REPAINTING THE BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS FOR PEER-TO-PEER SHARING AND COLLABORATIVE CONSUMPTION

Sharing Economy businesses have become very popular recently but there is little guidance available on how to develop the respective business models. We faced this problem during a consortium research project for developing a service for electric vehicle charging that adopts the paradigm of Peer-to-Peer Sharing and Collaborative Consumption (P2P SCC)—a specific branch of the Sharing Economy. We use Action Design Research (ADR) to develop an adapted version of the Business Model Canvas that is specifically tailored to the needs of P2P SCC business model development. The adapted canvas is then applied to develop a business model for the proposed service. The learnings from the development process are formalized into a set of generally applicable guidelines for the development of P2P SCC business models. The resulting guidelines and the adapted canvas provide guidance for both researchers and practitioners who want to either develop new or analyze existing P2P SCC business models

Customer satisfaction and firm profits in monopolies: A study of utilities

There is a growing body of evidence that customer satisfaction is predictive of firms’ future financial performance. However, studies of this relationship have been limited to competitive markets, and monopolistic markets have been largely ignored. This study explores the large and important utilities market and exploits its unique regulatory requirements that generate detailed and reliable operating and accounting data to examine the overall relationship between customer satisfaction and utility profit and establish the causal mechanisms involved. Using data from U.S. public utility firms, the authors show that even when customer satisfaction does not affect future revenues, it does positively predict future profitability by reducing utility firm operating costs. More specifically, they find that higher satisfaction reduces the costs of utility firm distribution, customer service, and sales and general administration expenses. These findings and additional post hoc evidence are consistent with the notion that customer satisfaction (1) generates efficiency-enhancing benefits for utility firms by lowering the direct and employee engagement costs of dealing with dissatisfied customers and (2) fosters greater trust and cooperation from customers. This study has important implications for both managers and regulators and provides important new insights for market-based asset theory and regulatory economic theory

Process Evaluation Insights on Program Implementation

This white paper has the explicit intention to draw lessons learned from the past 30 years of energy efficiency program evaluation in order to facilitate improved program design and implementation going forward. The discussion in this white paper is developed based on interviews with 43 individuals who are either practitioners or users of process and market evaluation. In addition, we obtained references to published materials from our contacts and reviewed conference proceedings dating from 1992 to 2008, which resulted in a review of nearly 100 articles or reports documenting the results of, or commenting on, process and market evaluations

Electric Vehicles: Rolling Over Barriers and Merging with Regulation

Electric vehicles are merging into the mainstream of transportation. Although the technology still comprises a small fraction of the current market, it ismorewidely available due to competitivepricing, technological improvements, and available state and federal incentives. The benefits of electric vehicles include reduced fossil fuel emissions and associated climate change mitigation, new independence from oil-driven policies in foreignmarkets and international relations, and potential opportunities for increasing and complementing renewable energy electric resources. The risks of widespread electric vehicle deployment are largely thought to involve potential impacts on existingutility generation,distribution, and transmission systems and how the costs of any needed changes to these resources should be allocated among customers, including those not utilizing the technology. This Article argues that the potential risks of increased electric vehicle deployment can be tempered by targeted involvement of the state agencies tasked with regulating electricity, for example in requiring utilities to take the lead on public education and in mandating certain rate structures that minimize load impacts. It provides a road map for state agencies to answer the novel legal and policy questions posed by traveling vehicles as electric load, and also examines how state involvement can actually mitigate the barriers to further growth in this nascent sector by allowing increased opportunities for competition, information gathering and dissemination, andminimization of unnecessary regulatory burdens, particularly at this early stage of deployment. This Article makes the case that, given the scope of potential environmental and social benefits, state agencies can and should actively explore and develop policy mechanisms to integrate electric vehicle growth into the electric regulation space