### C. Specific Sharing Economy Services

(a) Goods and sharing

Among the five categories, goods sharing has made the greatest progress. Most goods sharing services are provided through a flea market smartphone app that allows buyers and sellers of goods to trade with each other in a virtual Internet market. Such apps are called “flea market apps” as their dealing is similar to that in a flea market.

In a flea market, various new and used goods are bought and sold, including clothing, sundry goods, furniture and electrical home appliances. A flea market app is used mainly from smartphones and has disseminated particularly among young people featuring high smartphone diffusion rates.

(b) Skills and sharing

Skills sharing services have diffused in recent years in Japan. The most popular among them is crowdsourcing $ ^{7} $ . However, ordering parties are mainly ordinary companies, with crowdsourcing limited to B2C.

In the meantime, services have emerged to match individuals willing to provide skills with those willing to use them. Services by AnyTimes Inc., introduced later, have attracted attention as those that provide consumer-to-consumer deals and could lead to solutions to social problems such as women's and aged people's labor participation, working style reform and regional revitalization.

### 3. Smartphone Use and Its Consumption Promotion Effects

This paragraph takes up smartphone use and its consumption promotion effects.

## (1) Direct and Indirect Effects

Smartphones, Internet advertising and Internet shopping may be effectively utilized to match supply and demand well to improve the satisfaction of consumer needs and the degree of consumers' satisfaction while enhancing producers' sales and productivity.

Smartphones’ private consumption promotion effects have been quantitatively estimated to find sizes and trends of Internet shopping and mobile commerce by product and consumer attribute.

Here, the amount of consumption using smartphones is estimated as a direct effect and the amount of consumption induced by information collection through smartphones as an indirect effect, based on questionnaire survey and other data.

### A. Amount of Consumption Using Smartphones

Based on questionnaire survey data, the percentage shares of consumption using smartphones and Internet shopping have been estimated (Figure 1-2-3-1).

The estimation results show that consumption using

Figure 1-2-3-1 Amount of consumption using smartphones

(Source) "Research on Present and Future of

Smartphone Economy," MIC (2017)

smartphones accounts for 8% of monthly private consumption and Internet shopping for 28%.

Internet shopping’s share of overall private consumption stands at 60% in the United States and at 51% in the United Kingdom. Smartphones using Consumption may have room to grow further for products now with small shares of smartphone-using consumption as smartphones’ characteristics are utilized to increase convenience. As the smartphone using market size has increased, smartphones might have been increasingly used for Internet shopping. (Figure 1-2-3-2)

### B. Impact of Information Collection Using Smartphones

Based on questionnaire survey data, the share of the amount of consumption induced by smartphone-using information collection has been estimated (Figure 1-2-33). In Japan, consumption induced by smartphone-using information collection accounts for 19% of total private consumption and consumption induced by tablet-using information collection for 3%.

The share of consumption induced by smartphone-using information collection stands at 34% in the United States and at 23% in the United Kingdom. The share of consumption induced by tablet-using information collection stands at 15% in the United States and at 13% in the United Kingdom. In the United States, consumption in

Figure 1-2-3-2 Smartphone-using consumption market size and share

(Source) "Market Research on Electronic Commerce," METI