It is unknown if the sharing economy is changing our world, or if the digital economy is pushing the sharing economy forward. We’ll let the economist argue that one. For us marketers, we must be mindful of the trends and associated potential changes in user experience. 

NN/g offered 3 examples of the sharing economy making giant changes and disrupting markets and marketing. The 3 examples are Rent the Runway, Uber and Airbnb in an article titled Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries.  I found that the wardrobe rental service the most intriguing because it is being driven by cost, of course, and social media photography concerns. The problem with Clothing is that if you are not careful, you may end up in the same clothing in all your Facebook and Instagram photos. So, enter “Rent the Runway.”

A simple straightforward approach, better than any clothing retail outlet, helps you find the right clothing for the right event and then you rent it for a fraction of the costs. According to NN/g, users are offered a “convenient, seamless start-to-finish user experience.”  The sharing of clothing seems perfectly acceptable and a bit glamorous and solves a problem for those not wanting to caught in the same clothing for all the event social media photos.

The thought of sharing a room, sharing a car, sharing clothing is not new. What is new is how this is becoming the norm, not the outlier. It is one of the first lessons we learn in kindergarten. And it is a real trend more billions.