Zipcar is a car-sharing service that offers urban residents, whether on an individual, business or university level, an alternative to car ownership. Its on demand and self-service model provides solutions to issues such as parking, congestion and transportation. This new model for automobile transportation is more cost-effective and hassle-free than owning, renting or leasing a car.
The development of new technologies, such as RFID (radio frequency identification), in addition to the birth of new user profiles, led to the emergence of Zipcar’s concept by creating an agent-artifact space.
The need was generated through the specific user profiles; people who live in cities and use public transport but need cars from time to time, or people who want to save money and don’t want to go through the hassle of owning a car, or even people who refrain from buying cars for environmental reasons.
You might be thinking, “but what’s so special about Zipcar? It’s just like another car rental company.” Well, what Zipcar did, is that it eliminated the intermediary relationship a customer usually has with a car rental company and replaced it with self-service accessibility to the car through the RFID card. Small change, big difference.
The way Zipcar works is quite simple:
Each new member that joins Zipcar’s community on the webpage http://www.zipcar.com/ receives a Zipcard powered by RFID technology. The member browses the cars available through the website by time, location, price or model. Once the car is chosen and booked, the member heads towards the parking spot and uses the activated Zipcard to lock and unlock the doors of the car. After the trip is over, the user returns the car to the same location.
The Zipcar concept is environmentally friendly and is changing the way people think about owning a car. Fewer cars on the road means less congestion, less pollution, less fuel consumption, less stress and fresher air. To top that, “over 40% of Zipcar members either sell their car or stop a car-purchasing decision.”
The development of new technologies, such as RFID (radio frequency identification), in addition to the birth of new user profiles, led to the emergence of Zipcar’s concept by creating an agent-artifact space.
The need was generated through the specific user profiles; people who live in cities and use public transport but need cars from time to time, or people who want to save money and don’t want to go through the hassle of owning a car, or even people who refrain from buying cars for environmental reasons.
You might be thinking, “but what’s so special about Zipcar? It’s just like another car rental company.” Well, what Zipcar did, is that it eliminated the intermediary relationship a customer usually has with a car rental company and replaced it with self-service accessibility to the car through the RFID card. Small change, big difference.
The way Zipcar works is quite simple:
Each new member that joins Zipcar’s community on the webpage http://www.zipcar.com/ receives a Zipcard powered by RFID technology. The member browses the cars available through the website by time, location, price or model. Once the car is chosen and booked, the member heads towards the parking spot and uses the activated Zipcard to lock and unlock the doors of the car. After the trip is over, the user returns the car to the same location.
The Zipcar concept is environmentally friendly and is changing the way people think about owning a car. Fewer cars on the road means less congestion, less pollution, less fuel consumption, less stress and fresher air. To top that, “over 40% of Zipcar members either sell their car or stop a car-purchasing decision.”
Now that’s innovation!
Mandy, congratulations on a great post. You took the time to actually look up Zipcar and figure out what's new about them: well done!
ReplyDeleteIf you wanted to take this a little further, I guess your next question could be "if this concept is so great, how come very few people I know do car sharing?" There are deep answers to be found here: and many have to do with network externalities. Zipcar would work really well if everybody used it; and it would be completely useless if it had only very few users. We would all switch if enough people had switched before us; so we are all waiting for each other to be an early adopter. We should talk a little bit about this in class, because it is relevant to many business projects.
Thank you very much!!! ohhh it's just what i wanted!!!
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