quantitative studies to conceptual-ize commercial sharing systems within three different study designs. The first study that fo-calizes on car sharing investigates the elements, which are relevant to legal commercial shar-ing systems. The authors find that transaction utility (the perception of the consumer to have made a good deal with sharing), perceived degree of substitutability between ownership and sharing (the assessment that a shared car substitutes well for an owned car), technical costs (to get familiar with different cars) and mobility utility (to be able to get a car everywhere) are relevant for choosing. Besides, the authors found evidence that the perceived risk of product scarcity has a significant influence on the tendency towards sharing.

Literature provides motives for renting behavior, usually from the perspective of the person renting the item. This might be because for the longest time renting implied renting from a rental company provider (Durgee & O’Conner, 1995, p. 89). Philip, Ozanne and Bal-lantine (2015, p. 1ff.) initiated with their study to explore all sides of the sharing activities. Their qualitative sample included next to the one-way users (renters or providers), also the two-way users (renters and providers) as well as non-users (that are members but have not yet participated in the rental activity). They found that the crucial motive for sharing is the eco-nomic benefits. Apart from the financial incentives, a balanced exchange relationship where both sides perceive to benefit gratifies the renters and providers. Besides, experiential motiva-tors, as being able to try out a product before deciding to purchase it, the opportunity to pur-sue a more sustainable, anti-materialistic way of life. Convenience was one of the most im-portant aspects, which in the context of their study related to a low consumer involvement that needed to be in place to not deter the sharing activity.

Hamari, Sjöklint and Ukkonen (2015, p. 9ff.) found in their empirical study that intrin-sic motivations, as sustainability and enjoyment are strongly correlated with the attitude to-wards sharing. However, extrinsic motivations, as reputation or economic benefits did not show to have a significant effect on attitude. Economic benefits and enjoyment showed to predict the intention to share. Since they found only a small positive effect from attitude to-wards the behavioral intention to share, they suggest that an attitude-behavior gap might exist which would result in people perceiving sharing with others as something positive but this point of view does not automatically lead to participation.

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Table 2: Summary of the Literature Review on publications about consumers’ motives for participating in sharing activities

Publication Study Context Research Focus Key Findings*

Balck & Cracau (2015)

4 different indus-tries: accommoda-tion sharing, car-sharing, commodity sharing and clothing sharing

Motives for shar-ing in different industries

The only relevant factor that is independent of product and the organizational form of sharing is the low cost of usage. For the car-sharing industry, also sustainability and convenience showed to be relevant motives. For commodity sharing the access to special prod-ucts and avoiding ownership were found to be relevant motives Durgee & O’Conner

(1995) Recently rented objects (n= 113, self-reports) Insights about rental behavior and motives

Perceived price advantage is the major reason to choose access Hamari, Sjöklint &

Ukkonen (2015) Marketplace website “Sharetribe” (n=168, survey da-ta) Motivations and the effect on atti-tudes and behavior

Participation in collaborative con-sumption is motivated by sustaina-bility, enjoyment of the activity as well as economic gains

Lamberton & Rose (2012)

Carsharing (n=369, survey); Cell phone minute sharing (n=123, experi-ment); Bikesharing (n=105, experiment) Understanding and managing com-mercial sharing systems

Specific cost and utility factors affect the propensity to participate in commercial sharing systems. Perceived risk of product scarcity is a major driver of sharing propen-sity in commercial sharing systems

Moeller & Wittkowski (2010)

Online peer-to-peer sharing network (n=461, online sur-vey)

Identify and assess the importance of proposed determi-nants of several determinants for non-ownership preference

“Trend orientation” as well as “con-venience orientation” has a positive influence on a customer’s preference for renting goods. “Importance of possession” is negatively correlated to a preference for non-ownership. “Experience orientation”, “price consciousness” and “environmental-ism” showed no significant positive influence on a consumer’s prefer-ence for non-ownership

Philip, Ozanne & Bal-lantine (2015)

Any P2P rental company (n=19, interviews)

Examine renting from the perspec-tive of individual consumers who choose to rent their possession to peers.

Economic utility is the primary consideration for participants in peer-to-peer renting. Also the us-age of idle possessions was found to be appreciated by the renters

Schor & Fitzmaurice (2015)

Various sharing platforms

Temporary dispo-sition and acquisi-tion in the context of online peer-to-peer renting

Economic, ecological and social reasons for participation in the sharing economy

Tussyadiah (2015)

Hospitality sector (n=754 adult travel-lers in the US)

Identify the driv-ers and deterrents of collaborative consumption

The underlying factors “sustaina-bility”, “community” and “eco-nomic benefits” drive participation in collaborative consumption

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Tussyadiah (2015, p. 825f.) examines the motives for sharing activities in the hospitality in-dustry. She found out that consumers who participate in sharing accommodation are open for new experiences and have a high-income at their disposal, which provides evidence that ac-commodation sharing is not only a low-cost alternative but also “a new ‘mode’ of travelling” (Tussyadiah, 2015, p. 826). Nevertheless, the economic benefits show to be the most relevant motives for sharing, which refers to the attitude of travellers to retrieve more benefits by pay-ing less. Economic benefits apart, also sustainability and community play a significant role. Travellers value to travel more responsively and develop enriching social relations.

Similar results obtain Schor and Fitzmaurice (2015, p. 414f.) in their study. The first motive that they find for participation in the sharing economy is again the economic motive. The second motive that leads to participation in sharing is of ecological nature. Consumers want to reduce their eco-footprints and sharing offers this opportunity through the usage of idle assets. The third motive for sharing that the authors discover is the interest in increasing social relations and building social networks. The last motive that was found in their study is the deliberate election of sharing to engage in non-market exchange.

The last study that is considered in this overview, is the quantitative study of Balck and Cracau (2015, p. 6ff.). Whereas many studies focus on one single sharing economy sector (Bardhi & Eckhardt, 2012; Tussyadiah, 2015), Balck and Cracau (2015) explore the motives for participation in sharing activities across four different industries. The industries that are examined refer to the most popular ones and are: accommodation-sharing, car-sharing, com-modity-sharing and clothing-sharing. The authors exhibit that the only relevant motive inde-pendent of the industry and the product is the economic benefit of sharing. Regarding car-sharing, besides the appealing low cost of usage, environmental friendliness plays an im-portant role, as well as good and easy access to the cars. For the commodity-sharing industry, the following motivations to engage in sharing are found to be avoiding ownership and access to an enlarged set of products. In terms of sharing clothes, participants are motivated by an extended access to special cloths as well as environmental reasons. With regards to the ac-commodation-sharing industry no other significant motive for sharing can be inferred from the results, except for the economic benefits.

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Table 3: Synopsis of sharing motivations dimensions Ec on om ic d im en-si on En vi ro n m en ta l di m ens io n So ci al di m ens io n Fu n ct io n al d im en-si on Pe rs on al d im en-si on Fi na nc ia l b en-ef it s Su st ai na bi li ty Co m m un it y So ci al r es po n-si bi li ty Ac ce ss a nd av ai lab il it y Fa m il ia ri ty En jo ym en t Av oi d Own er-sh ip

Balck & Cracau (2015) X X* X* X*

Durgee & O’Conner (1995) X

Hamari, Sjöklint & Ukkonen (2015) X X X X

Lamberton & Rose (2012) X X X X

Moeller & Wittkowski (2010) X X

Philip, Ozanne & Ballantine (2015) X X X X X

Schor & Fitzmaurice (2015) X X X X

Tussyadiah (2015) X X X

* Depending on the examined sharing sector

As can be seen from the current state of research on consumers’ motives to share assets out-lined in table 3, the economic benefit is the most frequently found motive that results in par-ticipation of sharing (cf. table 2). Balck and Cracau (2015, p. 7) even conclude that “sharing is from the very bottom an economic phenomenon”. In almost all studies the economic utility was the primary motive to engage in peer-to-peer sharing (Tussyadiah, 20015; Balck & Cracau, 2015; Philip, Ozanne & Ballantine, 2015). The only study that did not reveal any sig-nificance for economic benefits is the study of Moeller and Wittkowski (2010). A reason for that might be as Baumeister and Wangenheim (2014, p. 23) indicate that the examined con-structs were evaluated on an overall level instead of investigating them product or industry specific. Moreover, Moeller and Wittkowski (2010) do not examine whether people want to have economic benefits when sharing but rather whether people who already are price sensi-tive prefer sharing. Since this interrelation is not prevalent, this finding could support Tus-syadiah’s finding of participants of sharing activities to be from an upper class (Tussyadiah, 2015, p. 825).

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Another insight that can be inferred from the review of the different motives is that it can be suggested that the motives for sharing differ according to the industry that is inspected. The study of Balck and Cracau (2015) provides evidence for the assertion that depending on the product that is being shared different motives are predominant. This would explain the inconsistency in the found motives within the different studies. Many studies have collected data not within one product category but within more product categories (Hamari, Sjöklint & Ukkonen, 2015; Schor & Fitzmaurice, 2015) or have not specified the product category of the sharing platform (Moeller & Wittkowski, 2010), which could have caused the variation in the found motives.

2.5 Barriers for sharing in the consumer context

Since the main motive for sharing has shown to be an economic motive, the question arises whether a perceived lack of economic benefits prevents consumers from engaging in sharing activities. Moreover, it is important to know whether there occur other impediments that are associated with the concept of sharing assets. However, academic studies concerning barriers that hinder the usage of sharing activities are almost non-existent.

Owyang (2013, p. 9) illustrates anecdotal evidence for five obstacles. The first one refers to lack of trust between renters and providers of assets. Second, he identifies the ab-sence of an industry-wide reputation and data standard system as another obstacle. Third, the uncertainty about the persistence of the rather new sharing business models is a reason not to engage in sharing activities. The fourth and fifth obstacles refer to resistance from existing businesses to accept the sharing trend and regulatory and legal battles about existing regula-tion (Owyang, 2013, p. 9). Most often observed is the first obstacle that Owyang (2013) men-tions, lack of trust. Tussyadiah (2015, p. 10) found in a quantitative study in the hospitality sector that lack of trust regarding the hosts and the platform were a significant deterrent for travellers to use peer-to-peer accommodation sharing. This finding can be supported by a study of Kellett et al. (2011, p. 368). However, Lamberton and Rose (2012, p. 121) found that the level of trust had no significant effect on the usage of sharing services. This finding is based on bicycle sharing systems, which could imply, as it was the case for the motives for sharing, that there might be different barriers to sharing depending on the product and the industry sector.

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2.6 Shift from consumer-to-consumer sharing to business-to-business

sharing

This study builds on the growing body of evidence that there are various different motives for consumers to participate in sharing assets. Even though the focus of the motives for sharing is on the consumer context, it can be assumed that an economic, financial benefit would also be appealing for a business context. If firms had the possibility to share excess assets with other firms via a digital platform, most likely firms could also generate an economic benefit by effi-ciently utilizing excess capacity. In the best case, the benefits are twofold if businesses are able to save costs by lending from each other instead of buying assets and at the same time are able to generate additional income by temporarily renting out assets. This might be especially interesting since manufacturing firms increasingly have to compete in markets that are charac-terized by unpredictable market changes and high demand volatility (Renna & Argoneto, 2011, p. 405).

Moreover, other motives for sharing in the consumer-to-consumer field, as access to otherwise hard-to-reach assets, might also be profitable for businesses. In addition, sustaina-bility gains more and more importance as a corporate issue (Seok & Nof, 2014, p. 1622) with the result that a more sustainable procurement process could also be a relevant benefit for businesses to share assets with other businesses.

When Botsman (2013) classifies collaborative consumption, she also refers to a trans-action model that involves business-to-business sharing. This kind of sharing is defined as “solutions that enable businesses to unlock and monetize the idling capacity of their existing assets” (Botsman, 2013, online quotation). In other words, business-to-business sharing refers to firms that provide access to their excess assets via a digital platform to other firms. These excess assets of firms have so far not been intended for monetization. For reasons of complex-ity, in this study we will exclude human resources as one type of assets and focus instead on tangible assets (e.g. cars, rooms, facilities, equipment). Analogous to the B2C and the C2C model that have been discussed at an earlier stage, the business-to-business model refers to an intermediary platform that serves to coordinate and organize the sharing activities between different businesses (cf. figure 3).

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Figure 3: Design of a business-to-business model

Many firms have assets that sit idle often enough, as for example car fleets or garage spaces. These assets could be shared with other firms, making better use of these underutilized assets and possibly creating extra sources of revenue (PwC, p. 20). Moreover, by monetizing un-derutilized assets, firms could be able to cut costs and increase efficiency. One example is the hotel chain Marriott that faced an underutilization of their conference rooms and collaborated with an online platform to offer these vacant spaces to firms and guests that needed flexible workspace (Botsman, 2014). Another example of early sharing has been the case of Med-Immune (one unit of pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca) that agreed to share its manufac-turing facilities with the pharmaceutical firm Merck (Vaughan, 2014). In this way Med-Immune could compensate a 20 percent capacity excess, whereas Merck could fulfill its need for greater flexibility. Co-working can be seen as another example, since some startups (e.g. LiquidSpace, ShareDesk or PivotDesk) have started to take advantage of businesses that have excess space in form of vacant working places. However, such examples of sharing that takes place among businesses are scarce. The question is why? Do firms need other reasons to be motivated to share excess assets than consumers or is it just the missing platform? To our knowledge there exists no research on business-to-business sharing via a digital platform, consequently this will be a first intent to explore how firms perceive the potential value to share excess assets.

2.7 Conceptual Model

Given the lack of research concerning the business-to-business model of sharing assets, this study will explore whether firms see a potential value in the functioning of this model. In a first step, we will explore whether firms have a demand to share assets, whether they have excess assets to supply or if they want to even demand and supply assets at the same time.

In a second step, we analyze the motives of the firms to rent an asset temporarily from another firm or to provide other firms with assets. We expect the economic motives that drive individuals to participate in the consumer context to be also the main driver for firms to en-gage in sharing assets. This is due to the fact that procurement represents one of the largest

Demand

of business Platform provided by =irm

Supply provided by business

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costs for a firm (Angeles & Nath, 2007, p. 104) and hence lowering procurement costs is in the best interest of the firm. Especially indirect procurement or the purchase of maintenance, repair, and operations goods, i.e. office supplies and non-manufacturing objects that are not directly linked to the business production generally comprise about 30 - 60 percent of the overall disbursement of a firm (Orr, 2002, p. 59). Those assets that are not needed for the core business operations seem to have a great potential to be shared since they are mostly not needed all of the time and provide excess capacity.

Moreover, we expect similar barriers for firms to engage in sharing as for customers. Since the underlying concept for business-to-business sharing is the same as the one for con-sumer-to-consumer sharing, similar barriers are probable. Especially the trust behavior might play a significant role, since firms will most likely take less risk than consumers due to the dimensions that any hazardous incident may have. This implies that firms will most likely need to trust the process, the platform and the other firm providing them with the asset to make business-to-business sharing via a digital platform effective.

An overview of the factors that aim to be explored and the relationships that aim to be understood within this study can be found in figure 4.

Figure 4: Conceptual Model

Demand

of business

Platform provided by firm Economic motive Economic motive Trust barrier Trust barrier Supply provided by business

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3 Methodology

The previous sections analyzed the existing literature upon sharing. This study aims to identi-fy the potential value of firms to share their excess assets via a digital platform with other firms. The selected research design for this study comprises of both qualitative and quantita-tive methods. Mixed method research refers to research approaches that incorporate qualita-tive and quantitaqualita-tive research elements for the reason of breath and depth of understanding and corroboration (Johnson et al., 2007). We utilize a qualitative approach to collect data through semi-structured interviews about demand, motives and barriers of business-to-business sharing and supplement the interview data with a representative survey of 505 firms to examine firms’ perception of a business-to-business sharing platform. In this case a mixed-method approach is well suited for exploring such a little investigated topic, as sharing assets between firms is. This inductive research that aims at building new theory about a known phenomenon in an unknown field needs to be examined from an integrated approach to un-derstand the underlying processes and rationale. Moreover, according to Gable (1994) the relative strength of qualitative research is its high discoverability and explorability, whereas the relative strength of a survey is its high generalizability. By combining these two research methods in this study, highest explorability and generalizability are sought at the same time.

In most cases exploratory mixed-method research is carried out sequentially with a qualitative study followed by a quantitative study (Harrison & Reilly, 2011, p. 14). Due to time constraints, the quantitative and qualitative research in this study will be concurrent, im-plying that the results will be analyzed separately and then combined to reach a holistic view. The method of interviewing participants is most frequently applied for exploratory research since it yields in-depth data about the investigated subject (Saunders & Lewis, 2012). In line with the research objective and the conceptual model of this study, the interviews give insight into the demand of firms to share assets via a digital business-to-business sharing platform, the motives for firms to engage in sharing and the barriers that hinder firms in engaging in sharing activities. The interviews focus on exploring and providing in depth-data about the motives and barriers, whereas the survey is supposed to complement the interview data of the small interview sample with a larger sample that allows generalizability. Following this re-search design will enable highest explorability and generalizability of the conceptual model that is to be examined.

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3.1 Semi-structured interviews

The purpose of the semi-structured interviews is to explore the perceptions of firms to engage in business-to-business sharing via a digital platform. The interviews will explore the demand to share assets, and especially provide in-depth information about perceived motives and bar-riers for firms to engage in business-to-business sharing via a digital platform. According to the conceptual model, we assume to discover that firms want to share assets with other firms for economic motives and that the main barrier that might hinder participants to engage in business-to-business sharing is a lack of trust.

3.1.1 Participant recruitment

In-depth interviews comprised of open-ended questions were conducted with different small- and medium sized firms in Basel, Switzerland. Contact was made through the Chamber of Commerce in Basel that offered to support the study by providing contact to 120 firm mem-bers of the Chamber of Commerce. The contact persons were all situated in the upper man-agement to ensure that the interviewed managers have the autonomy and the experience to give their expert opinion on the topic of sharing assets. Ten out of the eleven interviewed managers had more than seven years of management experience. The identity of the partici-pants will remain undisclosed due to reasons of confidentiality but a list of the participartici-pants and the investigated industry sectors can be found in the appendix (cf. appendix 1). A variety of industries was addressed to get an overall impression of different perceptions of sharing among diverse industries and to provide a reasonable degree of internal validity. By including a broad variation of industries within the sample, the diversity of the data grants a favorable basis for reaching conclusive statements.

3.1.2 Pilot study

One pilot test was conducted to minimize the likelihood of respondents having problems in answering the provided questions. Pilot testing is important because it assesses the questions’ validity and the reliability of the collected data (Saunders & Lewis, 2012). Especially because the object of investigation is new for firms, it was important to make sure that the concept is well explained. The pilot test revealed that it made sense to explain the concept of sharing in the consumer sector where it already exists and give two examples (room- and car-sharing) that can also be transferred to the business context. This introduction to the subject was ap-plied through all eleven interviews.

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3.1.3 Data collection

After receiving approval of the participants to be interviewed, a meeting was arranged to car-ry out the interviews. All eleven interviews took place in Basel in May 2015 and the location of the interviews was determined by the participants to ensure their convenience. All the in-terviews were conducted in (Swiss)-German. The duration of the inin-terviews averaged around 45 minutes. Only the participant and the interviewer were attending the interviews. Before the interviews the participants were asked to agree on audio recording and after the interview the participants were asked to sign the consent form.

3.1.4 Interview questions

The interviews followed the interview guide (see appendix 2). The interviews started with giving the participants the opportunity to provide a short introduction about the firm they are working for. After getting to the sharing topic by discussing personal sharing experience in the consumer context, the business side of sharing was examined. Questions regarding the perception of the firm concerning business-to-business sharing were asked to test and verify the compiled conceptual model. The leading questions referred to the discussion whether the interview participants saw an application field in their own firm for business-to-business shar-ing via a digital platform and which motives and barriers they expected when usshar-ing a busi-ness-to-business sharing platform. The three major questions about the demand, the motives and the barriers for sharing that the interviews are supposed to answer were summarized at the end of each interview by the interviewer to give the participant the possibility to add or adjust themes and inputs and to eliminate any possible misconceptions. This was particularly important to ensure highly credible data and to eliminate any possibility of an observer error. In a last step, the opportunity for the participants to provide additional information was given.

3.1.5 Data analysis method

The data analysis followed two steps. The first step refers to data reduction, which includes preparing transcripts and processing the data (Miles & Huberman, 1984). Personal summaries of the interviews were generated immediately after each interview as one way of simplifying and focusing the main themes. The second step refers to the process of drawing inferences. Manual coding was used to analyze the data and to identify emerging patterns and plausible relationships regarding demand of sharing and motives and barriers for firms to share. After having done the first six interviews, five patterns for motives and four patterns for barriers could be identified. The following three interviews confirmed these identified patterns and added one more for each category. The last two interviews provided no new emerging

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pat-terns, which showed that data saturation was reached after eleven interviews. The results of the identified patterns and relationships will be presented in the next chapter.

3.2 Survey

The purpose of the survey is to get an overall understanding of firms’ propensity towards firms’ lending and renting behavior and moreover, to find out how firms perceive a business-to-business sharing offer. In contrast to the in-depth data that is to be provided by the inter-views, the aim of the survey is to complement the interview data by providing additional data based on a larger sample. The data that should be captured in the survey is supposed to be behavioral data to find out what firms have done in the past in terms of renting and lending (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2009, p. 368). Moreover, it is important for this study to find out the inclination of firms towards a business-to-business sharing option, hence the demand that firms perceive for using a digital business-to-business sharing platform.

3.2.1 Execution of the survey

Due to the limited time frame of the thesis, an independent Research Institute, amPuls Market Research in Switzerland, undertook the survey. A Swiss company interested in the potential value of business-to-business sharing financed the survey and the survey questions were de-veloped in close collaboration between the collaborating firm and the author. The Research Institute provided the raw data of the conducted survey and the author carried out the pro-cessing and analysis of the survey data.

Since the qualitative research concentrated on local conditions and was restricted to one city in Switzerland, the survey seized the opportunity to reach a larger population to draw more generalizable results. The total sample of the survey composed of 505 firms, of which 75 percent belong to the German-speaking part of Switzerland and 25 percent belong to the French-speaking part of Switzerland, thus providing an appropriate distribution of firms in Switzerland. Also a proper distribution of firm size was provided, with 312 small firms hav-ing nine or less employees, 136 medium-sized firms havhav-ing 10 to 49 employees and 57 large firms having 50 or more employees. A more detailed composition of the survey sample can be found in the appendix (cf. appendix 3). Besides, an overview of all survey questions that were collected via a standardized online questionnaire from amPuls Market Research between the 29th of April and the 5th of May, 2015 is provided in appendix 5.

3.2.2 Validity and reliability

When using secondary data, it is important to consider validity and reliability implications. Validity refers to the degree to which research findings accurately report what they intend to

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measure. One of the most fundamental issues that needs to be controlled for secondary data is the measurement validity (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2009, p. 273). The measurement validity refers to the question whether the data that one receives matches with the data that one needs. For this study this is the case. Even though the data also entails information that is not essential for this study, the survey includes the examination of firms’ demand for a busi-ness-to-business sharing platform, which is one of the main subjects of this study.

Another possibility to assess the validity of the provided data is to assess how the data was collected. The research institute showed to use stratified random sampling, which refers to sampling method where the population is divided into subsets according to specific varia-bles (which in the context of the research was the firm size). According to the firm size, the sample was selected randomly until a sufficient population size was reached (n = 505). This results in a high degree of data representativeness.

Reliability refers to the degree to which other researchers that undertake the same study would yield the same results (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2009, p. 600). Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2009, p. 276) state that “secondary data collected through a survey with a high response rate are also likely to be more reliable”. For the conducted survey, three quar-ter of all questions present a non-response rate (participants giving no answer) below five percent. This demonstrates that the survey was easily understandable and that the question design ensured minimal misinterpretations and high reliability.

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4 Research Findings

In the following section the research findings are presented. First, the findings from the semi-structured interviews will be presented focusing on experience with sharing, demand to share assets, underlying motives for firms and barriers for firms to share assets. Second, the find-ings from the survey will be demonstrated focusing on the renting and lending behavior of firms and the interest of firms towards a business-to-business sharing offer.

4.1 Semi-structured interviews

The analysis of the interview data revealed four main findings. First, firms already have expe-rience with sharing, which means firms already rent or lend assets but on a small scale. Se-cond, firms have a demand to share assets with other firms. Third, the data identifies a set of six underlying motives for sharing. Fourth, the data identifies a set of five barriers that pro-vide obstacles for firms to engage in sharing assets.

4.1.1 Experience with sharing

The interview data reveals that nine out of the eleven managers reported that the firms have been sharing assets with other firms in the past. In five cases the shared asset was office space, other than that also company cars, a canteen, IT developer human assets and equipment (chairs, special machines and event material) were mentioned. Often this kind of sharing ex-perience came up in between the interviews as the interviewee seemed to remember that they also did engage in sharing, as this case shows: “Ah, yes, of course, we also have a conference room in Zurich that we share with another firm, if required. Now, I remember”. This demon-strates that sharing often occurs in situations where it makes sense but there is no particular awareness about it. Often managers explained that other firms approached them because they needed something and knew that the other firm had it. Usually the experienced sharing activi-ties of the interview managers took place because of close network relationships, so affiliated firms or network effects of employees initiated the sharing activities. This can be supported by the statement of one manager who said “we started the canteen and then the neighbor firm found it a great idea and now they also join and then it’s just sharing”.

4.1.2 Demand to share assets

Ten out of eleven interview participants mentioned that they would likely or very likely use a platform to share assets with other firms if a reliable sharing infrastructure, as for example a well-functioning platform was in place. Moreover, ten out of eleven interview partners could also name own underutilized assets (conference rooms, company cars, production facilities,