A current awareness resource for students & faculty members in Business & Economics

On researching carsharing consumers...

Published September 5, 2014 by Mark Bodnar

As I mentioned in my last post on researching online daters, one of the marketing classes is doing some very focused primary research this term. One of the topics they will be working on will be car sharing services such as Car2Go and Zipcar. As with most primary research projects, there's a strong need for some secondary material to understand the context, demonstrate the need for further research, and gather some methodology details. This post is meant to support students who choose the car sharing topic, but as with any of our posts, it may also prove useful for those who need a topic to guide their exploration of our many resources. And, as with my last post, these suggestions are in no particular order. Nor are they exhaustive -- I'm just hoping they help you get started. I'm sure that by the end of the project you'll have unearthed far more resources and will be an expert on the topic. :-)

1. For a transportation topic, my first choice is almost always TRID: the TRIS and ITRD database.

Start with a broad keyword search for : carsharing or carshare or rideshare or ridesharing. Possibly also add in the names of some key companies in the industry with another OR to expand your results further. Even after limiting to just English-language articles, you should have over 2000 hits. Restricting (with an AND) your results to those that have words such as "Consumer" in the abstract or title might be worth trying.

Note that we own most - but not all - of the publications covered in this database. However, even for the publications that we own, the links provided in TRID will only work if you are on campus. If you're researching from off campus, just add http://proxy.lib.sfu.ca/login?url= to the front of the article-direct URL they give you. For instance, this link is in one of my initial results: http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/15568311003717181 Adding in the bit above will make it into a link that you can use from off campus: http://proxy.lib.sfu.ca/login?url=http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/15568311003717181. Or you could just look up each journal in our catalogue and navigate your way in from there.

2. GEOBASE

GEOBASE will have quite a bit of overlap with TRID, but it's still worth a quick look. There don't appear to be perfect subject terms (i.e., "Controlled Vocabulary") for this topic in GEOBASE, but using keywords such as the ones listed above for TRID will be a good start.

Note that even older articles (here or in other databases) may have useful information. Their findings may be outdated, but you might still learn from their methodologies: How did they define their variables? Were their results flawed due to methodology issues that you could improve on?

3. PsycInfo

PsycInfo seems to have a little bit on this topic, but I'm not sure the "consumer personality" aspect is as well covered as we might want. See below for a couple articles that came up in most of my exploratory searches:

- Bardhi, F., & Eckhardt, G. M. (2012). Access-based consumption: The case of car sharing. Journal Of Consumer Research, 39(4), 881-898. doi:10.1086/666376
- Katzev, R. (2003). Car sharing: A new approach to urban transportation problems. Analyses Of Social Issues And Public Policy (ASAP), 3(1), 65-86. doi:10.1111/j.1530-2415.2003.00015.x
- Van Lange, P. M., Van Vugt, M., Meertens, R. M., & Ruiter, R. C. (1998). A social dilemma analysis of commuting preferences: The roles of social value orientation and trust. Journal Of Applied Social Psychology, 28(9), 796-820. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1998.tb01732.x

As you know, sometimes it just takes a couple solid articles to add some momentum to your search. What subjects were used on those items? Are any of their cited references useful? Have newer (and likely related) articles cited them in PsycInfo or Google Scholar?

4. Passport GMID

As with the online dating topic, car sharing doesn't quite match Passport's usual strengths (fast moving consumer goods), but since Passport does deal with global consumer trends in general, it's still worth trying. Experimenting with terms such as carsharing or carshare or rideshare or ridesharing or zipcar... gets me reports like:

Uber Challenging: A Transport App Impacting City Life
Collaborative Consumption is the Future as it Continues to Deepen and Spread
Travel Social: Why Peer-to-Peer and the Sharing Economy Should be on the Radar
Collaborative Consumption: Savvy North American shoppers Trade Up, Rent Out and Share

5. Books, eBooks, and Reports in the SFU Library Catalogue

It appears that the subject terms "Car Pools or Ridesharing" will catch most of the material we have that is substantially on the car sharing topic.

6. Digital Dissertations

It seems that quite a few new PhDs around the world have dug into this topic. Check out this rough search I did where I looked for some key terms in the title or abstract (the "Anything but fulltext" search field).

Dissertations may be a bit daunting at first, but the fact that their references will usually be almost exhaustive (an amazing treasure chest full of resources pre-identified for you!), and that they often include any actual surveys or focus group questions make them particularly valuable for this type of research.

7. Coming at the topic from a different angle: Both our SimplyMap and our Print Measurement Bureau (PMB) Category Reports databases have Psychographic cluster data for Canadian consumers.

The PMBs, for example, have data on those it describes as the "Car is a tool" group. Apparently, "the main concerns of this group were practicality and efficiency. The vehicles they owned tended to be practical: minivans, pickups and mid-sized sedans. Many tried to do their own servicing, for economic reasons." You would need to scan the descriptions of the clusters and pick ones that seem close matches to the current consumers of services like ZipCar and Car2Go based on your research in the other databases.

Both SimplyMap and the PMBs can be complex to use. SimplyMap has fairly detailed help (including videos) available within the database.

OK, I'll stop for now.Good luck with your research!

Mark

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mark Bodnar

Business Librarian

mbodnar@sfu.ca

P.S.: Don't forget to check out our Primary and Secondary market research guides to find gems like our Marketing Scales Handbook volumes! The MSHs may have samples of survey questions that you could re-purpose for your own study.