Are Italians knowing Car Sharing? (finally after almost 10 years of activity)

A recent TV report from the Italian television (SuperQuark of July 26th 2012 - Rai1) showed me that finally Italy is knowing what car sharing is. 

I have known Car Sharing since 2007, when I wrote my bachelor thesis on it. Since that time Car Sharing has been always in my research interest, and I am now writing a paper about it.

Here is the abstract!

Car sharing, an innovative mobility service complementary to the local public transport, helps, through the sharing of a fleet of cars among users, to reduce individual and social costs of private transport, at the same time avoiding the rigidity of traditional public transport as well.

My paper on car sharing intends to explain the nature and development of car sharing through three key directions: i) the critical analysis of literature, through which it was possible to identify how car sharing is still not very extensive; ii) the overview of the Italian context; and iii) the analysis of car sharing service in detail, through a case study of the experience in the city of Genoa.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the few existing studies on car sharing in an effort to increase academic and managerial attention on this sustainable mobility service. 

Negotiation, Nudge and Anchor. How to obtain hundreds $ discount on a long-term rental car in US.

Theory defines the negotiation as a joint decision-making process between two or more interdependent parties, with preferences and interests of opportunistic nature and partially in conflict. This process can finish with an agreement.

Anchoring trap happens when you will estimate the magnitude of something by adding or subtracting a little from known magnitudes; so if you are in a town with 3 million you will calculate the population of the next town a bit bigger or smaller to yours. Anchors serve as nudges. We can influence the figure someone else will choose in a particular situation by ever-so-subtly suggesting a starting point for our thought process.

At the starting point of my experience in the United States I needed a car, I live outside Washington DC, the closest grocery store is 2-3 miles away and there is no public transport serving the neighborhood. So I started calling rental companies to find a good deal on a long-term rental car for the length of my stay in US. The lowest price they all said to me was around 850-900 $ per month, obtained negotiating without an anchor (and a Best Alternative). Then I started looking at the web, but the prices were around 750 $, then I found a deal on priceline.com for 650 $, but I had to go very far to take the car (around 100$ of cab…).

Then I tried to negotiate with this anchor with my first calls, and I discovered that when I called a previous 900$ rental agency saying I had an alternative for 650$ they lower their price close to that! So, as a good Italian, I started cheating!

I called the closest rental agency and gave them the anchor of 500$ and they lower their initial from 800$ to 510$, so I beat the priceline.com.

I used an anchor price to nudge the other negotiator.