Understanding product-service systems in a sharing economy context – A literature review

Abstract

The continuous development of the sharing economy calls for the attention of the design community. Practical knowledge of where, how and what roles designers could play, in developing the phenomenon out of its infancy into a full-grown alternative way of consuming and living with social and ecological benefits, remains absent. This article reports upon an exploration to match product-service system design with the sharing economy. A literature study was needed toward understanding the sharing economy from a designer’s point of view. A link was formed by focusing on different kinds of stakeholders. The result is a framework of five operable levels concerning PSS. One level concerns the product-service characteristics (0), while the other four concern levels of stakeholders mapped according to their involvement with the product-service. These four levels are the users (1), the ecosystem (2), the organization (3) and society (4). The framework results in an overview of workable parameters and leverage points: an attempt to support designers in understanding and designing PSS in a sharing economy context.