n. An economic model in which consumers use online tools to collaborate on owning, renting, sharing, and trading goods and services.
2010
From social lending (Zopa), to car sharing (Zipcar) to co-working (HubCulture), to peer-to-peer rental (Zilok), to collaborative travel (Air BnB), to neighborhood sharing schemes (WeCommune), … people are already using the principles and dynamics of Collaborative Consumption — organized sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting and swapping through online and real-world communities — to get the same fulfillment and benefits of ownership with reduced personal burden and cost and as well as lower environmental impact.
2008
As Zipcar (and GoLoco.org) founder and former CEO, I totally agree. In fact, I've given a number of lectures over the last four months on this topic. I think of it as "consumption 2.0" or "collaborative consumption."
2007 (earliest)
Collaborative consumption is a phenomenon that is sweeping the globe. … Consumers collaborate on-line to exchange goods and services through web sites such as eBay and Gumtree, share hospitality experiences through Trip Advisor (featuring five million reviews and rising) and pool their collective purchasing power on www.12thshare.com to co-own, in a process known as fractional ownership, high-value assets such as prestige cars, property and airplanes.
I spent time on the subway this morning thinking about what a new economic model might look like and what might have any chance of succeeding and came up with ZipCar Capitalism. Treehugger calls it Rentalism but that doesn’t ring well in my ears.