Changing Contours of the Sharing Economy

Introduction

What is the sharing economy? What do platforms actually do? Do they simply intermediate among market participants, or do they shape the market by actively intervening in it? To answer these questions, this report analyses the sharing economy in India through a study of e-commerce platforms.

Typically, the sharing economy was meant for voluntary sharing of resources (for eg. Couchsurfing) but has now transformed into powerful platforms shaping entire markets and even economies (Amazon, Uber, Airbnb etc.)

E-commerce in India makes up only 1.6% of retail sales as of today. But this market is going through significant changes, particularly through the impending merging of online and offline retail with Big Tech investments in retail networks. We are looking at a future where digital technology through e-commerce platforms can determine the future of all commerce in India.

This report looks at two phenomena. One is the tendency of e-commerce platforms to infrastructuralise: that is, to become ubiquitous, accessible and reliable in a way that resembles infrastructure. The other is the tendency of e-commerce to platformise existing infrastructure: that is, to capture, fragment, and privatise infrastructure.

Methodology

This report uses quantitative research in the form of two online surveys among e-commerce consumers (402) and third party sellers (68), conducted by the market research agency IRB. Both surveys focused on Amazon and Flipkart, the largest platforms in Indian e-commerce. An extended interview with an industry association of logistics service providers in India supplemented the primary research.

What are the implications of the potential infrastructuralisation of e-commerce in India?

Key findings:

• E-commerce adds value to third-party sellers’ business by providing access to new domestic markets (84.6% of Amazon sellers, 77.6% of Flipkart sellers) and improving price discovery (67.7% of Amazon sellers, 58.6% of Flipkart sellers changed their price after going online). It adds value to consumers with helpful product reviews (70% of consumers), lower prices (79% of consumers), and brand discovery (70% of consumers).

• E-commerce creates dependence, with a majority of sellers (92.3% of Amazon sellers, 84.5% of Flipkart sellers) making fundamental changes to their business practices to accommodate the rules of the platform or optimise operations on the platform. On average, sellers depended on Amazon for 50.4% of their total revenue and on Flipkart for 39% of their total revenue. Most sellers did not feel “locked in” to a particular platform, but the indication was that they were locked in to e-commerce in general. Most sellers also felt that the commission they paid platforms was low or adequate (93.9% for Flipkart, and 87.5% for Amazon), showing that e-commerce in India is still in early stages of market-building.

Policy recommendations:

Policymakers can choose among the three recommendations below. The choice must be such that it preserves the value-adds of e-commerce:

1. Allow concentrated e-commerce markets to continue, but then undertake one or more of the below:

• Disallowing the fusion of online and offline retail, or limiting the growth of this fusion under monopoly conditions;
• Regulating platforms to minimise chances of breakdown, because third-party sellers also have an interest in the platform not arbitrarily shutting down;
• Restricting the change of policies on platforms that may adversely affect platform participants without duly informing or consulting with the latter.

2. Maintain a minimum level of competition to allow switching between platforms for third-party sellers;

3. Promote public ownership or democratic control of e-commerce platforms to correspond with its infrastructural nature.

What infrastructure is e-commerce platformising?

Key findings:

• Platformisation of the marketplace is taking place through control over market conditions – e-commerce firms both regulate and act as participants in the marketplace, thereby exerting inordinate amounts of control over the marketplace.
  
  In the survey, most sellers did not have an issue with their appearance in search rankings. This indicates that despite the platformisation of the marketplace, it is perhaps premature to ask for algorithmic fairness in e-commerce; but algorithmic transparency is still needed. The survey also found that over 70% of consumers now search for goods they are buying directly on the platforms instead of using search engines. This makes it clear that if there were to be an issue with algorithmic fairness in search results in the future, it would affect nearly all of online product search, not just product search on a particular platform.
  
  Platformisation of the marketplace also takes place through private labels. Both Amazon and Flipkart use sales and other data generated on their platform to introduce their own products (private labels) for sale on the platform. This is egregiously anti-competitive as third-party sellers do not have access to the data generated by themselves and which is used to develop and market private labels. A majority of sellers (63.1% for Amazon and 58.6% for Flipkart) said that they saw platform-branded products as competitors to their own products.

• Platformisation of logistics is evident in over half of surveyed sellers (63.1% for Amazon and 53.4% for Flipkart) claiming one of the reasons for selling online is shipping provided by the platform. Sellers and consumers both preferred bundled services (sales and shipping provided together by the platform), showing that such platformisation of logistics is likely to continue. About 20-25% of the e-commerce logistics market is controlled by e-commerce firms’ own entities.

Policy recommendations:

• Third-party sellers must have access to the same sales data that is used by the platform to compete against them. Mechanisms for mandated sharing of non-personal data sharing should be built for e-commerce.

• Currently, platforms with FDI are effectively disallowed from selling their own products as well as third-party products. This separation of intermediation and sale has to be imposed on domestic e-commerce entities in multi-brand retail above a certain firm size as well. It should not remain limited to e-commerce entities receiving foreign investment.

• Third-party sellers should be able to know why their products have a certain rank in search results on the platform. Algorithmic regulation should include a minimum level of transparency about how algorithms rank results on e-commerce sites, with evolving standards for fairness.

• To regulate broader economic effects, lending rules in the logistics sector should account for the growing market share of e-commerce firms in logistics. 

Conclusion

Both tendencies underline the fact that e-commerce platforms affect markets and economic relationships outside their immediate scope. Regulations for e-commerce will have to preserve its value-adds to sellers and consumers while limiting its drawbacks.

About the Authors

Jai Vipra

Jai is a Senior Resident Fellow at the Centre for Applied Law and Technology Research (ALTR) at Vidhi. Her work focuses on the economics of platforms and its implications for regulation. Jai has previously worked at IT for Change and the National Institute for Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) in the areas of fintech, cryptocurrency, data commons, platforms and digital trade. Jai completed a Master of Public Policy from the University of Oxford.