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Case study: GoGet CarShare

23-APR-2013 | GRANT | 1 COMMENT

This post is part of a series outlining my learnings from interviews with a number of small and medium
businesses exploring how they have bene�ted from a shared value approach. These case studies support a
paper I wrote exploring strategic CSR (PDF 1.3MB). This case study is based on an interview undertaken in 2012
by Allison Heller, who at the time of publishing is Social Strategy Advisor for the City of Sydney.

The distinctive orange side mirrors of GoGet CarShare cars are an increasingly familiar sight across
Sydney’s urban neighbourhoods, along with those in Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane.

GoGet CarShare car. Image: neeravbhatt @ Flickr

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Australians are notoriously wedded to their private vehicles. But attitudes to car ownership are shifting
in inner city areas when good alternatives are available. A lack of private parking spaces in new
developments, local government planning controls supporting reduction in private parking, and
residents’ desire to not own a car are all driving this shift.

GoGet has both benefited from and actively supported this zeitgeist to establish and grow a highly
successful car share business. The firm’s marketing is based on simple, common sense, rather than an
overtly ‘green’ message. The appeal of the service is neatly captured in just a handful of paragraphs on
the company’s website:

GoGet gives you all the bene�ts of a car—without the hassle and expense of owning one! As a
member, you have access to a network of new cars parked locally which saves you time and
money and lets you get more out of life…

GoGet is perfect for people who don’t need a car everyday or want to get rid of that second car. It’s
also perfect for businesses or organisations that get the bene�ts of having a car ᇋ�eet without the
costs. [1]

GoGet CarShare is more convenient than car rental, cheaper than car ownership and a great way
to help the environment. Just book any car online or over the phone, by the hour or by the day.
Then, take a short walk to the car, unlock it using your smart card, jump in, drive and bring it back
to the same spot when you’re done.

Each month you get an itemised invoice, much like a phone bill. What you don’t get are
mechanical, insurance and registration costs, cleaning hassles and everything else that goes with
owning a car. [2]

Census data for 2011 from City of Sydney, where the firm’s headquarters is based, shows a strong
decline in household car ownership and declining figures for car-based journeys to work—a clear boon
to GoGet’s business model. But it’s fair to say that GoGet co-founders Bruce Jeffreys and Nick Lowe were
well ahead of the curve when established the company back in 2003.

Straight-talking Bruce, who hails from a marketing background, says the business model just made
sense:

Aristotle talked about utility being from use, not from ownership. It’s about taking the surfboard
out and gaining enjoyment value from sur�ng on the wave, not from owning and looking at the
surfboard. It’s about being on the wave.

The strong demand for the firm’s product is growing exponentially, supported by property development
trends and local government policies. Supporting City of Sydney Council’s Sustainable Sydney 2030
Strategy, for example, is a car sharing policy targeting uptake of car sharing to 10% of all households by
2016.

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The firm had humble beginnings, grounded in the duo’s inner-western Sydney community ties. Starting
with three cars in Newtown and 12 founding members, the business has grown organically to have 800
cars, 18,000 members and 22 employees in 2012. GoGet is now one of the largest car share companies
in the world, according to Bruce, and the fastest growing in the English-speaking world.

This success is not only attributable to wider social and political trends, but to the firm’s common sense
and ethical approach to business. In this sense, Bruce summarises GoGet’s brand differentiators as:

Local;
Authentic: for example “if we take a marketing photo of a person for a brochure, it’s a real person,
not a model from an agency”—early advertisements featured Jeffreys and his sister, for example, and
Connected: internet/networked/engaged.

Starting small and growing organically has had advantages in developing GoGet’s market position. Bruce
explains:

A large corporate is by nature global, super�cial and disconnected. In terms of trust and values,
these things are key. This is how we view our model, brand and success, from a brand
di堫�erentiation point of view. It’s not rocket science.

It was a sustainable model from the start in relation to business �nances. The business has grown
organically without the need for external funding. We will continue to grow organically—in Sydney
and Melbourne we are leading the market, and we’re interested in other Australian cities.

At the outset, the GoGet co-founders rooted their business decisions in market research. They saw the
potential for car sharing through their community’s living patterns.

Our initial market research involved surveying 450 people in Newtown in one day, at the Newtown
Festival. The survey was not about car sharing per se. We asked them about their transport
patterns—Did they have a car they hardly used?

This was really important [to the foundation of the business]: the most important thing with any
business is direct market research. You have to establish your �rst customers.

Now GoGet is going from strength to strength, Bruce provides a refreshingly straightforward take on the
highlights so far.

There have been no real watershed moments. It’s about slogging away day by day. … The big
highlight for me personally was the day that me and Nick [Lowe] didn’t have to be on call 24 hours
[a day]—we could get a good night’s sleep. Also, putting in the place management team—one that
we can trust, that’s delivering.

Like many small business owners, Bruce sees authenticity in relationships with suppliers is critical:

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We look for straight-talking, ethical suppliers. Essentially, people we like dealing with.

Sustainability for GoGet is integral to our approach. It’s integral to how we do things; not an add-
on. So if a supplier has sustainability as an add-on, it has no value for us. We are only interested
in those that do it and get it. We’re just not interested in, for example, a supplier with a green
standard as a mask.

The question is: do they �t? We need to discern that, for example, by looking at how a supplier
approaches you. You want to have an honest and straightforward relationship with someone who
can communicate well. So that when you need to have a discussion, for example, about whether
something is too expensive, you’re not dealing with a defensive attitude.

He stresses that sustainability must be a fundamental value for a successful business today—but one
that is inherent, beyond the promotional:

A business promoting itself as ‘sustainable’ is a bit like a business saying ‘I believe in world peace,’
when what they do is make pizzas.

It’s about embedding sustainability in what you do on a day-to-day basis, rather than a culture of
window dressing. Resilience comes from aligning your values with what you do. And if you aren’t
already doing it [i.e. sustainability practices] then what’s stopping you?

As for the concepts of shared value and collaborative consumption, Bruces shared a similar sentiment:

Well a lot of [shared value] is quite common sense. For example, GoGet is about wanting to lessen
our impact on the ground, and you can’t do that unless these values are enshrined in local
communities.

There is a lot of talk among large corporates of localisation and shared value etc. But it has to be
in [the �rm’s] DNA.

Bruce is keen to stress that GoGet’s fundamental business model and drivers, along with the day-to-day
challenges it faces, are really no different to any other business.

It’s about marketing—to communicate simply what we do; communication; delivery of a seamless
service that uses a lot of technology. For GoGet, there is incredible complexity to the system that
operates in the background. In the foreground, we have to deliver on the promise of a seamless
service. We take on the pressure of the systems; we take care of things so that members just have
the driving experience.

It’s about process; systematising; training; feedback mechanisms. There is no special formula.
We’re very focused on our market segment. We aim to continuously improve and re�ne

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production. We never stand still.

Technology has facilitated a growth in collaborative consumption, which Bruce notes is in itself not a
new concept:

The internet is a major enabler of sharing, of cars for example—this market was ready to be
opened up, and it’s an exciting time. … [Collaborative consumption] has always been there.
Historically, we’re currently going through a whacky period, when Chinese-made things are so
cheap, we’ve �lled our workplaces and homes with stu堫� we rarely use.

He adds:

Collaborative consumption to me never went away, but often there was no alternative to owning
things. Now you have a choice about owning things, [alternatives to] buying something …
expensive that you don’t use much, or buying a cheap thing that you will throw out.

Examining GoGet’s path to success demonstrates a reconception of products and services, applying
what Vargo and Lusch term as “service dominant logic” (more on S-D logic: 1, 2) to deliver the utility
value of a product with a radical reduction in the drawbacks—social, economic and environmental—of
the traditional ownership model.

GoGet represents a Product Service System, a concept pioneered by Oksana Mont among others and
highlighted by Rachel Botsman in What’s mine is yours: The rise of collaborative consumption. Such
systems place a greater emphasis on the longevity and servicability of the products being produced and
provided to users, and rely on and encourage stronger relationships with suppliers. They also enable the
recouping of higher production costs of goods such as electric vehicles through greater operational
efficiency.

The close community ties highlighted by Bruce in our interview extend to working closely with local
governance bodies (such as councils) to provide car share spots and other infrastructure. This in turn
helps strengthen local clusters where such shared services are highly valued in attracting talent. All in all,
GoGet provides a terrific example of the three pillars of shared value as outlined by Porter and Kramer
working synergistically to create business and societal prosperity.

BUSINESS, CAR, CARSHARE, CASESTUDY, COLLCONS, CSR, GOGET, SHARE, SHARED, SHAREDVALUE, SUSTAINABILITY, UNI, VALUE

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Grant 

P.S. I found out via Twitter that Neerav Bhatt (the photographer of the GoGet car image above)
has also written about GoGet and car sharing in the era of “XaaS”—everything as a service—over
at Business Spectator. An interesting read, worth checking out.

28-APR-2013 AT 11:53 AM

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