The access economy has emerged as a disruptive force in the business landscape, transforming traditional industries. This term describes a business model that focuses on the sharing, renting, or lending of goods and other resources among individuals and organizations, emphasizing temporary access and usage over permanent ownership. As the access economy continues to gain traction, understanding service experience in this context becomes crucial for researchers and practitioners. Drawing from the mobility sector, this chapter presents an overview of service experience in the access-based economy. We discuss the characteristics of nine access-based mobility services, differentiating traditional ones (e.g., car rental and leasing) from more recent and disruptive ones (e.g., micro-mobility services). We then compare these mobility services through the lens of eight key dimensions of service experience. Our analysis highlights how service experience is multifaceted, as customers perceive access-based services differently depending on their needs and attitudes. We conclude by looking at the future of service experience in the access economy paradigm by illustrating integrated mobility ecosystems that represent convenient, affordable, and customized solutions for individual mobility needs.

The access economy is a business model emphasizing temporary access and usage over permanent ownership, centered on the renting of products among individuals or organizations. Endorsed by the media, analysts, and researchers, access-based services, which allow customers to pay for the temporary use of a product without owning it, have gained popularity in various consumer and business-to-business industries, including mobility, fashion, and mechanical equipment. However, many providers of such services face difficulties attracting and retaining customers, scaling their businesses, and achieving profitability. Against this backdrop, the objectives of this research are, first, to understand how service providers in the access economy can create value for their customers to promote higher customer adoption and sustained retention rates, and second, to understand how collaboration within an ecosystem can facilitate value creation in the access economy. The thesis draws on consumer and business marketing literature to examine ownership and access dynamics. It uses the mobility service sector as a context to analyze the access economy. Four different types of access-based mobility are analyzed: carsharing, car subscriptions, e-scooter rental, and Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS). The papers appended to the thesis use different methods, including a systematic review, two case studies, a survey, and a conceptual study to address the research purpose. The analysis is conducted from three different perspectives: customer, service provider, and ecosystem, to provide a more comprehensive understanding of value creation in the access economy. The thesis contributes to the literature on the access economy by identifying various business models within access-based mobility and emphasizing the role of collaboration among ecosystem actors. Furthermore, it provides practical implications for service providers to improve their offerings and attract more customers.

Access-ekonomin är en affärsmodell som betonar tillfällig tillgång och användning framför permanent ägande, med fokus på uthyrning av produkter mellan individer eller organisationer. Accessbaserade tjänster, som gör det möjligt för kunder att betala för tillfällig användning av en produkt utan att äga den, har fått mycket uppmärksamhet i media och av analytiker och forskare. Fenomenet har blivit populärt inom många olika konsument- och företagsmarknader, inklusive mobilitet, mode och mekanisk utrustning. Många leverantörer av accessbaserade tjänster har dock svårt att attrahera och behålla kunder, skala upp sin verksamhet och uppnå lönsamhet. Mot denna bakgrund är syftet med denna forskning att för det första förstå hur tjänsteleverantörer i accessekonomin kan skapa värde för sina kunder för att främja högre kundadoption och bibehållen retentionsgrad, och för det andra att förstå hur samarbete inom ett ekosystem kan underlätta värdeskapande i accessekonomin. Avhandlingen utgår huvudsakligen från konsument- och företagsmarknadsföringslitteratur för att undersöka dynamiken mellan ägande och access. Den kontext som analyseras är transport- och mobilitetssektorn. Mer specifikt analyseras fyra olika typer av accessbaserad mobilitet: bildelning, bilabonnemang, uthyrning av elsparkcyklar och transport som tjänst (Mobility-as-a-Service; MaaS). I avhandlingens fem artiklar används olika metoder för att besvara forskningsfrågorna, såsom en systematisk genomgång, två fallstudier, en undersökning och en konceptuell studie för att ta itu med sitt forskningssyfte. Analysen genomförs ur tre olika perspektiv: kundens, leverantörer och ekosystemet för att få en djupare förståelse för värdeskapande i accessekonomin. Avhandlingen bidrar till marknadsföringsforskning om access-ekonomin genom att identifiera olika affärsmodeller inom accessbaserad mobilitet samt analysera den roll som samarbete mellan aktörer i ekosystemet spelar. Avhandlingen har även praktiska implikationer för tjänsteleverantörer som strävar efter att förbättra sina erbjudanden och attrahera fler kunder.

The last decade has brought the transport sector to the forefront of discussions on sustainability and digital innovations: practitioners, researchers, and regulators alike have witnessed the emergence of a wide diversity of shared mobility services. Based on a longitudinal case study of a regional Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) ecosystem in Sweden, constituted of a document analysis and 24 semi-structured interviews with 18 representatives from regional authorities, mobility service providers, and other stakeholders from the public and private sectors, this study examines the co-existing and competing institutional logics at play, identified as State logic, Market logic, Sustainability logic, Experimental logic, and Service logic. The analysis reveals that these institutional logics pertain to tensions in the collaboration within the ecosystem’s stakeholders in terms of: (1) finding a common vision and scope for MaaS, (2) establishing a sustainable business model, (3) triggering a behavioral change regarding car travel, (4) being able to find one’s role within the project and to consequently collaborate with other stakeholders, and (5) managing uncertainty through testing and experimenting innovative solutions, which ultimately yielded key learnings about MaaS and the shared mobility ecosystem and its stakeholders. These case study findings, based on an institutional logics framework, provide a novel perspective on emerging ecosystems, from which implications for MaaS developers and further research on shared mobility are drawn.