Hungarian residents’ openness for sharing-based services along socio-demographic factors

Abstract

THE AIMS OF THE PAPER

Sharing economy has been developing dynamically in recent years, gaining ground in certain industries. The new phenomenon can be approached in several ways: from sociological point of view, which draws attention to the changing behavior of consumers, from economic point of view, which has a competitive incentive effect on the innovative solution and from management science point of view that draws attention to a new business model. In our study, consumers and potential Hungarian consumers were examined focusing their openness to these innovative services, along with socio-demographic factors.

METHODOLOGY

We examined consumers in the framework of a Hungarian national representative sample. After data retrieval, we examined how socio-demographic factors influence the openness to sharing-based services using cross-table method, and examined the impact of different Internet usage patterns on openness using factor analysis.

MOST IMPORTANT RESULTS

Almost 40% of people are open to using a sharing-based service. From socio-demographic point of view students and active workers, people with minor child, younger generations, metropolitans, people with higher education and higher income are more open to using this sharing-based services. In addition, four factors were identified based on respondents’ online activities: entertainment, complex content creation, and community and web-browsing-email activities.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Based on our results, openness to sharing services is very high, but there are still relatively few users. Based on the defined target segments, sharing platform operators can better target potential users to increase their usage. At the same time, in the case of several industries, it may be crucial for companies operating in the traditional business model to protect their own consumer base, and our results point to the most vulnerable target groups.

Acknowledgements: The research has been financed by Magyar Telekom Plc.