Investigation of rental business model for collaborative consumption - workwear garment renting in business-to-business scenario

Increasing population and improving living standards have continued to amplify the consumption of textiles and
apparel, which has created challenges in resource management and sustainable development. In this context,
renting-based collaborative consumption business models (CCBMs) have received considerable attention in
recent times. Consumption through renting allows the replacement of ‘ownership’ of a product to ‘usership’
which creates new opportunities for the companies as well as for the customers. For the development of rentingbased
CCBMs or decision making in rental activities by the companies, one of the fundamental requirements is
the baseline characterization of consumers’ renting pattern – which includes general rent duration, renting
frequency, inventory management, rental product movement, etc. – that acts as input from the operational aspect
of a rental business. In this context, the paper aims at investigating the general renting characteristics for
workwear garments through data analysis of about 5.4 million garment-rents to multiple business customers over
6 years. Further, the implications of the renting characteristics are investigated through discrete event simulations
under various scenarios of inventory management by the customers. The findings from the study are
anticipated to help the rental companies in operational and strategic decision-making.