The Bike Sharing Economy in China, How Can You Survive?
The bike sharing economy in China, how can you survive?
Introduction
When you feed up with the traffic jam and the crowded subway, sharing-bike might be a good choice to commute in many cities in China. Sharing-bike has been so popular in China that both its consumers and operators keep surging. Take ofo, the pioneer in the field of sharing-bike, for example. When the company first introduces its little yellow bike (seen in Figure 1) into the market in September 2015, there are only around 200 orders per day. Within two years, the number of orders of ofo in Shenzhen alone reaches 1.5 million per day (
Figure 1 ofo’s little yellow bike, “Xiao Huang Che” in Chinese
As for the operators of sharing-bikes in China, there are at least 10 companies fighting in this field with their styled sharing bikes, some are shown in Table 1.
Table 1 Different types of sharing-bikes
Name of Operator
Pictures of Sharing-bike
Fees
Deposit:RMB199
Charge:RMB1 per hour
Mobike
Deposit:RMB299
Charge:RMB2 per hour/RMB 1 per hour for Mobike lite
Bluegogo
Deposit:RMB99
Charge:RMB1 per hour
Youon
Deposit:RMB99
Charge:RMB1 per hour
In spite of the fact that sharing-bikes become prevalent in China just recently, it is not something new actually, even in China, but never as popular as it is in China. According to DeMaio (2009), the first sharing-bike comes into being more than five decades ago and the development of sharing-bike has experienced three generations. The first generation started in July 1965 in