The first wave of the sharing economy was a misnomer. To look at some of the mature companies, among them the private Airbnb and the now publicly listed Uber, calling them companies based on “sharing” is simply false. After all, these companies don’t facilitate sharing as much as they facilitate selling access to assets or resources owned by individuals rather than the company itself.
Sharing 1.0: utilitarian, not social
In a 2015 essay, the marketing professors Giana M. Eckhardt and Fleura Bardhi, of Royal Holloway University of London and City University London respectively, suggest that in this early incarnation, the...