Multi-agent Simulation for the Manufacturer's Decision Making in Sharing Markets

When manufacturers make decisions about their production activities, they increasingly consider consumers' sharing of goods because of the emergence of a sharing economy. In a duopoly market, however, because of complexity in consumers' behavior in a sharing market, many difficulties can complicate manufacturers' analyses showing a theoretical equilibrium of the sharing market model. As described herein, we constructed a durable goods market model with a sharing service. Then we use multi-agent simulations to characterize manufacturers' decision making in the market. Our study demonstrated that consumers' preferences for durable goods change manufacturers' decision-making, and manufacturer's product quality remains high and prices remain low in a duopoly compared to monopoly.