Roundtable contemplates how sharing economy fits into the Chinese market
The growth of the so-called sharing economy — such businesses as Uber and Airbnb, where an online platform connects independent service providers with consumers — is catching the attention of the local Chinese community, with some looking at ways to replicate it in Asia.
At a roundtable at UBC earlier this month, 50 Chinese academics and corporate leaders, most with links to mainland China, discussed the merits of creating similar businesses to facilitate commerce between Asia and Canada.
Zhang Jiawei, a visiting scholar at SFU’s Jack Austin Centre for Asia-Pacific Business Studies (and a founder of the Grizzly Bear Institute, a local Chinese-Canadian think-tank), organized the gathering with the aim of helping Chinese small businesses sell products directly to Canada, and vice-versa.
“It’s always a topic that interests our community, and it’s never just theoretical discussions,” said Zhang, who noted this was the third such roundtable hosted by Grizzly Bear, made up of ChineseCanadian scholars at UBC, SFU and Kwantlen.
“There’s always a practical element, a new business that we introduce. Now, these projects we put forward are not always successful, but it will always carry a business logic that fits the trends that we are seeing in our community.”
While the discussion broached the success of Uber and Airbnb, the practical case at the event was co-sponsor Freelife Solutions, a Richmond-based company seeking to be a marketing and sales link between Chinese sellers and the Canadian market, as well as for Canadian sellers looking to access China.
The Freelife portion of the presentation was essentially a sales pitch, aimed at the Chinese-Canadian businesses in attendance to create an economy of scale for the fledgling online retail platform — a kind of Chinese Amazon.com that targets specific demographics on social media.
Much of Freelife’s projects are still in early stages, although one — the Canada Channel, which is embedded in Chinese highspeed rail’s free Wi-Fi services to promote Canadian goods — is already online and “aiding Canadian companies with limited resources to enter China’s retail scene.” Freelife’s goal, spokesman James Dean Waryk said, is to help Chinese businesses get access to North America.
“Basically, what we do is we destroy those barriers, so that thousands, millions of people can do business in North America and Asia,” said Waryk, who is also an entrepreneurial consultant based in Vancouver. “We are embracing the sharing economy, we have the network, we have the people, and we are ready to go.”
Scholars at the roundtable, however, noted that it isn’t as easy as setting up a platform to achieve the same results that Uber or Airbnb have seen. SFU associate professor Li Jing said that companies (like Freelife) that are looking to set up new platforms may face challenges from other players looking at the same market.
Li added that what may be the make-or-break factor will be consumer trust — and that is why issues such as privacy, security and customer satisfaction will be vital in any new sharing economy platform.
“The most valuable thing for a major platform is the trust of users, which is also the hardest to get,” she said.
“Unless your word of mouth is really strong, the vast majority of your potential customers won’t have trust in a brand new platform. So how do you gain that trust is crucial.”
The most valuable thing for a major platform is the trust of users, which is also the hardest to get.