Despite their global emergence, sharing economy businesses do not consistently experience favourable outcomes across different geographical regions. Additionally, since the sharing economy is considered a contemporary business mechanism, unlike the traditional business model, there is a lack of constructive business frameworks for these businesses to contemplate in order to maintain or advance their business operations. This is particularly the case with respect to emerging economies. Accordingly, our study provides a comprehensive systematic review of the relevant sharing economy literature to determine influential factors and their impacts on sharing economy business performance. Our findings suggest a diverse context classification and research trend within the existing sharing economy literature and, thereby, we conceptualise a sharing economy epistemology to enhance comprehension of the different forces and mechanisms in place. With that, we develop a conceptual model based on the strategy and institutional literature where we uncover differences for emerging markets. Finally, we suggest a future research framework for the sharing economy field.