Sharing economy and incumbents' pricing strategy: The impact of Airbnb on the hospitality industry

Paolo Roma, Umberto Panniello and Giovanna Lo Nigro

International Journal of Production Economics, 2019, vol. 214, issue C, 17-29

Abstract: In this paper, we examine how the emergence of sharing economy platforms influences incumbents' price responses. Grounding on the literature on price reactions to new entrants and on the unique characteristics of the sharing economy, we argue that the effect of the penetration of the sharing economy on incumbents' prices is not straightforward, and actually depends on the type of incumbents as well as certain product/service offer characteristics. Indeed, relying on a large sample of hotel price offerings from the Italian market, we find that the effect of the growing relevance of the sharing economy (exemplified by Airbnb) on incumbents' prices depends on the type of incumbents (low/medium-end versus high-end hotels) as well as on the accommodation period (weekend versus weekdays), and thus on the type of consumers looking for accommodation. Specifically, low/medium-end incumbents set lower prices in geographical areas where sharing economy has a higher penetration, but this occurs only for weekend accommodation search. In contrast, high-end incumbents tend to set higher prices in geographical areas where sharing economy has a higher penetration, irrespective of the accommodation period. We discuss the important implications of our findings for incumbents, sharing economy platforms, consumers, and policy makers.

Keywords: Sharing economy; Pricing strategy; Revenue management; Hospitality industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925527319301197
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:proeco:v:214:y:2019:i:c:p:17-29

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2019.03.023

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Production Economics is currently edited by Stefan Minner

More articles in International Journal of Production Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().