Extending collaborative consumption concept to yacht charter services: The case of Blue Voyage

Abstract

Collaborative consumption (CC) is a form of sharing in which participants jointly conduct services thereby creating a variety of benefits ranging from economic to social. CC has been widely studied in the hospitality industry but yacht charter services have not been examined within this concept. Customer-to-customer interaction which is an important element of the value-creation process has not been discussed together with CC. The purpose of the study is to extend the concept of CC regarding yacht charter services as a new field of study. Blue Voyage used as the research context corresponds to a Turkish yacht charter concept that describes the circumstances in which voyagers live together in a limited space and share all services provided for a week. Twenty-four in-depth interviews were conducted with demographically diverse experienced or potential customers along with auto-ethnographic research. The data were analyzed via content analysis as a result of which three categories emerged as core benefits perceived risks and expected service elements. According to the study findings the intense customer-to-customer interactions due to CC are inevitable in the yacht which satisfies the social needs of the voyagers while also triggering risks related with sharing. The results offer important implications for such interaction-collaborative-based services.