Uberisation

Details

Supervisors

Gailly, Benoît

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences de gestion

Abstract

Since 2008, the economy has witnessed the emergence of platform-based companies, enabled by the development of technology, with Uber and Airbnb as the pioneering firms. Moreover, people are more connected than ever, thanks to the smartphone and social networks revolutions that have helped the development of the platforms. ‘Uberisation’, commonly refers to platform-based business model, is therefore recent and has been subject to scientific papers, even though it still lacks perspective and definitions. Therefore, the first part is dedicated to a literature review in order to find the different dimensions of this emerging phenomenon. Based on this review, we sustain it by the case studies of Uber and Airbnb. In this section, we explain the origin of these firms and their evolution as well. Following this, we select a definition of the concept, based on the dimensions. In the second part, we analyze the factors of susceptibility of an industry to adopt the model and the factors of success and risk. In fact, many existing actors start to wonder about this revolution in order to stay up to date. Following this, we draw a first grid of analysis, solely supported by theoretical papers. In the third part, we apply our findings from the first two parts of the thesis to semi-structured interviews, to compare what we found in the theory with the opinions of people working for traditional firms with an interest in ‘uberisation’, and to build a more complete and robust grid of analysis. The selection of the interviewees is based on their belonging to traditional firms, the relevance to ‘uberisation’ and their accessibility, making it a sample of convenience. Lastly, we end the thesis with a conclusion that summarizes the different steps we have been through and what came up from the three parts. We also describe the limits encountered during the writing of the thesis.