Uber

Why People Should Ride a Bicycle for Short Distance Trips A bicycle is a mechanism that has transported man for many decades. Nowadays, bicycling is a great way to move from one place to another in short distances. In my opinion, everyone should use a bicycle for short distant trips, rather than the convenience of a car. The use of a bicycle has many great advantages over a car. If you choose to ride your bicycle to drive a short distant trip, you will can decrease gasoline consumption, improve the quality of your life, and protect our environment.

The first reason to use a bicycle for short distances is that gasoline consumption is a major effect on oil and gas prices. If more people would take advantage of riding their bicycles, rather than driving their car, then gas and oil prices would lower. Our economy is at risk of losing the value of a dollar because the increase of oil and gas. If more people would ride their bicycles, then it would save money and gas consumption would save as well. Another good reason to riding your bicycle is that it can improve the quality of your life.

By riding your bicycle it gives you the opportunity to breathe in fresh air. You can clear your lungs, get plenty of exercise, and stay in shape. Riding a bicycle gives you the freedom that you wouldn’t get by driving your car. Improving the quality of your life can be as simple as taking a short trip on your bike. Finally, we can help protect our environment by giving up the convenience of driving our car which causes gas fumes and chemicals in there air.

If more people would realize that gas fumes are bad for our environment, and harmful to the birds and creatures that live here with us, they would surely take the opportunity to ride their bike. These are some excellent reasons why riding our bicycle is more to our advantage than the convenience of driving our car. If we will take the opportunity of riding our bike for short trips, we can definitely help on gas consumption, improving the quality of our lives, and be a help to improving the quality of our environment.

In an ideal scenario for brick-and-mortar businesses, when a customer is done browsing your website and decides she wants to buy something, she would just visit your store and you could make a sale then and there. A new partnership between Uber and Yext wants to help make that scenario more of a reality.

You may not be familiar with Yext, a 10-year-old New York-based advertising and marketing firm that helps companies use location data to better engage with customers, but if you’ve used platforms such as Google Maps, Apple Maps and Yelp to figure out where to grab dinner or get your car fixed, or used a Snapchat geofilter, it’s likely you’ve run into its work.

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With this new partnership, Yext for Uber, if a company is a Yext customer, it can include a rideshare button on its website, in an app or in promotional emails. When a user hails a ride using that button to get to the location of the store, he or she will then gain access to special offers from the business directly through the Uber app.

“It allows for a branded experience on the way to the store,” says Marc Ferrentino, Yext’s EVP of product and strategy. “Imagine sending an invite to an exclusive event to some of your top customers and being able to have a ride with Uber button in that announcement … and then the entire experience that they have driving in the Uber to that location is now branded.”

Ferrentino said that the branded experiences can be tailored to many kinds of businesses. For example, restaurants could provide a list of daily specials, retailers could show what is on sale that day and hotels could include a link to a concierge service so you could book a spa treatment before you arrive. Some of the companies that are already utilizing the partnership are Cole Haan, home health care service BAYADA and Guitar Center.

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“It’s all about extending the brand experience past the door and starting it with the journey to the store itself,” Ferrentino says. “The experience of the brand doesn’t start when you get there — it starts really when you click on that button.”

He explained that even if the business in question is a chain of stores, whether it’s two or 200, each individual location can have its own branded experience thanks to information that Yext already has at its disposal.

Ferrentino says he believes that location-oriented services will only continue to grow, moving beyond something such as Google Maps and into ride sharing, messaging apps such as Snapchat or even the sheer phenomenon that is Pokémon Go. “You’re [going to be] seeing more and more of these non-directory type services that need location,” he says, “where location is really the center of the value that it delivers.”

Finite oil supplies, rising gas prices, traffic congestion, and environmental concerns have recently increased the interest in services that allow people to use personal automobiles more wisely. The demand for ride-sharing services, which aim to bring together travelers with similar itineraries and time schedules, has increased sharply in recent years (J.Saranow, 2006) Ride- share providers across the globe are offering online notice boards for potential carpoolers, whether for daily commutes or for one-time trips to festivals, concerts, or sports events. Some online services, such as Nuride, provide incentives like restaurant coupons, gift certificates, or retail sales discounts to participants (Niels Agatz, 2009)

The annual cost of congestion in the US in terms of lost hours and wasted fuel was estimated to be $78 billion in 2007. Private automobile usage is also the dominant transportation mode producing carbon dioxide emissions. Vehicle emissions give rise to problems both on a local and global scale. Locally, the health effects of air pollution represent a serious problem in many of the most densely populated regions worldwide. Globally, carbon dioxide emissions are associated with climate change and global warming. (Niels Agatz, 2009)

Demand of the ridesharing is increased day by day. Just for Uber; as of April, 2016, the service is available in over 60 countries and 404 cities worldwide. By late-2015, Uber was estimated to be worth $62.5 billion. (wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber, 2015) Competitor of Uber, Lyft, In 2014, announced that it had grown ride numbers and revenue by five times (Nagie, 2015).

A 2010 survey at the University of California, Berkeley found 20% of respondents willing to use real-time ridesharing at least once a week; and real-time ridesharing was more popular among current drive-alone commuters (30%) than transit or non-motorized commuters.The top obstacles to using real-time ridesharing were short trip lengths and the added time of ride logistics (Elizabeth Deakin, 2012).

Porter’s 5 Forces Analysis

Bargaining Power of Suppliers: Since Uber works with individuals, there are many suppliers with limited bargaining power. Low concentration of suppliers positively affects the company. Uber will have a long-term positive impact on the suppliers, which adds to its value. This qualitative factor will lead to a decrease in costs. This statement will lead to an increase in profits for this entity. Bargaining Power of Customers: the company have large numbers of customers, so any customer tends to have bargaining leverage. Limited bargaining leverage helps Uber to create powerful affect among the users. They also have low dependency of distributer as well. On the other hand, customers have limited choices they end up paying more for the choices that are available.

Limited buyer choices are a positive for Uber case. Threat of Substitutes: When products and services are very different, customers are less likely to find comparable product or services that meet their needs. However Taxi, Public Transportation, Subways and other private companies are the ones that can be threat of the operations of Uber. Threat of New Entrance: Regulation is the most important issues for the industry to enter. On the other hand Brand Image and strong distribution network is must for the industry to survive. Since the sector is required economies of scale, we can say that entrance barrier is high. However Uber’s Business Model is easy to copy.

Rivalry Against The Competitors: Lyft is the main competitors of Uber in Us. Both allow you to hail cars from your phone. Prices for the basic service tend to be similar – they fluctuate frequently, but the companies generally try to match each other. As a points of differences Uber is larger and available in more places. Lyft’s brand is more about community and friendliness so drivers interact with passengers more, Uber’s brand is more about a professional service so drivers interact less. Uber has more upscale options like luxury cars, private town, cars and SUVs. However in Turkey there are Bitaksi and blablacar which can excepted as a threat of substitutes.

Functional Analysis Size, Growth And Profitability

Uber is one of those few tech companies in the world that has been valued over $50 Billion. Uber has already received an equity funding of $8.2 Billion and is present in 60 countries. (wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber, 2015) These facts surely shows the trust of investors in Uber’s business model and make it easy for us to imagine how much revenue will Uber be making once it attains liquidity. What has made Uber so successful is the fact that the revenue model of Uber is as unique as their business model. It can be explained as:

Different cab models to cater to everyone: Uber has not limited itself to a particular segment of cars or to a particular segment of people. There is Uber X, Uber Black for those who love to travel in a black car, Uber Taxi for those looking for cost-efficient solutions and Uber SUV for those who want luxury.

Surge Pricing Technology: Variation in cab fares according to situation is an important aspect of Uber’s business model. Whenever the demand increases, per mile prices are automatically increased.

Recently, on the way to LAX airport I took an Uber ride that would change my perspective of how I saw employees. There is this “entrepreneur” label that we use every day that suggests you are either an employee or a business owner. If you remove shares from the equation, then we are all technically entrepreneurs.

As I hopped into the car with my driver, Vincent, something felt instantly different. By the time we got a few streets away, I had learned that he was a traveling wedding photographer who was forced to sell his Mini Cooper convertible so he could pay his bills. Vincent talked me through how he became an UberX driver and went from a gold driver status to a platinum driver status within 12 months. Before meeting Vincent, I’d never met a man who was so proud of his accomplishments and of the company that he worked for.

He is a model employee because there is no fluff with him. The focus he had on customer service was almost inhuman like. Never before has an Uber ride given me chills down my spine, especially after an exhausting two weeks in California, and a long flight ahead back to Australia. Meeting this man made me proud to be human and hearing his story was inspiring. Here are the five things you can learn from Vincent:

1. Everyone has a dream.

During my journey with Vincent I heard about his dream. I’ve found it easy in the past to believe the lie that everyone has a grandiose dream like winning a gold medal or piloting spaceships, but I forgot how simple it is to forget that not all dreams are so enormous.

Some of us have far less complicated dreams like being a great parent or rising to the top of our company. In Vincent’s case, he wants to become a Uber Black driver and lease a brand new BMW so he can offer the next level up in service that he believes he can deliver.

Vincent wants to be the most successful Uber driver that has ever set foot on the planet and he will stop at nothing to find new ways to astonish his riders. Imagine all of us thought like this… ohh the things we could achieve and the progress the human race could make.

Vincent showed me that no matter your nationality, background, or circumstances, everyone has a dream, and when you deliver 200 percent, you get the results you’ve always wanted.

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2. Customer service is the main differentiator.

We’ve all sat in a traditional taxi and heard the driver whinge about how hard business is. What Vincent taught me is that business isn’t difficult for those who are willing to work hard and show up every single day with everything they’ve got.

Business becomes hard when you show up without a purpose, and you hate what you do. It’s easy to build a name for yourself with your business or as an employee: show up with your A-game and demonstrate your passion until it pours out of you. Look your customer in the eye and show them you mean business exactly the way that Vincent did to me.

Before I even got in the car, Vincent had my bag loaded carefully into his boot and ensured that I was comfortable. He then told me that he got out of the car in the first place because he’d been sitting for a while and wanted to ensure he had high levels of energy for our trip (who does that… wow).

He then proceeded to inspect the traffic conditions to ensure that I would not be late to the airport — even though I was early — so I could have plenty of time to relax and get some food before my flight. Everything had been thought of, and no stone had been left unturned. At the end of the trip, I felt like royalty being chauffeured around by this incredible man who told me his entire story and transformed my last day in LA for the better.

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3. We’re all entrepreneurs.

Throughout my conversation with Vincent I picked up on a subtle difference between him and all the other Uber drivers; he didn’t see himself as an employee. He wasn’t just saying it; he genuinely believed that the business was his and that Uber just provided him with the clients.

This change in perspective can show us all that being a business owner is a reality for everyone whether we know it or not. The fact is that — they think like Vincent, and that’s a good thing.

4. Win-wins are what it’s all about.

There was one line out of all the lines that Vincent said that stuck with me. It was this: “Business is all about you helping me so that the company helps me, and in return, I help both of you.” It’s one continuous cycle that works like a successful marriage when you understand it at its core.

The description that Vincent presented me was almost like a utopian view of business, and his success is a demonstration that it works really well when all three sides commit to it.

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5. Positive attitudes are near impossible to shake.

As we pulled into LAX, I decided to experiment with Vincent and test him to see if all of this was real. The way I did this was by questioning his confidence. I falsely believed that the one thing that would break his positive mindset was technological disruption.

I asked Vincent what he thought of and whether he thought that would jeopardise his Uber dream. Just like the previous 45 minutes, Vincent again showed me his true colors.

He said, “Tim there is always going to be new technology, and I welcome that. It’s probably five years away and by then, if my time is up with Uber and I am replaced, then there will always be another job for me.”

Within five years, he hopes to be able to travel the world and use his creativity to pursue his other dream outside of driving which is photographing weddings in exotic locations. Vincent wants to bring his same customer service focus, to that one special day, and wow a new type of customer.

After my trip with Vincent, I don’t ever believe that I will meet another driver as good as him. Just writing this blog post send chills down by spine because of the way that he made me feel. No matter what your focus is in life when you give it 100 perent people notice and they want to go out of their way to support you.

If you are at a stage where you are not achieving your goals, it’s because you are not giving it your all and your passion is not shining through. Take a page out of Vincent’s book and dedicate your life to what it is that you do no matter how basic your profession may seem to the rest of the world. 

In this study, we purpose to research Uber Inc. as a market leader in ride sharing application market and sharing economy with considering internal and external factors that might be effective on the company’s development process. Besides, we try to collect recent news about Uber to illuminate its strategy has been taken according to circumstances.

INTRODUCTION

The aim of this research is comprehend the strategies behind sharing economy industry leader Uber Technologies Inc.’s unrestrainable success despite of all legal obstacles, law suits, protest upraised by taxi drivers that it is facing everyday. Since on-demand ride sharing mobile application Uber lunched by Uber Technology Inc., a number of companies copied its business model and that trend has been referred as “Uberification” (Boland, 2014). Today, Uber has reached $62.5 billion valuation with more than 8 million users in 68 countries that include Istanbul, Turkey (Newcomer, 2015). Uber’s rivalry competitor Lyft follows Uber as a market follower with attempt of new service innovations to became competitive in the market.

In this project, current published sources and daily news will be mastering us to prove our statements since Uber is an ongoing social innovation that catches a big trend and popularity around the world. We also consider users comments. Contemporarily, Uber face with various number of legal issues that we need to consider in our study. And in order to fit in the law, Uber has made several changes on their business model. In this sight, we need to mention law cases that Uber was one of the sides to make an inference about its strategies.

BACKGROUND

Carpooling technics has been using since World War II. At the beginning, it existed as a rationing tactic in the United States during the war years as a huge propaganda with the slogan of “When you ride alone, You ride with Hitler.” (Pursell, 1943) . Then ridesharing idea had been operated by Chrysler and 3M companies as employee vanpool during the 1970s due to 1973 Oil Crisis and following 1979 energy crisis.

Figure 1 World War II Propaganda Poster by Weimer Pursell, 1943. Printed by the Government Printing Office for the Office of Price Administration After 30 years of decline, with the advantage of developing technology, we started seeing carpooling idea again in 2000s. This time, users stand to benefit of communication opportunities. There are also times that ridesharing had occurred naturally in some places and more slagging way. For instance, people had been getting line in certain points to get ride share on their way to work, in Washington, DC.

Also as an innovative idea of slagging carpooling, people started using e-mail services to communicate with each other to get ride share. First in 2002, eSLUG had been created as a yahoo e-mail group list for the employees who want carpooling, in Navy Yard Area of Washington, DC. Destination was determined as Horner Road Park and Ride Lot. After a short time, RosslynSlugs had been created by Yahoo listserv in Rosslyn Area, Arlington to serve Route 17 Park & Ride, Stafford County on February 2004. It was only one way ride-matching system for about 45 miles distance with log in requirement. Especially in the United States, in an effort to reduce traffic and encourage carpooling, some governments have introduced high- occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes in which only vehicles with two or more passengers are allowed to drive. In the mean time, all became conduced toward carpooling kind of applications for future.

Then, real-time-on-demand dynamic ride sharing has taken place in the market and now it shows themselves as mobile applications, since late 2000s. One of the most known transportation network company Uber has been established in 2009 in San Francisco, California and spread the world in 7 years. Beside the big success of Uber, they have had to face many lawsuits and protests against them. But still, Uber’s continues to increase its market share as a market leader.

ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS POLITICAL FACTORS

Uber is challenging with some political issues due to state policies in the US. Since the sharing economy is a new trend on recent years and the lack of regulatory law about this subject lead to many problems for each side. Even during the Presidential Debates in the US, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton shared her approach the ride-hailing app and the “on- demand economy,” also referred to as the “sharing economy.” in her economic policy speech. Clinton referred his concerns about Uber, which is focusing instead on the implications for the labor market and the risks faced by drivers who aren’t shielded by benefits and job security (Che, 2015).

“This ‘on demand’ or so-called ‘gig economy’ is creating exciting opportunities and unleashing innovation, but it’s also raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future. (Clinton, 2015)” she said. Also in other countries, Uber has found itself running up against investigation. While it is banned in Spain and in Delhi, India while German city of Berlin, France, Netherland, Thailand courts attempted to ban Uber.

ECONOMIC FACTORS

With the sharing economy takes significant place as a hybrid market, it created new independent workers who works on-demand economy or as also referred as gig economy. Nevertheless, while some approaches refer that it is what future economic world will look like, others like Jacob Morgan’s, who is author, speaker and contributor in Forbes Magazine, supporting opponent ideas as he said: “While we will indeed see the trend towards independent workers increase, this trend will by no means reach the exorbitantly large levels that some are reporting.” (Morgan, 2015). Uber’s effect on the economy cannot ignored as we observed it as upraising toward the Uber by taxi drivers around the world. While it is received as a threat that will end the traditional taxicab business, it brings many conflict into current taxation system and even it triggered some regulatory for revising taxation system.

Toyota Motor Corp. and Uber said on Tuesday they would partner to explore ridesharing, including an investment by the Japanese automaker in the on-demand ride company, the latest in a wave of high-profile partnerships between carmakers and ride-sharing services.

Toyota and Uber will create new leasing options in which car purchasers can lease their vehicles from Toyota Financial Services and cover their payments through earnings generated as Uber drivers, the companies said in a joint statement.

Traditional automakers are racing to find ride-sharing partners as a response to the rush of technology companies such as Apple, Alphabet’s Google and private companies such as Uber that are reshaping the global auto industry.

Earlier on Tuesday, German automaker Volkswagen announced a $300 million investment in Gett, a smaller ride-sharing company.

The Toyota-Uber partnership comes more than four months after General Motors’ $500 million investment in Lyft, Uber’s main U.S. rival, to develop an on-demand network of self-driving cars.

More recently, Apple said it would invest $1 billion in Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing, seen as a political move by the technology giant to cement its presence in the crucial Chinese market.

At the same time, Ford Motor Co. is looking at partnerships to expand beyond manufacturing and selling cars, with Chairman Bill Ford saying on Monday that “you’ll hear more from us” as the year progresses.

Toyota is making the through its unit Toyota Financial Services Corporation and Mirai Creation Investment Limited Partnership.

(Reporting by Alexandria Sage in San Francisco and Radhika Rukmangadhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Alan Crosby)