Wanna share a Gucci?

As millennials have gotten into the driver’s seat, the consumer world is quickly shifting gears and moving from buying and owning tangible assets to sharing and renting the same.

The phenomenon of hailing a car of your choice has now extended to vacation rentals, and the renting of fashion & apparel, consumers durables and workspaces.

The rise of brands like Uber, Airbnb, Rent The Runway, WeWork, etc., has stimulated the sharing economy that allows today’s consumers--limited by money, resources, time and geography-- to attain temporary access to assets of their choice. With increased internet connectivity, smartphones and cloud, millennials can hunt down their desired assets with ease, transact seamlessly and ensure on-time delivery.

A neo-Indian professional is lesser glued to one location and smartly weighs the option of renting over buying, says Shubham Jain, CEO, GrabOnRent. In India, there are over 200 million internal migrants (Census 2011), a majority of who reside in rented accommodations and work in a market reeling under job insecurity. This primarily drives the behaviour to rent out other valuable products like furniture, consumer durables, apparel, jewellery, etc. Experts feel sharing/renting has also emerged as a lifestyle choice that gives consumers what they want without the investment of ownership.

Says brand expert Pavan Padaki, author of Brand Vinci: Decoding Facets of Branding, “The sharing economy is about to speed up to provide an experience which is convenient and cost-effective, powered by technology. It enables maximisation.”

According to Aditya Loomba, joint director, Eco Rent A Car, rental has become a way of life. “New-age consumers care about lower costs, instant access and flexibility and the idea of sharing an object seems more economical than owning.”

The tendency of millennials to disregard the idea of ownership is set to infuse a paradigm change in the workings of a brand, compelling brands to re-shape their services and offerings in order to thrive, feel experts.

To prosper in the sharing economy, says Loomba, brands will have to cater to those who prefer easy access over ownership. “Brands will need to primarily restructure their relationship with consumers by investing on positioning themselves correctly in order to get results. Their branding and marketing provisions should engage directly with useful consumer motivations,” says Loomba.

Sudeep Singh, chief evangelist and co-founder of collaborative workspace GoWork, says that in the future, brands that lend themselves to sharing will benefit the economy by reducing individual prices of goods, increasing demand (due to higher wear and tear) and simultaneously provide a complete experience to consumers.

Singh feels marketing strategies might change as instead of policies focused on wooing individuals, businesses would reach out to a group of consumers interested in sharing a common resource. "This can bring in more M&A opportunities for businesses who want to leverage on a shared economy without having to completely give up on their ownership model,” says Singh.

Another course of action for existing brands, say experts, may be to consider product-renting as a value-added service to their existing portfolio, like in case of brands like PepperFry, which have options for both buying or rentals (of furniture). “What will be worth noticing is how quickly businesses might witness a dent in their sales and thus shift momentum towards the needs of millennials who value flexibility over ownership,” says Jain.

But merely having a sharing option is not enough. Padaki says that brands will need innovative ways to offer personalised and unique experiences to differentiate themselves from the competition. “Consumers will be measuring, accepting or rejecting brands on metrics beyond product features or performance. A brand is judged on the kind of experience it delivers. To a consumer, the ‘’sharing’’ stops with the access to a product, as thereafter, the expectations for a personalised and superior user experience begins,” says Padaki. The user experience that a brand ultimately provides should be unique and not ‘’shared’’ by one and all.

TIME TO CO-OWN

• The phenomenon of hailing a car of your choice, be it in pool, has now extended to vacation rentals, and the renting of fashion & apparel, consumers durables and workspaces
   
• The rise of brands like Uber, Ola, Airbnb, Rent The Runway, WeWork, etc., has stimulated the sharing economy that allows today’s consumers—limited by money, resources, time and geography— to attain temporary access to assets of their choice