Sharing economy marketplace model
We outline a protocol for requesting and booking fractional usage of assets and services. It is used in the VQ Marketplace Platform (VQM)for building on-demand and sharing economy marketplaces.
The fractional usage model is inspired by the Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (RFC2445), or simply iCalendar/jCal.
Users and Listings
Users on VQ Marketplace can both represent demand and/or supply side. Supply users can create supply listings and send requests for demand listings. Demand users can create demand listings and send requests for supply listings.
Booking: requests and orders
Demand users can create orders based on requests. We outline couple of scenarios based on the different handling of requests and orders.
Instant booking
Demand user sends a request for supply listing and an order is automatically created referring the request. This scheme covers popular use cases in all types of marketplaces.
- Product marketplace — “Order now” as seen in Amazon and similar eCommerce marketplaces
- Rental marketplace — Instant booking scenario as seen in airBnB
- Service marketplace — Instant sale of a service
Request booking and approval
Demand user sends a request for a supply listing. The supply user can approve each request that he or she received. After approval of the request, an order is created for the demand user.
Applications
Supply user sends a request for a demand listings. The demand user can browse through the requests and create one or many orders, respectively for each received request.
Fractional usage, scheduling and availability
Fractional Quantity Usage
When an order is created, the quantity (quantity) of the listing counting the number of units available will decrement. When the quantity of the listing becomes 0, it is evident that it is sold out. New requests need to specify the desired quantity. If the quantity of new request is higher than the quantity of the listing, the request will be automatically declined btw. refused to be created. The supplier can always increase the number of units available.
Intervals
Listings for services or assets that are made available to different parties over time (e.g. fractional usage of an office building’s conference rooms), must first be broken into intervals that represent blocks of time representing when the asset can be booked. For example, a freelance designer may offer their services by hour, while a hotel would offer their rooms by the day.
These intervals are a fundamental building block for how we think about managing fractional bookings in the VQ Marketplace Ecosystem.
Listings that offer fractional usage of assets must define a constant size (in seconds) of each interval (intervalSize) as well as the initial timestamp of the first interval (createdAt). In this manner, desired windows of usage can be calculated client-side using basic algebra. Timezone adjustments can be done on the client-side. By default, the minimum purchasable interval is 1, but it can be set to any integer greater than or equal to 1. This can be made configurable either as a global marketplace setting or a listing setting.
Intervals are represented with whole numbers and are non-divisible since they represent the smallest purchasable unit of time on VQM. Intervals are numbered starting from 0 and are calculated relative to the interval start time (a unix timestamp) of a listing.
When we consider now fractional usage of an asset, we do not need to understand how large of a window of time that interval represents. It only needs to know whether that interval is available and how much it costs.
Availability and time-depended price
The listing owner can create an availability calendar. By default, it can be assumed that the listing is always available with the price specified in the listing (price). The owner can then specify non-overlapping intervals for the listing with start and end for each interval. Optionally, a new price can be specified for each interval. In order to avoid currency conflicts, the price is specified as a reference to the main listing price (relativePrice) from 0 to x%.
Requesting fractional usage
When requesting a booking of a fractional asset, the request must specify the desired start and end of the booking interval. When the request is accepted and an order is created, the availability calendar adds a blocking interval hindering a double booking.
Additionally, the intervals model of fractional usage can easily be extended with periodic rules. In particular, the Recurrence Rule (RRULE) section of the iCalendar specification can be adopted format for displaying recurring events on a calendar and is a possible extension for defining bookable intervals for VQM listings.
VQ Marketplace is a platform that allows entrepreneurs, creatives, and businesses to build marketplaces with a focus on the on-demand and sharing economy sector.
We are currently working on an implementation of a fractional asset usage. You can track the developments here: https://github.com/vq-labs/vq-marketplace-platform.
