#zookal

Writing the same things over and over again can sometimes get a bit boring, so I've decided to add to my blog a "big word" or concept that relates to something that I have read in my readings. 

And today’s concept is…

COLLABORATIVE CONSUMPTION

In a nutshell, ‘Collaborative Consumption’ is when people share a good or service rather than owning the good or service themselves. A good example of this, which relates to a lot of Uni students, is renting a textbook rather than purchasing one.

There a number of different benefits of this – not only is it cheaper to share goods and services with a lot of willing people, but it is also more “green”. When I first heard of Collaborative Consumption, I didn’t think it would work. More so when I was younger, my mentality towards purchasing products was always “I want to buy things for myself and I don’t want to share”. I could never see the benefit in sharing a car, a bike, textbooks or clothes because I didn’t understand how it worked.

There are obviously some things that you can share that won’t work for everyone, so the concept isn’t exactly perfect, but it’s pretty darn close. For example, I couldn’t participate in a car-sharing program because I use my car so much, that it would be more expensive for me to pay the car sharing fees than to own my own car. With that said though, if I wasn’t living in suburbia and I was working throughout the week, this program would be very beneficial to me.

At the moment, I’m really enjoying textbook sharing. In my opinion, purchasing a $150 textbook for three months isn’t feasible. Yeah sure, you can sell the textbook afterwards for maybe a quarter of the price, but it’s really not worth it. There are so many companies that offer the ability to rent or share a textbook that is so much more attractive and really fits the needs of today’s time-poor/money-poor student. If you haven’t tried one of these and you’re still in Uni I really urge you to!