Flowers, Bees and the Secret to Platform Growth

Airbnb, BlaBlaCar, Turo and other peer-to-peer platforms face a familiar challenge: how to attract both users and providers. After all, platform growth in the sharing economy is a numbers game: As the number of providers grows, consumers are more likely to find resources that match their needs; as the number of consumers grows, providers are more likely to fulfil transactions. 

But what happens when neither side wants to be first? Understandably, consumers can hardly get value from a platform that has yet to attract providers, and providers get no value from a platform that has little or no consumers. Traditionally, this is called the “chicken-and-egg” problem. But we propose a more fitting metaphor: flowers and bees.

Flowers and bees in action

To understand platform adoption, we studied a leading French peer-to-peer car-sharing platform with over 2 million user accounts and more than 35,000 cars available across France. Similar to Turo in the United States, the platform lets consumers rent cars from individual car owners (or the providers) who list their vehicles on the platform. 

In this setting, the aptness of the analogy is evident. Consumers are like bees: they travel across locations, seeking resources – just like how someone living in Paris may rent a car to be picked up in Marseille. Providers are like flowers: stationary and visible. Car providers are highly visible to consumers via maps and listings on a smartphone app, where consumers can search for a car by entering a location, booking dates, price, type and other requirements. 

In contrast, by virtue of the platform design – where providers post resources and consumers initiate request – little information (if any) about the level of demand at a specific location is available to providers. This information asymmetry, combined with consumer mobility, creates powerful and often overlooked spatial network effects. Our findings, based on data since the platform’s launch in 2013 until March 2018, challenge conventional network-related knowledge and offer actionable insights for platform managers.

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What the research reveals

One of the most striking insights from the study is that providers are the true catalysts of growth. When a car is listed in a city like Paris or a tourist hotspot like Bastia, it doesn’t just attract local users – it draws consumers from other regions. For instance, adding a car in Bastia led to a spike in rentals from mainland cities, especially Paris. 

However, the reverse wasn’t true: Adding a car in Paris had little impact on consumers based in Bastia or other regions. This asymmetry reveals how consumer mobility creates directional network effects that vary by location. Essentially, local consumers have limited influence on provider adoption. Because they are less visible on the platform, their presence does not signal opportunity to potential providers. Instead, providers rely on visible cues, such as other providers in their area or reviews from past transactions, to infer demand. 

Interestingly, local promotional campaigns had a strong but geographically contained impact. For instance, a subway billboard campaign in Paris boosted adoption in the region, but had minimal spillover effects elsewhere. Despite consumers being highly mobile, the effects of local marketing remained largely local.

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Strategic implications for managers and chief marketing officers

For platform leaders, these findings carry important strategic implications. First, investing in supply-side growth is more effective than demand-side marketing in the early stages. Providers are visible, stationary and exert strong influence on consumer behaviour. Consumers, while mobile, don’t drive adoption in the same way due to their lack of visibility.

Second, location matters – but not equally. Big cities and tourist destinations are fertile ground for seeding supply. These areas not only attract local users who seek to solve their first- or last-mile problems, but also serve as magnets for consumers coming from other regions. Data on commuting patterns and travel flows could help managers identify high-impact locations for supply growth.

Third, visibility is power. Platforms should design interfaces that make providers easy to find and instil trust among consumers. Ratings, reviews and map-based discovery tools are essential to amplify network effects.

Overall, due to the distinct characteristics (demographics, population density, etc.) of each area and different population flows, managers need to understand the geography of the network effects. This knowledge can then help them better allocate marketing resources to target areas where an increase in supply results in proportionately higher consumer adoption.

From local buzz to national scale

The study results confirm our flower-and-bee view of network effects in the early growth of this sharing-economy platform, as well as the underlying symbiotic relationship: Bees obtain food from flowers and give rise to new flowers through pollination. 

In view of consumer mobility, managers should not try to solve the scaling challenge in each market in isolation. Rather, they should consider the links across markets. Even when national growth is the goal, managers must balance it with strategic geographic targeting. Our simulations show that seeding supply in major cities and regions that draw huge tourist populations leads to the fastest platform growth. But achieving geographic diversity by spreading supply across regions is also essential to build a resilient and reputable brand, as well as to defend against competitors. 

In short, if a platform is to bloom, managers must think like gardeners: plant flowers where the bees are most likely to fly and let mobility do the pollination.

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