Classroom Companion: Business

17.3 · E-Commerce Markets

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Uber, and Airbnb. In fact, most of the sharing economies are C2C e-commerce. 
Advantages of C2C e-commerce are better utilization of resources and simpler 
trade opportunities for second-hand goods.
5
Consumer-to-Business (C2B) e-commerce enables private consumers to sell dig-
ital services online to professional companies. This is the most recent supple-
ment to e-commerce. One example of C2B e-commerce is a private consumer’s 
web page on which manufacturers and retailers advertise their products. A 
blogger may have many viewers on their blog, and manufacturers or providers 
may find the blog to be a simple and cheap way to reach a particular audience.
Box 17.1 The Sharing Economy
B2B
C2C
B2C
C2B
Consumer
Professional
business
. Fig. 17.5 Classification of e-commerce markets. (Authors’ own figure)
The sharing economy enables consumers 
to sell access to property, goods, money, 
or services to other consumers for a cer-
tain fee. Airbnb and Uber are two of the 
most well-known companies in the shar-
ing economy. The sharing economy is an 
example of C2C e-commerce since the 
trade takes place between two consumers.
A more precise term of the shar-
ing economy is access economy. This is 
because, strictly speaking, consumers do 
not share goods or services but pay for 
access to other consumers´ goods and 
services. The sharing economy may lead 
to better utilization of resources since 
homes, tools, or cars can be rented out 
when they are not used by the owner. An 
important requirement of sharing econ-
omy services is fast and reliable feedback 
from the consumers. This is required to 
build trust and reputation for those offer-
ing access to their assets and services.
The major difference between the 
sharing economy and traditional trade 
is that the providers are often individu-
als and not companies. In many coun-
tries, this means that a different set of 
laws and regulations govern the trade. 
The sharing economy is enabled by mul-
tisided platforms (see 
7
Chap. 
10
) and 
crowdsourcing (see 
7
Chap. 
7
). Sharing 
economy services use crowdsourcing as a 
production model and create value as a 
value network (see 
7
Chap. 
8
) or, more 
specifically, as a multisided platform. 
One example is Uber, in which people