The sound of "rising" in the sharing economy has aroused heated discussions among experts——
Price increase is not the only way out for the sharing economy
Our reporter Li Yanzhen
Recently, the phenomenon of frequent price increases in shared economy fields such as shared bicycles and power banks has attracted attention, reflecting the difficulties and bottlenecks faced by the current development of the sharing economy.
Relevant experts said in an interview with a reporter from the Economic Daily that the original intention of the sharing economy is to improve the efficiency of the use of idle resources, and low prices are an important factor in attracting consumers.
The continuous price increase of the sharing economy has deviated from the original intention and has become a leasing economy.
Why does the sharing economy have to increase prices, and why is it becoming more and more expensive?
Ding Hong, a researcher at the Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the current barriers to entry for the sharing economy in my country are relatively low. Excessive market competition has led to a sharp increase in business operating costs. There is an urgent need to increase prices to hedge costs.
Chen Wenfeng, a researcher at the Hunan Academy of Social Sciences, also said that in order to compete, sharing platform companies often adopted competitive strategies such as "burning money" and "subsidies" in the early stage, mainly relying on the capital advantage of venture capital.
However, when the sharing platform company obtains a stable passenger flow and creates a certain degree of stickiness for users, the venture capital behind it is eager to achieve "retirement" through the company's profitability and listing.
Therefore, only by sacrificing the interests of users and increasing prices can the company achieve the business scale and profit targets required by venture capital.
Why have difficulties and bottlenecks encountered in the development of the sharing economy today?
Wen Xingqi, deputy director of the China Research Center for Industry-University-Research Cooperation at Wuhan University, told reporters that the first shared economy is the lack of a sustainable business model.
At present, most products or services in the sharing economy still lack a very clear business model, it is difficult to form in-depth exploration of specific market segments, and customer stickiness is weak.
To a large extent, this has led to low-level price wars and subsidy wars among enterprises, and the industry has shown a "barbaric growth" situation.
The second is the lack of market foundation in some areas of the sharing economy.
The sharing economy has specific requirements on the market consumption demand and consumption scenarios and costs of products or services, and not all products or services are suitable for sharing.
Due to the lack of a market foundation, many sharing economy sectors have bleak and unsustainable operations.
The third is that the industry rights protection mechanism and supervision mechanism are not sound.
At present, the government and industry have not established a regulatory system for information disclosure, competition regulation, and standardized management in the sharing economy. Consumers have low trust in the sharing economy, which reduces market participation, which also makes the development of the sharing economy lose the “sharing” "The mass base."
It is worth noting that with the collapse of a large number of companies in the same field, more and more sharing economy fields show a dominant feature, which means that these companies have strong market monopoly characteristics, and they can completely increase the price to Above normal levels, this will undoubtedly have a negative impact on market order and consumer welfare.
How to promote the sharing economy onto the track of benign sustainable development?
Cai Zhibing, associate professor of the Economics Department of the Central Party School (National School of Administration), said that on the one hand, the government must strengthen supervision and guide these companies to legally use their market positions and set reasonable market prices; when the products and services of the sharing economy are significantly higher than the normal market prices , The government should strengthen supervision and interviews with enterprises.
On the other hand, it is necessary to guide these companies to return to the origin of the sharing economy and encourage them to use the sharing economy products to develop other secondary products for profit, instead of directly gaining huge profits through shared products.
Guo Liyan, a researcher at the China Institute of Macroeconomics, suggested that, one is to encourage sharing economy platform companies to make greater efforts to optimize supply, iteratively upgrade products and services, and expand their own development space.
Enterprises should provide more abundant content, more convenient and personalized service supply, focus on the unsatisfied needs of people's livelihood for a better life, focus on innovation, and develop new demands by increasing high-quality supply.
The second is to strengthen the effective supervision system, improve service standards, improve security and emergency protection, and emphasize the main responsibility of platform companies to protect consumer data security, and better protect consumers' rights and interests.
Maintain the order of fair competition in the market, and punish the abuse of market dominance to eliminate or restrict competition.
The third is to strengthen industry self-discipline and standardization system construction, on this basis, further relax market access, give the sharing economy more room for innovation and market application, encourage orderly expansion, guide the concentrated development and use of idle resources, and avoid disorder Expansion to reduce idleness and waste of resources.
Experts said that the sharing economy is a brand-new economic form in the era of the Internet and information technology, which provides a new experience for people's consumption methods and produces significant economic and social benefits.
Although the sharing economy has encountered some difficulties in its development and faced development bottlenecks, it is necessary to deeply understand the essential characteristics and internal laws of the sharing economy, and through the joint efforts of the government, industry and platform companies, consolidate the foundation of the industry, innovate business models, and strengthen industry supervision. Optimize the development environment, promote the sharing economy to break through the bottleneck, and achieve healthy and sustainable development.
Our reporter Li Yanzhen