The sharing economy trend

The sharing economy term may be still alien to some people, but currently more and more businesses, in Spain and around the world, are adapting their business ideas to this philosophy. Its growth has been explosive in recent years and nowadays there are more than 500 businesses in Spain based on this principle. But, what exactly is?

In a communication of the European Commission in 2016, we find the following definition: "business models which allow activities through collaborative platforms that create an open market for temporary use of the goods or services which are normally provided by private individuals. It involves three categories of actors: service providers, users and intermediaries. The last ones, through an online platform, connect the other two agents and facilitate the transactions between them".

In other words, the basis of the sharing economiy lies in the exchange of goods and services between users, and they no longer need to own an asset, but only have access to it.

At the moment, we do not have a lot of data of this sector. The same report of the European Commission shows that the revenue from this kind of platforms and collaborative suppliers in the European Union are about 28,000 million euros for 2015. In addition, it is expected that this sector could represent a rise among the 160,000 and 572,000 million euros for the European Union. At the same time, the consulting firm PWC estimated in 2016 that the market for this type of business offers a potential opportunity of $ 335,000 million by 2025.