New consumer behaviour – new business opportunities. SocialCar in the sharing economy

The sharing economy has rapidly gained in importance over the last few years, affecting traditional market sectors including mobility and logistics, retail and consumer merchandise, tourism and leisure.

Collaborative consumption, rethinking the value of ownership, consumers becoming service providers are factors which herald in a paradigm shift in global consumer behaviour.

Recent business pairings such as KLM and Airbnb, Toyota and Uber, Volswagen and Gett, GM and Lyft reveal the readiness of big corporations to embrace the change.

But is the European small business ready yet? Europe is still missing an adequate regulatory framework, and the small business sector keeps a safety distance.

SocialCar, a European research project funded by Horizon 2020, pursues the mission to kick-start business models in the passengers’ mobility sector capitalising on the sharing economy. The project develops a user-oriented platform for planning, booking and integrated payment combining carpooling and other on-demand services with regular collective transport, in an effort to mainstream the concept of a public-private co-modal urban transport. Business analysts devise concepts for viable and bankable service models which can ripple out across Europe.

Can this become a role model for other sectors as well?

SocialCar is about sharing and collaborative development. Software engineers, business analysts, transport experts, carpooling providers and public authorities from Italy, Greece, United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Poland, Switzerland, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Hungary, Spain and Belgium are collaboratively inventing a unique solution made in Europe.

The SocialCar community is growing, and now it’s time for you to have a say. We look forward to meeting you in Brussels!

Register here for the event!

Further information will follow soon.