Description and Analysis of the Market
Market Infrastructure, Access, Design, and Behavior Expectations
Every market has an infrastructure and design. Whether the infrastructure is designed intentionally by architects and layout planners or panned out organically between self-organizing vendors, every market has an infrastructure. When it comes to physical marketplaces, infrastructural conversations often include accessibility designs for people with disabilities. Considering many marketplaces are not designed with people with disabilities in mind, these conversations are important. However, the conversation of accessibility goes beyond that — the location, accepted methods of payment, the types of goods that are sold, and much more, could all act as barriers of entry or attractions for people fro,m different demographics. A market's design not only entices some and repulses some, it also assigns appropriate behaviors and expectations to those who participate in the marketplace.
Airbnb is no different. As a marketplace, its infrastructures and designs cater to some and exclude some. Even though Airbnb constantly tries to capture new markets (the recently launched Airbnb Plus , which focuses on offering traditional-hotel-like accommodations, is a good example) and improve their user experience, its digital infrastructure inevitably excludes those who do not have the digital means and technical literacy. Not only so, the design of the market, in this case largely the interfaces, propels both the guests and hosts to act in certain ways. As Schüll argued in Addiction by Design, the user-centric interior and software design of casinos and slot machines are ultimately only important because "good design" increases the gambling industry's profit. Though it is probably not entirely fair to draw any sort of parallel between Airbnb and the gambling industry, the role of user-centric design is essentially the same—all of Airbnb's designs are geared towards increasing their profit.
First, to understand infrastructure from a business model point of view, here's an illustration of the difference between how Craigslist and Airbnb structured their platforms according to their business strategies:
This illustration is what the "tech world" (i.e., startup world) calls that "platform stacks." These stacks differ depending on each company's business strategies and how they seek to create value. According to "Pipes to Platform," the "network/marketplace" layer refers to the user-centric and network-centric part of a specific platform. For websites like Facebook, users in the networks directly interact with one another, whereas for services like Mint, a financial service for budgeting and providing credit scores, users are benchmarked against other users (i.e., community/network) without explicitly interacting with one another. The "infrastructure" is where "value" is generated regarding each platform. Going back to Craigslist and Airbnb, Craigslist has a very thin infrastructure that does not include any handling of payments, facilitation mechanisms like trust, or inbuilt messaging function. The positives of websites like Craigslist include the possibility for more kinds of transactional activities (you can find a lawnmower, a babysitter, a house, a girlfriend, and much more) and less curatorial costs on Craigslist's end, and the negatives include a lack of trust on both seller and buyer's end, less website support, and the need to use multiple websites and services to complete transactions (i.e., communicate through email, use PayPal, bank transfer, or cash for payment, etc.). Airbnb has a much more established and extensive infrastructure that dictates what types of transaction can and cannot exist on its platform. Airbnb has a strict application process and verification process (especially for the hosts), review mechanisms, payment methods, communication platform, and more. By doing this, Airbnb is able to curate its services and establish more trust with its users, both guests, and hosts. With that said, it limits the kind of transactions and activities that can take place on its platform—those without credit cards or other forms of third-party payment services will not be able to participate or benefit from the platform. The "data" aspect of the platform stacks is out of the parameters of discussion for this project, but more can be found here.
The following videos show the kinds of infrastructure, technological literacy, and knowledge one needs to possess in order to participate in the market as well as some of Airbnb's designs and their expectations.
Craigslist Early Airbnb Airbnb
Local? Expert? Compared to Whom?
Airbnb hosts are sometimes referred to as "local experts" who have access to a city in ways that tourists, or even people who live in the city, don't. What kinds of "ins" do they have? What does it mean to be a local expert? Do the hosts see themselves as local experts, or perhaps, other kinds of experts?
Here are three word clouds (or "theme" clouds) that represent some of the themes that came up the most during my interview with the three hosts. The first one represents the architectural tour, the second one the Notting Hill tour, and the third one the street photography tour.
Personal
Experience
"I want to describe my London. It's my experience of London. It's what I think about the buildings." To him, his relationship with the architectures represent his relationship with London—it's redemptive, powerful, and ever-changing. He's a photography expert and an architecture expert, but neither of those is as important as sharing his local insights and stories, expressed through his relationship with architectures.
Each of the Airbnb hosts echoed Airbnb's idea of being an "expert" in some ways. Two of the hosts aligned their experiences quite well with Airbnb's concept of "local expert," but they expressed it differently. To the architecture host, he expressed his localness and expertise through his wealth of knowledge in London's architectures and his relationship with them. To him, the trip is not only about transferring technical or historical knowledge of the buildings to his guests, but also about sharing his views of and relationship with the city landscape. To the Notting Hill host, she demonstrated her local expertise through the ability to discern between what tourists might and might not like. When I asked her why she chose Notting Hill, she said the mews there are "colorful; people tend to say wooooowww when they see it. Whereas if I take them somewhere else, people aren't actually shocked that much. It's just like bakeries and stuff like that. I love Belgravia, but I can't take people there because all the streets look the same, like, you know, it's all white." She's not only knowledgeable about various areas of London, but she also knows what tourists might like. As she said, "Notting Hill is associated with the movie. It's like half touristy, half not."
The street photography host probably had the most focused expertise. She was one of the first recruits Airbnb reached out to when they first launched Airbnb Experience in London. To her, it is clear that her main agenda is to deliver a photo class that will give her guests the most fundamental skills and inspirations to take good street photography. An ideal trip for her is where she can truly educate the students and see them improve or start seeing street photography in a different light. She mentioned that she used to do a three-days-tour where she would bring the same guest(s) to Soho, Shoreditch, and Notting Hill. Since she had stopped leading those tours, she's been delivering her tours in the Soho area. To her, Soho has the most interesting people to shoot, and that is what street photography is all about.
The most interesting and unexpected thing all three of my hosts expressed are their roles as experts in contrast to Airbnb. All three have hosted guests who are successful architects, bloggers, and photographers but all three joked about how much of an amateur Airbnb was—"a company in America trying to understand London, but doesn't." To my hosts, their "local expert" identity stood out the most in contrast to the "foreign amateur" Airbnb. For marketing purposes, Airbnb hired photographers to take promotional videos and photos during the hosts' experiences (click here for example). For all three of the hosts, Airbnb misidentified either the area, focus, or vibe that each of their trips was supposed to be about initially. For instance, Airbnb used a photo of the London Bridge for the architectural tour. That may sound appropriate for someone who doesn't know London, but the host was leading an architectural walking tour in the City of London—the area, the types of architecture, and the tone to the trip, Airbnb got it all wrong. For the Notting Hill trip, Airbnb miscategorized her experience as a "photo class" instead of a "walking tour." This mistake led to a few unhappy guests who did not get what they were expecting from the trip. Similarly, for the street photography experience, the initial promotional video did not reflect the "gritty, urban feel" that my host associates with street photography. As she explained, "the video they made was too happy and too jolly, I guess very much like what Airbnb is all about, but that's not street photography. That's definitely not Soho. I don't think they know Soho very well."
Airbnb: Dynamic Role & Shifting Meaning
As a marketplace, Airbnb's main role is to facilitate and initiate the relationship between hosts and guests. Other companies who have adopted the same aggregator business model, which includes both the supply and demand side of things, include Uber and Indian company Oyo Room. As simple as it sounds, to be able to balance both supply and demand, Airbnb cannot just let the market run free. It has to recruit, facilitate, and regulate the market. The following annotated maps will show the various ways Airbnb are directly and indirectly involved in different stages of the experiences.
During my interviews with the hosts, all of them expressed that their trips are personal and intimate. With that said, as the "map" above shows, Airbnb, a paid service and therefore a commodity by nature, remains present throughout the trips. Do "personal" and "commodity" necessarily conflict? Does one encompass the other? Anna Tsing's account of the Matsutake mushrooms in "Sorting out commodities: How capitalist value is made through gifts" sheds light unto these Airbnb trips.
In Tsing's article, she traced the lives of the matsutake mushrooms and described how they wandered in and out of the status of being fully "capitalist commodity." Airbnb experiences may be commodities at every stage of their lives, but they are rarely fully capitalist commodities. As Tsing succinctly argued, "the ordinary condition of [commodities] are never a pure form, but always interwoven with non-capitalist social relations. Capitalist commodities are simultaneously capitalist and non-capitalist" (2013: 38). Airbnb experiences gain their values from being social, relational, and personal. In fact, these qualities are what make Airbnb experiences stand out from its competitors' "standard tours." As one of my hosts and a staunch advocate of Airbnb said, "only Airbnb can do that."
Quoted work by John Fiske (1989 instead of 1999!)