What managers should know about the sharing economy

The phrase 'sharing economy' has grown to become an umbrella term for a wide range of nonownership forms of consumption activities such as swapping, bartering, trading, renting, sharing, and exchanging. In spite of such a wide spectrum of behaviors, there is limited practical knowledge about how individual sharing economy practices should be managed. Building on a framework that categorizes sharing economy practices based on their detailed characteristics, this article provides extensive recommendations to managers and practitioners. We argue that each practice is a hybrid of sharing and exchange, and provides several recommendations based on the nature of each practice's offering. (C) 2016 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.