Reference no: EM132215591

Supply Chain

Consumers play a critical role in the supply chain as they are an important part of developing and implementing a strategy. With the advancement of technology, there are many products and services today where the target customer is part of the supply chain. Companies such as Mary Kay, Amazon, Booksy, Airbnb, Hire A Chef, Fiverr, FlexJobs, Upwork, TaskRabbit, Uber, Lyft and Care.com are all companies that consumers play a major role. Basically, without the consumer being part of the supply chain their business would not be successful.

Airbnb depends on consumers as it is a unique approach toward lodging. Thus, it is a sharing economy as Airbnb offers you someone’s home as a place to stay rather than a hotel (Coomes, 2018). Airbnb allows one to book a place to stay for a couple days or a couple of months around the world at a variety of different price points. Also, consumers can be a host as well offering their own space or home to guest and make money (Coomes, 2018).

Airbnb is worth approximately $38 billion as of May 2018. Airbnb had a rough start as its founders Joe Gebbia, Brian Chesky and Nathan Blecharczyk develop the business in 2008. The founders saw potential in the market as when conferences came to San Francisco the city was full of sold out hotels. Therefore, they developed a website called airbedandbreakfast.com (Coomes, 2018). They used their own place as a bed and breakfast to make extra money to pay rent. The business had its struggles as it had experienced many ups and downs as it went through three separate launches (Coomes, 2018).

Consumers are key to Airbnb success because without them there would be no properties to rent. Airbnb does not own any properties as its is an intermediary between those who want to rent space and those that are seeking to rent space (Coomes, 2018). Therefore, consumers can sign up for a free account and they have the option to sign up through Facebook or Google. With the account you can rent or rent-out a property as well as rate your stay. Each listing has a response rate and time of the host (Coomes, 2018).

Airbnb showcases the importance of digitizing supply chains to better serve consumers. Thus, companies focusing on digitizing as their top priority it will ensure that businesses are on the same level as consumers. Consumers are so engaged in businesses as business can interact with customers to find out what they want and when they want it (Patrick, 2018).