The Business Model of Digital Platforms for the Sharing Economy: Intensive Case Study Methodology for Rover.com Pet Boarding Platform

Abstract

The sharing economy has allowed idle resources to be used again and is known as a model for the new economy. Advances in network technology have allowed the scale of the sharing economy to be expanded through digital platforms. To our best knowledge, no studies in the literature have explored a pet boarding platform for the sharing economy. This research selected the emerging pet care industry as its scope and took the Rover.com pet boarding digital platform, with the highest market share in the world, as the research object for an intensive case study. Three types of secondary data analysis were used: industry profile analysis, case information, and papers and journals. The business model and value proposition of the platform summarizes the key to the success of digital platforms, which is expected to be helpful to entrepreneurs who want to create a sharing economy marketplace. The research results showed that the sharing economy needs to use digital platforms as a matching intermediary between supply and demand to establish a personal-to-personal transaction pattern and it also needs digital platforms to establish a sense of trust and a guarantee mechanism for participants in the sharing economy. For the digital platform to be profitable, it must identify the platform’s unique value proposition and business model, and set up monitoring of transaction parties and evaluation functions, as well as insurance systems and digital platform IT support.