The Sharing Economy?

The Economist (magazine) recently had an article addressing what may be an emerging trend in developed economies:  the sharing or renting of purchased objects instead of expecting that every person or household will purchase and own one.

This article brought back memories of my childhood.  Most families had "only" one car, and it was not at all unusual to borrow a neighbor's auto in an emergency situation.  Now, we have more autos than licensed drivers in the U.S., and I cannot remember the last time a household auto was driven by a non-family member.

The magazine article cited the obvious example of Zipcar, a car sharing service where a member pays only for the time they actually use a car.  If you think about the money an auto costs you in insurance, depreciation, and loan interest versus the limited amount of time you spend driving, it is easy to imagine how cheap Zipcar can be if you don't need an auto to get to work.

Even beyond autos, the article cited emerging examples of sharing large-ticket items such as housing (renting out unused bedrooms or couches), and ride sharing.  One can easily think of other examples:  a street of homeowners chipping in to buy a rising lawnmower, communal vacation homes or RVs, or practically anything that requires a relatively large capital outlay but is used very little.

Now, the marketing question is what impact might this trend have on various sectors?  If it were to become widespread, the need for manufactured goods might well decline as more families share a given purchase.  But there might also be a need for better-made goods that are able to last under varied and increased use, and manufacturing those might require more labor and carry higher margins.  And one can readily see potential for this in many service areas; in fact, it may already be here with such offerings as cloud computing and VirtualpcConnect.

In the long run, this trend may reduce employment in raw manufacturing and duplicative service entities.  But this should be offset by an equally huge increased need for repair personnel, logistics experts, and the like.  As with many possible trends, the question is not so much predicting what will happen as making sure you and your company are flexible enough to not get trampled in whatever changes come.      

Airlines

For whatever reason (perhaps because 100+ college basketball teams have been flying all over the country this week so we can collectively be glued to our TVs), I have been thinking about air travel recently.

We will all probably admit that flying has become less and less fun as the ancillary fees, reduced service levels, packed planes, and less-than-competent TSA personnel and policies infest the industry.  Despite that, airlines have reacted differently to these varied pressures and created divergent experiences for passengers.  United is generally my preferred airline, primarily because of the rewards they gave me as I piled up miles shuttling between Ohio and Azerbaijan several years ago.  But, those tidbits aside, I have come to admire Lufthansa for their operational efficiency, cleanliness, and dedication to duty.

Which brings me to Turkish Airlines, which I had never flown before using them recently to fly round trip between Washington, D.C. and Dhaka, Bangladesh.  Each direction required a stopover in Istanbul to change planes (sidebar - if you ever have a layover at the Istanbul airport, bring plenty of cash and do not count on finding a functioning wifi).  And there were enough nuances overall to help me form a love-hate relationship with the airline.

Taking the negative side first, their planes were some of the dirtiest I have ever encountered.  Even beyond that, they were desperately in need of ventilation even before leaving the gate, and the stagnant air only got worse during the flights (two of my legs were about 6 hours each, and the other two about 13 hours each).  And, none of the four long-hauls had movie options for passengers, making entertainment problematic in an era when there is no longer sufficient room between seat rows to comfortably accommodate firing up a laptop.  

But Turkish Airlines did score spectacularly on one factor.  International passengers transiting through Istanbul have to re-book their boarding passes and clear Turkish customs regardless of where they originated.  On my trip to Dhaka this was accomplished professionally at the airline transit desk, leaving me with over 5 hours to kill before departure.  On my return flight, landing in Istanbul about 3 a.m., the clerk at the transit desk remembered me from the first flight two weeks earlier (he probably didn't, but at the very least the airline's data systems flagged him accordingly as I was standing at his counter).  Because this layover was over 11 hours, he offered me a hotel room in Istanbul, courtesy of the airline, and all it would cost me was $25 for a visa to get into Turkey.

Everything worked like clockwork - it took 2 minutes to purchase the visa, and there was about a 20-minute wait for the airport shuttle to take us into downtown Istanbul.  We were each given a single room in the 3-star hotel, free breakfast, and transportation back to the airport at 10 the next morning.  The hotel was clean, the breakfast delicious, and early-morning views of Istanbul on the (Friday) sabbath made me wish I had a couple of days to spare.

So thank you, Turkish Airlines, for making a not-so-simple gesture that totally distinguished you from any other airline on which I have flown.  In the marketing game that I play, that makes all of the difference.