Zipcar.
Car sharing is an industry where society and environmental purposes are more important
than business and financial objectives. This type of industry is known as a service for
urban communities by helping environmental and communities’ transit goals. Car sharing
business is the car rental service of the new era. Generally, customers obtain a one time or
annual membership then pay a small rate fee each time they need a vehicle. To
differentiate from car rentals services, car sharing has minute, hourly, day services, which
target another market than any other car rental service. It focuses towards students,
business, and residents of urban areas where other ways of transportations are available
and where parking fees are extremely high and do not need cars for daily activities. This is
a market that is increasing every day; it is now growing in the US with over 200 cars share
programs operating in over 600 cities (Addison, 2011).
Zipcar is a US membership-based car sharing company providing automobile reservations
to its members, billable by the hour or day. Zipcar was founded in 2000 by Cambridge,
Massachusetts’s residents Antje Danielson and Robin Chase. As of February 2013, the
company has 777,000 members and offers nearly 10,000 vehicles throughout the United
States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain and Austria, making Zipcar the worlds leading
car sharing network (Gates, 2007).
Zipcar reduced the threat of new entrant by spending high investment in its fleet in
addition to the technology and information systems like networking, software, processing
systems, and GPS systems. For that, this sector of business has a high cost of entry, which
eliminates the opportunities of other competitors to enter the same field. At the same time,
Zipcar built a wide market in Us, Canada and UK that made it difficult for any new entrant
to cover this market and to compete over this range. Zipcar also created a public image for
itself using social networking technology by developing an online community of Zipcar
members.
Zipcar built the technologies that focus on customer satisfaction, starting from online
