Mine, yours, ours and the power of access and utility

A month or two ago I watched Rachel Botsman’s TED talk on collaborative consumption and I was blown away by the movement because 1.) I think it is more important to have access than it’s to own, especially for things I’d use only once or twice in my life, and 2.) I am a proponent (or at least trying to be) of mindful consumption.

The term collaborative consumption describes the rapid explosion in traditional sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping reinvented through network technologies on a scale and in ways never possible before, according to Botsman and Rogers. It was coined by Ray Algar in 2007, but the last two years provided the perfect mix of circumstances for the movement to grow: the recession, increased awareness of personal environmental impact and the rise of mindful consumption, more people adopting a minimalist approach to life, and of course the boom of social networks which made sharing extremely easy. The movement is thriving across various sectors in three different systems: product service systems, redistribution markets, collaborative lifestyles (read more about the systems and some examples here).

WHAT’S MINE IS YOURS from rachel botsman on Vimeo.

For a while I couldn’t stop thinking about the tremendous opportunities that collaborative consumption can bring to our lives as consumers. Until yesterday, when it dawned on me that collaborative consumption messes up my job: people will buy less, and I do think we should buy less, but it also makes my job 1084694302 times harder because I get paid to convince people to buy more of Product X and Service Y. As if kids’ almost nonexistent attention spans weren’t enough.

So what do we do? How do we turn collaborative consumption into a fad and convince people to buy more because they don’t need to think about the environment, let alone save money? I am sure that’s the problem many marketing/advertising/sales folks are trying to solve now. *Mwahaha*

Honestly, I don’t think that collaborative consumption is a fad and I don’t think we have the power to turn it into such. But I do think that collaborative consumption provides tremendous opportunities for existing brands that were created to be profitable in a hyper-consumerism culture. Of course, new brands can incorporate the collaborative consumption movement into their business models from. So what are the opportunities?

Obviously, brands can be profitable by actively participating and facilitating activity in collaborative communities. Or even better, they can make money by starting swapping/renting services. Peugeot and Daimler already created their own services with Mu and car2go respectively.

Participation in collaborative consumption communities can also be used by brands to build trust, reputation and relationships with consumers, which is what everyone is trying to achieve today with transparency and engagement. Why? Because people are more likely to buy from brands they trust.

Last week Amazon announced the Kindle Lending Club, which doesn’t directly make money for Kindle, but provides utility to people and builds stronger relationships between the brand and consumers. When a participant in the club decides to buy a book, he/she is much more likely to buy it from Amazon than from Borders.

Brands can also remain profitable by making early adopters more loyal, which is what Best Buy is doing with its Buy Back program. The people at Best Buy understand that early adopters buy gadgets, play with them for a few months and toss them away in a closet/resell them/donate them/gift them and wait for the next new gadget. Best Buy is incentivizing them to buy all of their new toys at Best Buy. Of course, Best Buy can easily turn the program into a redistribution market scheme.

Or here’s even a better idea, companies can design products that are intended to be shared and re-used.

At the end it all comes down to providing utility. How are you as a company making my life easier? Can’t wait to see what big and small brands do with this shift in our culture.