Longitudinal, qualitative-empirical insights into the development of carsharing

Abstract

Although sharing has for a long time been a well-established principle to deal with resource shortages on a private level, the important impact of establishing sharing as business principle has only recently been highlighted by business practice as well as research. Sharing can be considered a relevant means to easily enhance resource endowment – nevertheless, making use of sharing in a business context calls for the employment of new, innovative business models. In this paper, we have a deeper look at the evolvement of carsharing business models as we present insights from a longitudinal qualitative-empirical study of six carsharing providers. We employ a process perspective to dig deeper into firm-level influence factors that are core elements of strategic renewal and drivers of subsequent business model innovation. Additionally, we show how strategic activities of the different market players are linked to each other and how this interplay affects our case firms. Our paper sheds light on the strategy renewal-business model innovation interface and contributes to strategy process literature and to business model innovation research.