Customer's New Voice: Extreme Relevancy and Experience through Volunteered Customer Information

CHAPTER 7 Horizontal Industry Innovators

Consumer-direct knowledge markets are the evolution of the digitization of our personal world, and the corresponding commercial world has created distinct sharing markets and economies. The following are among the major markets:

1. Collaborative consumption
2. Quantified self
3. Wearable technology
4. Mobile health
5. Internet of Things (individual and industrial)
6. Sensor technology
7. Virtual reality
8. Augmented reality

Collaborative Consumption (Sharing Your Stuff)

Collaborative consumption is an economy where individuals share access to products or services, rather than purchase their own products or service delivery. Most often they are enabled by technology and communities.

The most prominent names leveraging the collaborative consumption models are eBay and Craigslist. Emerging marketplaces of collaborative consumption include social lending (e.g., Zopa), peer-to-peer accommodations (e.g., Airbnb), peer-to-peer travel (e.g., LocalGuiding), peer-to-peer tasks (e.g., TaskRabbit), travel advisers (e.g., Locish), car sharing (e.g., Zipcar, RelayRides), commuter-bus sharing (e.g., RidePal, GoGet CarShare), and parking space sharing (e.g., ParkatmyHouse).

The concept of collaborative consumption is not new. It is the emergence of the enabling technologies that has given it a new form and function. Further renewal of collaborative consumption stems from the financial crisis of 2007–2010, which incentivized individuals to rethink how they could maximize ...