onefinestay: Building a Luxury Experience in the Sharing Economy

onefinestay was a two-sided marketplace that offered high-end home rentals to travelers who sought a more authentic and local experience than a typical upscale hotel might provide. After five years of rapid growth, it was time to do a comprehensive analysis of the brand and its positioning in the marketplace. Marketing Director, Miranda Cresswell was experimenting with consumer use-case scenarios that took a crack at segmenting the company’s customers using demand-state and needs-based segmentation. She pondered whether there were other ways to group customers that would allow for a more universal positioning for the brand or whether the company needed to focus on one or two segments to serve. She was also struggling to determine how to allocate her scarce marketing resources: toward the hosts who listed their homes on the site or to guests who would book them for a stay?Who was the company competing against, Airbnb or luxury hotels, and how did this frame of reference affect consumers’ response to onefinestay? And how could it carve out a unique customer value proposition that would appeal to home hosts and travelers and be differentiated from what was offered by other hospitality options? Once that customer value proposition was determined, how should the company realign its products, services, and operations to deliver value to both sides of its two-sided marketplace and prompt marketplace diffusion? And, which growth strategy, depth or breadth, would best serve the company’s future?