Market Overview

Overall trend of the sharing economy service market is difficult to summarize particularly in the covid-19 crisis, as the market includes various business fields, which had ups and downs.

Despite the pandemic, size of the domestic sharing economy market for FY2020 grew by 5.3% from the preceding fiscal year, generating 119,200 million yen (based on the sales at service providers). While the covid situation continues, it is estimated to rise by 6.5% for FY2021 to attain 126,900 million yen.

Noteworthy Topics

The Emergence of External Services Assisting Sharing Economy Services

Compared to other services in general, operation of sharing services is troublesome. For example, in the goods sharing service, unlike spot sales, they need to retrieve and provide maintenance on their products. Frequent maintenance on shared items is required, as items used by multiple customers in a short period of time wear out faster than items possessed by a single person.


For skillshare service between individuals, contacts are mostly done anonymously. Service providers are required to establish secure service platform, patrol to avoid troubles, and provide quick support to reported problems.


While the sharing services require burdensome operations, many businesses in the market are startups. In view of the increase of users along with the growth of the sharing economy service market, providers supported only by in-house resources may not be able to keep up with demand. In fact, the market had witnessed some services that had to limit new user registration during the pandemic, because their operation could not cope with the sharp increase in users.


In recent years, assisting services for the sharing economy services are emerging. For instance, E-Guardian provides back office operations such as user authentication　on behalf of the providers; Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance offers insurance service for sharing service providers; and AJIS provides round maintenance service for sharing services. As the market expands hereafter, the number of sharing economy service providers using these services is expected to rise.

Future Outlook

FY2021 saw COVID-19 situation continuing from the previous fiscal year. Although its impact differs by business domain for which the services are provided, sales of sharing services that can be used at home or provided online are expected to grow even if the crisis does not end, since people still refrain from going out and spend longer hours at home.


Considering the situation where most of the sharing services are provided via online service platform, the services can be used from anywhere. Convenience is a major strength of the sharing service business under the COVID-19 crisis, as is the case with other e-commerce services.

Research Outline