Collaborative Consumption versus Nike.

Collaborative consumption is a business model that describes methods of sharing, lending trading and bartering in the developing world. ‘What’s mine is yours is a resource book made for people looking to expand a business or create a business using this model. I looked at a journal called ‘Beyond Zipcar- Collaborative Consumption’ by the same authors of the book ‘What’s mine is yours.’ The journal briefly talks about some of the services that have become available after the great success of the company Zipcar. Zipcar is a company that’s all about sharing. You pick up a car from a fleet of many cars dotted around a city. You drive the car for the time you paid for, then leave the car at another station. This means Zipcar are offering goods as a service rather than trying to sell them as products. The use of a car rather than the ownership then the use of a car. The journal I looked at however described the parts within collaborative consumption.

People work to have collaborative lifestyles. The idea of a collaborative lifestyle is to have knowledge of using your own skills, space, time and money to make a profit. Some concepts that people have came up with are companies like ‘Landshare’, the idea of renting land from someone who doesn’t use the space so that you can run your own smaller garden or allotment; or a company like ‘ParkAtMyHouse’ a collaborative company that allows people to park there cars in other peoples unused driveways. Some of these ideas seem very underground to me. These are the kind of things that aren’t very socially acceptable. ‘Can I park my car in your drive?’ isn’t what you expect to be asked or paid money for on a regular basis. Looking at the statistics for the companies success though seems to suggest it works. ‘Landshare was created to bring keen growers and landowners together. The movement now includes more than 50,000 people’ An excerpt taken from ‘Landshare.net’ a website pioneered by famous food writer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. This collaboration has helped to stop fish being dumped back into the sea after being caught. All that is required for a collaborative lifestyle are the factors that make it work and confidence in the company the person is committed to.

Another part of collaborative consumption that is talked about in the journal is the topic of redistribution markets. These are markets that profit on the reuse or recycle of damaged or expired goods. From my understanding I believe I once bought a refurbished item, a coffee machine from ‘Amazon.com’ for a fraction of its recommended retail price because it had been removed from its box and used as a display demo. ‘Amazon’ make money from selling items that people don’t want anymore; books being there most popular sales, but the list carries on from electronics to clothing, all being bought and recycled. Eventually the world was going to adopt this scheme anyway. There is no way the planet would continue to have resources left if we kept consuming in the way we have over the past centaury. Years ago fridges were purposely built with motors in them that weren’t meant to last any length of time so that they would break and you’d have to replace it with another more expensive fridge thus giving the company more money. This is the perfect summing up of a ‘throwaway society’. The idea instead was to create companies with sustainable commerce. The journal highlights four points for successful redistribution markets- ‘reduce, re-use, recycle and repair.’ Websites like ‘Craigslist’ and ‘Ebay’ have been specially set up with these thoughts in mind; If you don’t need it give it to someone who can benefit from it and they give you money in return.

Nike is a company that profits from a different kind of marketing. At nike it’s all about the product and one company gaining from selling products. The second study I did was on a book called ‘Nike Culture: The sign of the swoosh’ by Robert Goldman. This book was about the history of the company and more particularly the ways that Nike sell their products. ‘Nike and its advertising agency have built their reputation on advertising that it is both distinctive and avoids claims of packaged individualism’

This is much the same principle as the marketing of collaborative consumer markets; effectively giving the consumer confidence in a company that works without taking a direct role in running the company. The only thing you are required to do is buy the product. Nike make money because of the trust we have in products. The main thing that draws a person in when looking for sportswear is the distinctive ‘swoosh’ that Nike use as their logo. ‘In 1993, Nike spent roughly $250 million on advertising, marketing and promoting the Nike brand. The visibility of Nike’s ‘swoosh’ sign has been largely a function of Nike being the current leader in a competitive advertising system geared to producing and maintaining the highest sign values’ The book states that because of campaigns like this the company grew. A survey of 200 middle class teenagers was taken to find what their top five favourite brands were. Nike led the list with a score of 38% in front of Reebook, Adidas, and Converse. In 1997 Nike had grossed a profit of over $9 billion in its footwear and sportswear businesses. At this point they held 43.6% of Americas footwear market. Nike works because it is representative of a new stage of capitalist institutions rooted in all sorts of cultural economies. Nike appeals to all ages. The company is more than a sports and footwear producer but instead a movement that people want to be part of.

Both of these forms of marketing work. I feel that collaborative consumption is much more efficient though. Collaborative consumption is efficient and valuable, to everyone, not just one person. An outlook on the state of our planet suggests that collaborations could offer so much more. ‘Landshare’ has a group of 46,000 people who are collaborating to stop the dumping of fish back into the North Sea. Programmes like this could see great change in our future quality of life. It is no longer feesable to live in a throwaway society. Ultimately when someone purchases a pair of nike trainers they will use them until they are obsolete or ruined. What if there was a company that took old shoes and recycled the parts from them to make other things? The book and the journal both share a lot of the same ideas about the development of companies. I found the journal far more valuable though. There were no intentions of insatiability or dominance within the journal but many strategies for creating a working business if creating a for-profit business was the thing for you.