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Uber’s Strategy for Global Success

How can Uber adapt its business model to compete in unique global markets?

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As Uber entered unique regional markets around the world – from New York to Shanghai, it has adapted its business model to comply with regulations and compete locally. As the transportation landscape evolves, how can Uber adapt its business model to stay competitive in the long term?

Harvard Business School assistant professor Alexander MacKay describes Uber’s global market strategy and responses by regulators and local competitors in his case, “ Uber: Competing Globally .”

HBR Presents is a network of podcasts curated by HBR editors, bringing you the best business ideas from the leading minds in management. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Harvard Business Review or its affiliates.

BRIAN KENNY: The theory of disruptive innovation was first coined by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen in his 1997 book, The Innovator’s Dilemma . The theory explains the phenomenon by which an innovation transforms an existing market or sector by introducing simplicity, convenience, and affordability where complication and high cost are the status quo. Think Netflix disrupting the video rental space. Over the years, the term has been applied liberally and not always correctly to other examples, but every so often, an idea comes along that really fits the bill. Enter Uber, the ridesharing behemoth that turned the car service industry on its head. In a few short years after launching in 2010, Uber became the largest car service in the world, as measured in ride count. Last year, Uber drove 6.2 billion riders. Today’s case takes us to London in 2019, where Uber is facing the latest in a long list of challenges from regulators threatening their ability to continue operating in that important market. In this episode of Cold Call , we welcome Alexander MacKay to discuss the case entitled, “Uber: Competing Globally.” I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’re listening to Cold Call on the HBR Presents network.

Alexander MacKay is in the strategy unit at Harvard Business School. His research focuses on matters of competition, including pricing, demand, and market structure. Alex, thanks for joining us on Cold Call today.

ALEX MACKAY: Thank you, Brian. Very happy to be here.

BRIAN KENNY: The idea of Uber seems so simple, but it was revolutionary in so many ways. And Uber has been in the headlines many times for both good and bad reasons in its decade of existence. So we’re going to touch on a lot of those things today. So thanks for sharing the case with us.

ALEX MACKAY: Brian, I’m very happy to. It’s a little funny, we’ve actually started to see the first few students who have never hailed a traditional taxi in our classrooms. So I think increasingly, the contrast between the two is going to be pretty difficult for people to fully understand.

BRIAN KENNY: Let me ask you to start by telling us what your cold call would be when you set up the class here.

ALEX MACKAY: The case starts off with the current legal battle going on in London. And so the first question I just ask to start the classroom is: What’s the end game for Uber in London? What do they look like 10 years from now? In the midst of this ongoing legal battle, there has been back and forth, some give and take from both sides, Transportation for London, and also on the Uber side as well. And there’s actually a recent court case that has allowed Uber to have a little more time to operate. They bought about 18 more months of time, but this has been also brought with additional, stricter scrutiny, and 18 months from now, they’re going to be at it again trying to figure out exactly what rules Uber’s allowed to operate under.

BRIAN KENNY: It seems like 18 months in the lifetime of Uber is like a decade. Everything seems to happen so quickly for this company. That’s a long period of time. What made you decide to write this case? How does it relate to the work that you’re doing in your research?

ALEX MACKAY: A big focus of my research is on competition policy, particularly the realms of antitrust and regulation. And here we have a company, Uber, whose relationship with regulation has been really essential to its strategy from day one. And I think appreciating the effects of regulation and how its impact Uber’s performance in different markets, is really critical for understanding strategy and global strategy broadly.

BRIAN KENNY:  Let’s just talk a little bit about Uber. I think people are familiar with it, but they may not be familiar with just how large they are in this space. And the space that they’ve sort of created has also blown up and expanded in many ways. So how big is Uber? Like what’s the landscape of ridesharing look like and where does Uber sit in that landscape?

ALEX MACKAY: Uber globally is the biggest ridesharing company. In 2018, they had over $10 billion in revenue for both ridesharing and their Uber Eats platform. And you mentioned in the introduction, that they had over 6 billion rides in 2019. That’s greater than 15 million rides every day that’s happening on their platform. So really, just an enormous company.

BRIAN KENNY: So they started back in 2010. It’s been kind of an amazing decade of growth for them. How do you explain that kind of rapid expansion?

ALEX MACKAY: They were financed early on with some angel investors. I think Kalanick’s background really helped there to get some early funding. But one of the critical things that allowed them to expand early into many markets that helped their growth was they’re a relatively asset light company. On the ground, they certainly need sales teams, they need translation work to move into different markets, but because the main asset they were providing in these different markets was software, and drivers were bringing their own cars and riders were bringing their own phones, the key pieces of hardware that you need to operate this market, they really didn’t have to invest a ton of capital. In fact, when they launched in Paris, they launched as sort of a prototype, just to show, “Hey, we can do this in Paris without too much difficulty,” as their first international market. So being able to really scale it across different markets really allowed them to grow. I think by 2015, their market cap was $60 billion, five years after founding, which is just an incredible rate of growth.

BRIAN KENNY: So they’re the biggest car service in the world, but they don’t own any cars. Like what business are they really in, I guess is the question?

ALEX MACKAY: They’re certainly in the business of matching riders to drivers. They’ve been able to do this in a way that doesn’t require them to own cars, just through the use of technology. And so what they’re doing, and this is I think pretty well understood, is that they’re using existing capital, people who have cars that may be going unused, personal cars, and Uber is able to use that and deploy that to give riding services to different customers. Whereas in the traditional taxi model, you could have taxis that you didn’t necessarily own, but you leased them or you rented them, but they had the express purpose of being driven for taxi services. And so it wasn’t using idle capital. You kind of had to create additional capital in order to provide the services.

BRIAN KENNY: So you mentioned Travis Kalanick a little bit earlier, but he was one of the co-founders of the company, and the case goes a little bit into his philosophy of what expansion into new markets should look like. Can you talk a little bit about that?

ALEX MACKAY: Certainly. Yeah. And I think it might even be helpful to talk a bit about his background, which I think provides a little more context before Uber. He dropped out of UCLA to work on his first company, Scour, and that was a peer-to-peer file sharing service, a lot like Napster, and actually predated Napster. And where he was operating was sort of an evolving legal gray area. Eventually, Scour got sued for $250 billion by a collection of entertainment companies and had to file for bankruptcy.

BRIAN KENNY: Wow.

ALEX MACKAY: He followed that up with his next venture, Red Swoosh, and that was software aimed at allowing users to share network bandwidth. So again, it was a little bit ahead of its time, making use of recent advances in technology. Early on though, they got in trouble with the IRS. They weren’t withholding taxes, and there were some other issues with his co-founder, and there was sort of a bad breakup between the two. Despite this, he persevered and ended up selling the company for $23 million in 2007. And after that, his next big thing was Uber. So one thing I just want to point out is that at all three of these companies, he was looking to do something that leveraged new technology to change the world. And by nature, sometimes businesses like that operate in a legal gray area and you have very difficult decisions to make. Some other decisions you have to make are clearly unethical and there’s really no reason to make some of those decisions, like with the taxes and with some other things that came out later on at Uber, but certainly one of the things that any founder who’s looking to change the world with a big new technology company has to deal with, is that often, the legal framework and the regulatory framework around what you’re trying to do isn’t well established.

BRIAN KENNY: Obviously drama seems to follow Travis where he goes. And his expansion strategy was pretty aggressive. It was almost like a warlike mentality in terms of going into a new market. And you could sort of sum it up as saying ask forgiveness. Is that fair?

ALEX MACKAY: Yeah. Yeah. Ask for forgiveness, not permission. I think they were really focused on winning. I think that was sort of their ultimate goal. We describe in the case there’s this policy of principle confrontation, to ignore existing regulations until you receive pushback. And then when you do receive pushback, either from local regulators or existing sort of taxicab drivers, mobilize a response to sort of confront that. During their beta launch in 2010, they received a cease-and-desist letter from the city of San Francisco. And they essentially just ignored this letter. They rebranded, they used to be UberCab, and they just took “Cab” out of their name, so now they’re Uber. And you can see their perspective in their press release in response to this. They say, “UberCab is a first to market cutting edge transportation technology, and it must be recognized that the regulations from both city and state regulatory bodies have not been written with these innovations in mind. As such, we are happy to help educate the regulatory bodies on this new generation of technology and work closely with both agencies to ensure compliance.”

BRIAN KENNY: It’s a little arrogant.

ALEX MACKAY: Yeah, so you can see right there, they’re saying, what we’re operating in is sort of this new technology-based realm and the regulators don’t really understand what’s going on. And so instead of complying with the existing regulations, we’re going to try to push regulations to fit what we’re trying to do.

BRIAN KENNY: The case is pretty epic in terms of it sort of cuts a sweeping arc across the world, looking at the challenges that they faced with each market they entered, and none more interesting I think the New York City, which is obviously an enormous market. Can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges they faced going into New York with the cab industry being as prevalent as it was and is?

ALEX MACKAY: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it’s pretty well known for people who are familiar with New York that there were restrictions on the number of medallions which allowed taxis to operate. So there was a limited number of taxis that could drive around New York City. This restriction had really driven up the value of these medallions to the taxi owners. And if you had the experience of taking taxis in New York City prior to the advent of Uber, what you’d find is that there were some areas where the service was very, very good. Downtown, Midtown Manhattan, you could almost always find a taxi, but there are other parts of the city where it was very difficult at times to find a cab. And when you got in a cab, you weren’t sure that you were always going to be given a fair ride. And so Uber coming in and providing this technology that allowed you to pick up a ride from anywhere and sort of track the route as you’re going on really disrupted this market. Consumers love them. They had a thousand apps signups before they even launched. Kalanick mentioned this in terms of their launch strategy, we have to go here because the consumers really want us here. But immediately, they started getting pushback from the taxicab owners who were threatened by this new mode of transportation. They argued that they should be under the same regulations that the taxis were. And there were a lot of local government officials that were sort of mobilized against Uber as well. De Blasio, the Mayor of New York, wrote opinion articles against Uber, claiming that they were contributing to congestion. There was a lot of concern that maybe they had some safety issues, and the taxi drivers and the owners brought a lawsuit against Uber for evading these regulations. And then later on, and this was the case in many local governments, de Blasio introduced a bill to put additional restrictions on Uber that would make them look a lot more like a traditional taxi operating model, with limited number of licenses and strict requirements for reporting.

BRIAN KENNY: And this is the same scenario that’s going to play out almost with every city that they go into because there is such an established infrastructure for the taxi industry in those places. They have lobbyists. They’re tied into the political networks. In some instances, it was revealed that they’ve been connected with organized crime. So not for the faint of heart, right, trying to expand into some of the biggest cities in the United States.

ALEX MACKAY: Absolutely. Absolutely. And what’s sort of fascinating about the United States is it’s actually a place where a company can engage in this battle over regulation on the ground. And de Blasio writes his opinion article and pushes forward this bill. Uber responds by taking out an ad campaign, over $3 million, opposing these regulations and calling out de Blasio. So again, we sort of have this fascinating example of Uber mobilizing their own lobbyists, their lawyers, but also public advertising to sort of convince the residents of New York City that de Blasio and the regulators that are trying to come down on them are in the wrong.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. And at the end of the day, it’s consumers that they’re really making this appeal to, because I guess my question is, are these regulations stifling innovation? And if they are, who pays the ultimate price for that, Uber or the consumer?

ALEX MACKAY: Consumers definitely loved Uber. And I don’t think any of the regulators were trying to stifle innovation. I don’t think they would say that. I think their biggest concern, their primary concern was safety, and a secondary and related concern here was losing regulatory oversight over the transportation sector. So this is a public service that had been fairly tightly regulated for a long time, and there was some concern that what happens when this just becomes almost a free market sector. At the same time, these regulators have the lobbyists from the taxicab industry and other interested parties in their ear trying to convince them that Uber really is like a taxi company and should be regulated, and really emphasizing the safety concerns and other concerns to try to get stricter regulations put on Uber. And part of that may be valid. I think you certainly should be concerned about safety and there are real concerns there, but part of it is simply the strategic game that rivals are going to play between each other. And the taxicab industry sees Uber as a threat. It’s in their best interest to lobby the regulators to come down on Uber.

BRIAN KENNY: And what’s amazing to me is that while all this is playing out, they’re not turning their tails and running. They’re continuing to push forward and expand into other parts of the world. So can you talk a little bit about what it was like trying to go into countries in Latin America, countries in Asia, where the regulations and the regulatory infrastructure is quite different than it is in the US?

ALEX MACKAY: In the case, we have anecdotes, vignettes, one for each continent. And their experience in each continent was actually pretty different. Even within a continent, you’re going to have very different regulatory frameworks for each country. So we sort of pick a few and focus on a few, just to highlight how the experience is very different in different countries. And one thing that’s sort of interesting, in Latin America, we focus on Bogota in Colombia, and what’s sort of interesting there is they launched secretly and they were pretty early on considered to be illegal, but they continue to operate despite the official policy of being illegal in Colombia. And they were able to do that in a way that you may not be able to do it so easily in the United States, just because of the different layers of enforcement and policy considerations that are present in Colombia and not necessarily in the United States. Now, when I talk about the current state of Uber in different countries, this is continually evolving. So they temporarily suspended their operations early in 2020 in Columbia. Now they’re back. This is a continual back and forth game that they’re playing with the regulators in different markets.

BRIAN KENNY: And in a place like Colombia, are they not worried about violence and the potential for violence against their drivers?

ALEX MACKAY: Absolutely. So this is true sort of around the world. I think in certain countries, violence becomes a little bit more of a concern. And what they found in Colombia is they did have more incidents where taxi drivers decided to take things into their own hands and threaten Uber drivers and Uber riders, sometimes with weapons. Another decision Uber had to make that was related to that was whether or not to allow riders to pay in cash. Because in the United States, they’d exclusively used credit cards, but in Latin America and some other countries like India, consumers tended to prefer to use cash to pay, and allowing that sort of opened up this additional risk that Uber didn’t really have a great system in place to protect them from. Because when you go to cash, you’re not able to track every rider quite as easily, and there’s just a bigger chance for fraud or for robbery and that sort of thing popping up.

BRIAN KENNY: Going into Asia was also quite a challenge for them. Can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges they faced, particularly in China?

ALEX MACKAY: They had very different experiences in each country in Asia. China was a unique case that is very fascinating, because when Uber launched there, there were already existing technology-based, you might call them, rideshare companies, that were fairly prominent, Didi and Kuaidi, And these companies later merged to be one company, DiDi, which is huge. It’s on par with Uber in terms of its global presence as a ridesharing company. When Uber launched there, they didn’t fully anticipate all the changes they would have to make to going into a very different environment. In China, besides having established competitors, Google Maps didn’t work, and they sort of relied on that mapping software to do their location services. So they had to completely redo their location services. They also, again, relied on credit cards for payments, and in China, consumers increasingly used apps to do their payments. And this became a little bit of a challenge because the main app that Chinese customers used, they used WeChat and Alipay primarily, they were actually owned by parent companies of the rival ridesharing company. So Uber had to essentially negotiate with its rivals in order to have consumers pay for their ridesharing services. And so here are a few sort of localization issues that you could argue Uber didn’t fully anticipate when they launched. The other thing about competing in China that’s sort of interesting is that Chinese policy regarding competition is very different from policy in the United States and much of Europe. For the most part, there’s not the traditional antitrust view of protecting the consumers first and foremost. That certainly comes into play, but the Chinese government has other objectives, including promoting domestic firms. And so if you think about launching into a company where there’s a large established domestic rival that certainly increases the difficulty of success, because when push comes to shove, the government is likely to come down on the side of your rival, which is the domestic company, and not the foreign entrant.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, which is understandable, I guess, to some extent. This sounds exhausting, to be sort of fighting skirmishes on all these fronts in all these different places in the world. How does that affect the morale or tear at the fabric maybe of the culture at a company like Uber, where they’re trying to manage this on a global scale and running into challenges every step of the way?

ALEX MACKAY: It certainly has an effect. I think Uber did a very good job at recruiting teams of people who really wanted to win. And so, if that’s the consistent message you’re sending to your teams, then these challenges may be actually considered somewhat exciting. And so I think by bringing in that sort of person, I think they actually fueled this desire to win in these markets and really kept the momentum going. One of the downsides of this of course is that if you exclusively focus on winning and getting around the existing regulations, there does become this challenge of what’s ethical and what’s not ethical? And in certain business areas, there actually often is a little bit of a gray line. I mean, you can see this outside of ridesharing. It’s a much broader thing to think about, but regulation of pharmaceuticals, regulation of use of new technologies such as drones, often the technology outpaces the regulation by a little bit and there’s this lag in trying to figure out what actually is the right thing to do. I think it’s a fair question whether or not you can disentangle this sort of principle of confrontation that’s so pervasive throughout the company culture when it comes to regulation from this principle confrontation of other ethical issues that are not necessarily business driven, and whether or not it’s easy to maintain that separation. And I think that’s a fair question, certainly worthy for debate. But what I think is important is you can set up a company where you are abiding by ethical issues that are very clear, but you’re still going to face challenges on the legal side when you’re developing a new business in an area with new technology.

BRIAN KENNY: That’s a great insight. I mean, I found myself asking myself as I got through the case, I can’t tell if Uber is the victim or the aggressor in all of this. And I guess the answer is they’re a little bit of both.

ALEX MACKAY: Yeah. I think it’s fair to characterize them as an aggressor, and I think you sort of need to be if you want to succeed and if you want to change the world in a new technology area. In some sense, they’re a victim in that we’re all the victim as consumers and as firms of regulations that are sometimes difficult to adapt in real time to changing market conditions. And there’s a good reason why they are sticky over time, but sometimes that can be very costly. Going back to something we talked about earlier, I think there are hardly any consumers that wanted Uber kicked out of New York City. I think everyone realized this was just so much superior to any other option they had, that they were really willing to fight to keep Uber around in the limited ways they could.

BRIAN KENNY: So let’s go back to the central issue in the case then, which is, how important is it to them, in terms of their global strategy, to have a presence in a place like London? They’re still not profitable by the way, we should point that out, that despite the fact that they are the largest in the space, they haven’t turned the corner to profitability yet. I would imagine London’s kind of important.

ALEX MACKAY: Absolutely. London is a key international city, and a presence there is important for Uber’s overall brand. So many people travel through London, and it’s a real benefit for anyone who travels to be able to use the same service at any city you stop in. At the same time, they’re facing these increasing regulatory pressures from London, and so it’s a real question whether or not, 10 years from now, they look substantially different from the established taxi industry that’s there. And you can kind of see this battle playing out across different markets. As another example, in Ghana. When they entered there, they actually entered with a framework for understanding. They helped build the regulations for ridesharing services in Ghana when they entered. But over time, that evolved to additional restrictions as the existing taxi companies pushed back on them. So I think a key lesson here in all of this is that the regulations that you see at any given point in time aren’t absolutely fixed, for anyone starting a technology-based company, there will be regulations that do get created that affect your business. Stepping outside of transportation, we can see that going on now with the big tech firms and sort of the antitrust investigations they’re are under. And the policymakers in the US and Europe are really trying to evolve the set of regulations to reflect the different businesses that Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google are involved in.

BRIAN KENNY: One thing we haven’t touched on, and it’s not touched on in the case obviously because it just sort of started fairly recently, is the pandemic and the implications of the pandemic for the rideshare industry as fewer people find themselves in need of going anywhere. Have you given any thought to that and whether that’s going to have any effect on the regulations?

ALEX MACKAY: It certainly could. Uber is in a somewhat fortunate position, at least if you judge by their market capitalization, with respect to the pandemic. Initially their stocks took a pretty big hit, but rebounded pretty quickly, and part of this is because the primary part of their business is the transportation through Uber X, but they do also offer the delivery services through Uber Eats, and that business has really picked up during this pandemic. There’s certainly a mix of views about the future, but I think most people do believe that at some point we’ll get back to business as usual, at least for Uber services, when we come up with a vaccine. I think most people anticipate that they’ll be resuming use of Uber once it becomes safe to do so. And I think, to be frank, a lot of people already have resumed using Uber, especially people who don’t have cars or who see it as a valuable alternative or a safer alternative to public transit.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, that’s a really good point. And the Uber Eats thing is interesting as another example of how it’s important for businesses to re-imagine the business that they’re in because that, in many ways, may be helping them through a really tough patch here. This has been a really interesting conversation, Alex, I want to ask you one final question, which is, as the students are packing up to leave class, what’s the one thing you want them to take away from the case?

ALEX MACKAY: So I would hope the students take away the importance of regulation in business strategy. And I think the case of Uber really highlights that. And if you look at the conversation around Uber I’d say for the first 10 years of their existence, it was essentially around the superiority of their technology and not so much how they handled regulation. If you think back to the cease-and-desist letter that San Francisco issued in 2010, if Uber had simply stopped operations then, we wouldn’t have the ridesharing world that we have today. So their strategy of principle confrontation with respect to regulation was really essential for their future growth. Again, this does raise important ethical considerations as you’re operating in a legal gray area, but it’s certainly an essential part of strategy.

BRIAN KENNY: Alex, thanks so much for joining us on Cold Call today. It’s been great talking to you.

ALEX MACKAY: Thank you so much, Brian.

BRIAN KENNY: If you enjoy Cold Call, you might like other podcasts on the HBR Presents Network. Whether you’re looking for advice on navigating your career, you want the latest thinking in business and management, or you just want to hear what’s on the minds of Harvard Business School professors, the HBR Presents Network has a podcast for you. Find them on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’ve been listening to Cold Call , an official podcast of Harvard Business School on the HBR Presents Network.

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Strategies Driving Uber’s Successful Journey: A Case Study

by PanGrow | Nov 6, 2023

Uber, the global leader in ride-hailing, is a universally recognized brand. We all know it as the platform that seamlessly links passengers with drivers for convenient transportation. However, what often escapes notice is that beneath the surface, Uber is more than just a transportation facilitator; it’s a formidable force in data and analytics. On a daily basis, countless riders engage with the Uber app, unwittingly feeding into a sophisticated network of data-powered insights and choices.

Uber stands as a dominant force in the transportation and delivery industry, boasting operations in over 72 countries and catering to more than 110 million active monthly users.

The remarkable triumph of Uber has spurred numerous entrepreneurs to venture into the realm of ride-hailing and delivery services. Let us get familiarized with Uber’s marketing strategies through this guide.

Revenue Model & Pricing Strategy

Uber makes money in a few different ways. Its a commission based system, where it takes a percentage of the total fare. There are various elements of its revenue model.

First, they take a part of the money you pay for your ride. This is called a commission, and it’s usually about 20-30% of the total cost. Sometimes, when a lot of people need rides, Uber might charge a bit more. This is called surge pricing. It helps encourage more drivers to be available when it’s really busy, and Uber makes extra money from it.

They also have other fees, like a booking fee or an airport fee. These are extra charges for specific situations. Some people pay a subscription fee for a service called Uber Pass. It gives them discounts on rides and other perks, and Uber makes money from these subscriptions.

Uber does more than just rides. They also deliver food (Uber Eats) and help ship goods (Uber Freight). They make money from fees they charge restaurants, riders, and other partners for these services. Businesses can pay Uber to advertise on their app, which brings in more money.

So, in short, Uber mainly makes money by taking a piece of the fare from each ride. They also have other ways of earning, like subscriptions, fees, and advertising. They’ve expanded into different services to bring in even more money.

Navigating Marketing Strategies

Uber, a trailblazer in the ride-sharing industry, owes much of its success to a well-crafted marketing strategy.

Customer at the Center Stage

A cornerstone of Uber’s strategy is its unwavering focus on the user. The company places a premium on delivering a seamless, hassle-free experience. This commitment is evident in their user-friendly mobile app and straightforward booking process. By prioritizing customer satisfaction, Uber has built a loyal and trusting customer base.

Dynamic Pricing Feature

Another standout tactic is Uber’s dynamic pricing, known as surge pricing. This strategy, allows Uber to adjust fares based on demand and supply. While it can be a topic of debate, surge pricing effectively balances ride availability during peak times, ensuring a reliable service.

Referral Program: A Win For All

Uber’s referral program is a brilliant move in customer acquisition. By encouraging existing users to refer friends and family, the company taps into the power of word-of-mouth marketing. This not only brings in new customers but also fosters a sense of community and trust among users. Incentives like discounts on future rides create a win-win situation, driving platform growth.

Data-Driven Approach

Data is a powerful ally for Uber. The company leverages analytics to gain insights into customer behavior and preferences. This data-driven approach informs decisions on pricing, routes, and service expansion, keeping Uber attuned to evolving customer needs.

Enhancing Experience

In addition to customer-focused strategies, Uber places significant emphasis on driver satisfaction. Recognizing drivers as integral to the service, Uber implements initiatives to enhance their experience. Offering flexible earning opportunities, access to support, and performance incentives are among the ways Uber keeps its driver base motivated and engaged.

Multichannel Marketing

Uber’s marketing efforts span various channels. The company invests heavily in digital marketing, utilizing social media, email campaigns, and targeted ads to engage with users. This multi-channel approach ensures Uber maintains a strong online presence and remains top-of-mind.

In summary, Uber’s success hinges on its dedication to user satisfaction, data-informed decision-making, and a comprehensive approach to the ride-sharing ecosystem. By focusing on user experience, implementing dynamic pricing, leveraging referral programs, and using data analytics, Uber has established itself as a dominant force in global transportation.

Additionally, the company’s attention to driver satisfaction and robust digital marketing efforts further contribute to its triumph.

Brand Building & Customer Loyalty

A key element of Uber’s success lies in its strategic use of social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube to connect with a diverse user base, including passengers, drivers, food enthusiasts, and partners. This concerted effort is central to building a strong brand identity and fostering lasting customer loyalty.

Through engaging content on platforms like YouTube, Uber shares driver stories, customer feedback, road safety tips, and updates on initiatives. This content not only informs and educates but also reinforces the brand’s commitment to safety, innovation, and community.

Uber excels at customer service on social media, promptly addressing feedback, suggestions, and concerns. With a dedicated customer service account, the company builds trust and reliability among its users.

Campaigns like the #WhyIRide initiative in 2016, encouraging users to share their motivations for choosing Uber on social media, have been highly successful in generating organic word-of-mouth marketing and user-generated content. This has significantly increased brand awareness and customer engagement.

Uber also strategically partners with influential figures, celebrities, and organizations that align with its values. Notable collaborations, like pledging to create one million job opportunities for women as drivers in partnership with UN Women in 2015, underscore the brand’s commitment to inclusivity and empowerment, garnering widespread recognition and praise.

Challenges and Future Prospects

Uber serves as a pivotal platform connecting drivers and passengers across cities globally. The company’s forward trajectory appears promising, owing to its astute consideration of critical factors such as regulatory dynamics, fierce competition in the transportation and delivery sector, ongoing innovation in products and services, and unwavering commitment to customer satisfaction.

This success has piqued the interest of entrepreneurs, leading to an uptick in the development of Uber-like clone apps for taxis and delivery services, potentially expanding to incorporate various modes of transportation like bikes, motorbikes, trains, scooters, buses, and even futuristic prospects like flying taxis. However, adherence to local laws and regulations is paramount in implementing Uber’s marketing strategies, as stringent rules governing safety, labor, and taxation may influence the company’s profitability and growth.

In the face of its accomplishments, Uber grapples with a set of formidable challenges that could impact its operations, financial performance, and overall prosperity. Foremost among these are regulatory hurdles. Many cities and countries contend that Uber’s business model clashes with existing legal frameworks, resulting in bans and limitations on its operations in certain locales.

Legal entanglements also pose a significant obstacle. Disputes with drivers seeking reclassification as employees rather than independent contractors, along with allegations of inadequate safety measures against harassment and assault, have landed Uber in the courtroom.

Furthermore, Uber contends with fierce competition in a cutthroat industry, contending with rivals like Lyft and Didi Chuxing, some of whom boast strong affiliations with local authorities and transportation entities.

Safety constitutes a paramount concern for Uber, encompassing both rider and driver well-being. The company has faced scrutiny for perceived inadequacies in safeguarding its stakeholders, prompting substantial policy adjustments to address these anxieties.

Finally, despite its lofty valuation, Uber’s profitability remains elusive. Pressured by investors to demonstrate sustainable financial viability, the company has undertaken substantial modifications to its business model and cost structure in a bid to achieve profitability. Balancing these challenges against its well-established strengths, Uber’s trajectory in the transportation and delivery sector will hinge on its ability to navigate these hurdles and capitalize on its innovative and customer-centric approach.

Lessons Learnt

Uber employs a distinctive marketing approach to cultivate a loyal user community. By offering complimentary rides, discounted fares, and referral perks, the company effectively lures in customers. The exceptional quality of the ride experience fosters a desire for repeated use, ultimately creating a habitual and revenue-generating pattern for the company.

To ingrain this novel mode of transportation in the public consciousness, Uber has made substantial investments in marketing efforts, generously providing free rides on a global scale. Moreover, the company leverages its competitive pricing structure as a significant selling point, further solidifying its appeal.

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Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, uber pricing strategies and marketing communications.

Publication date: 23 May 2014

Teaching notes

By late March 2014, the ridesharing company Uber was on a roll, rapidly expanding service to untapped markets and gaining new, enthusiastic customers, as well as a few vocal and visible detractors. Uber’s innovative organization of the supply-demand matching process produced eager customers who recruited others. Buzz marketing and aggressive recruitment of drivers augmented growth.

This case presents Uber as an example of a middleman adding real value for consumers and upstream suppliers (limo drivers). Unlike Tesla, which battled to sell cars directly to the public, Uber created value by adding a layer between limos and prospective riders, organizing the market for convenience and transparency for both sides. Where Uber stirred up the competitive equivalent of a hornet’s nest was with expansion from the livery car market into the taxi service market with UberX. The material allows for a lively discussion around disruptive digital technology and the firm’s business model.

Weiler, V. , Farris, P. , Yemen, G. and Ailawadi, K. (2014), "Uber Pricing Strategies and Marketing Communications", . https://doi.org/10.1108/case.darden.2021.000028

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Copyright © 2014 by the University of Virginia Darden School Foundation, Charlottesville, VA. All rights reserved.

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Marketing Strategy of Uber – Uber Marketing Strategy

January 11, 2019 | By Hitesh Bhasin | Filed Under: Brand Strategies

Operating in more than 540 cities worldwide Uber have a come a long way in operating as a cab aggregator from 2009. The company was formerly known as Uber Cab and is founded by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp headquartered in San Francisco, United states. It facilitates a platform for customers for booking cabs at their locations while the app automatically prompts the nearest Cab driver registered with Uber.

Table of Contents

Segmentation, targeting, positioning in the Marketing strategy of Uber –

Segmentation is the process of dividing the market into the groups of homogeneous characteristics. Uber uses a mix of demographic and geographic segmentation variables which helped the company pricing its services accordingly.

Both geographic and demographic segmentation is important because Uber needs to know which areas to target for customers who are ready to use an “on order transportation service” over public transport services. You will not find Uber in Rural areas but mainly in urban areas only where it replaces taxis.   1

Differentiating targeting strategy is used by Uber in order to the share of wallet customer brings in and how to increase wallet size by upselling . If we want to define the type of differentiation used by Uber, then we can use the terminology “Cost based differentiation”. Because of the very structure of Uber as a company, there is a huge pricing advantage to the end customer when they compare Uber taxis vs Publicly available modes of transport.

User benefit based and pricing positioning strategy is used by Uber to attract customers from different strata of the society. Because day to day travel is a huge cost to customers, positioning on the basis of Economy makes a huge difference in the mindset of the customers.

Marketing mix – Here is the Marketing mix of Uber .

SWOT analysis – Here is the SWOT analysis of Uber .

Mission - “ To connect people who need a reliable ride with people looking to earn money driving their car ”

Vision - “ Not Available ”

Tagline- “ Where to? ”

Competitive advantage in the Marketing strategy of Uber-

Global Presence: Having expertise and experience of operating in more than 70 countries globally is what making it competitively ahead of its competitors. Its presence in the remotest areas and easy & timely availability of the services are some of the major factors for its success .

Broad services portfolio: Its comprehensive range of services namely Uber Go, Uber X, Uber XL and the most famous and economical one Uber Pool with GPS enabled app-based tracking system has helped the company in making it convenient to book a cab.

Strategic partnership: It has been tying up with many car manufacturing companies to jointly produce customised vehicles exclusively for Uber which is giving a competitive advantage to the company over others. Recently it partnered with Daimler to build autonomous vehicles which will operate on Uber’s transportation network.

B CG Matrix in the Marketing strategy of Uber –

It operates in 4 segments Uber pool, Uber GO, Uber X, and Uber XL. Its Uber Pool and Uber GO services are categorized as stars in the BCG matrix because they have a high market share but at the same time, there is a high growth rate and high competition .

The other two i.e Uber X and Uber XL are question marks in the BCG matrix due to having low demand and high competition from local and regional players in the segments. If this segment does not bring in profitability, it will be bookmarked as DOG in the BCG matrix and might cause more losses then profits to the firm.

Distribution strategy in the Marketing strategy of Uber –

Uber have a fleet of company owned cars, SUV’s and independent vehicles who get themselves registered  with Uber for being in the business . Uber exclusively tie-up with the car and vehicles manufacturing companies customising its fleet of cars.

Since the company operate in more than 70 countries and 450+ cities across the globe, they have developed driving schools to inculcate good driving skills in the drivers who work under the company’s operational architecture.   Because the business right now is booming, there are many car drivers who are ready to join the business, thereby resulting in an increased overall distribution presence.

A problem facing Uber is that being in the services sector, several companies have replicated the same business model as UBER (OLA in India) therefore it is facing striff competition where distribution of its services is concerned.

Brand value  –

Initially, the brand Uber logo was red magnet while it got replaced with the black “U” badge in a square in the year 2012. Uber has been known for its efficient and reliable transportation facilities. Uber has a valuation at a whopping $60 billion and

Competitive analysis in the Marketing strategy of Uber-

The industry in which Uber operates is overcrowded with a large number of players, the primary ones being public transport and the second competition being from small companies and MNC’s which are eating up each other’s market share in the developing as well as developed nations.

The unorganised sector of Cab / Taxi services as well as the threat of ever changing government laws poses a  serious threat to the business of Uber. Some of its competitors in emerging as well as developed nations are Lyft, Ola cabs etc.

Market analysis in the Marketing strategy of Uber-

Changing lifestyle, global warming, volatility in oil prices, exchange rate, government regulations, political instability, illiteracy are some of the factors affecting the industry in which Uber operate in some or other way.  

A majority of the customers of Uber are the working professional and young tech-savvy Gen-Y who look for the convenience of booking, believe in standard procedures and pre-defined rates for commuting.

Liked this post? Check out the complete series on Strategies

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Hitesh Bhasin is the CEO of Marketing91 and has over a decade of experience in the marketing field. He is an accomplished author of thousands of insightful articles, including in-depth analyses of brands and companies. Holding an MBA in Marketing, Hitesh manages several offline ventures, where he applies all the concepts of Marketing that he writes about.

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I have a Copyrighted board game that involves WISE TRAVEL.I can Tweek this game to make UBER THE WISE CHOICE.Go to YouTube and type my name:James Stubits and watch a 7.39 minute video called a Simple Explanation to the GAME.This game can be made into an APP and be available in 140 countries for about 15k.Thank You.

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Uber Case Study: from Startup to Global Mission

by Bharat Arora · Updated on October 9, 2023

TABEL OF CONTENTS

• Introduction

From Humble Beginnings to Global Domination

• The Disruptive Wave: Challenges for Traditional Industries

Business model

Understanding the business, sharing economy business model, uber vs. regular taxi: how passengers meet drivers, introduction for uber case study:.

In 2009 a revolutionary idea was born on the streets of San Francisco.

An idea that will redefine urban mobility and challenge the non-functionality of traditional transportation.

This was the beginning of Uber, a startup that would soon become a popular name across the world.

But how did a simple app achieve such huge success in a relatively short period of time?

And what were the subsequent effects of its unique approach on established industries?

Let’s dive in deeper about the Uber Case Study.    

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When Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp first started with Uber, it was out of a personal need: finding a reliable ride in the city.

Little did they know, this seed of an idea would sprout into a tech giant, now valued at billions.

In its early days, Uber was a luxury service, offering rides in high-end vehicles. But as the company grew, it adapted, monetized, and expanded its services while meeting the needs of a broader audience. UberX, UberPOOL and Uber EATS are just a few examples of how the company continues to innovate to meet the diverse needs of its users.

Unique business ideas: Challenges for Traditional Industries

As Uber began to gain success, it wasn’t just the transportation industry that felt losing customers due to the competition.

Traditional business models across various sectors were suddenly under trouble, being compared to this new, agile approach that Uber represented.

The company didn’t just offer rides; it offered convenience, efficiency, and a user-centric experience, all come in a mobile app that is available on the Google Play Store and Apple Store .

But innovation comes with its unique challenges. Taxi unions, regulators, and even some users were skeptical and, at times, openly hostile to the changes Uber brought.

Cities like London, Paris, and New York saw massive protests, with taxi drivers voicing their concerns about this new player in the market

However, what truly sets Uber apart was its ability to leverage technology and data, continuously refining its services based on customer feedback and behavior.

What is Uber’s business model?   Is it sustainable?

Uber operates under a platform-based business model, often referred to as the “sharing economy” or “peer-to-peer” model.

Here’s a breakdown:

• Platform-based model: Uber acts as an intermediary between drivers (service providers) and passengers (customers). who doesn’t own a vehicle; instead, it partners with drivers who use their own cars.
• Flexible pricing: Uber uses an algorithmic pricing model in which fares can change based on real-time supply and demand. This  often happens during peak hours or during unfavorable weather conditions, known as “surge price.”
• Cashless transactions: Payment is made through the app using a credit card and debit card, making the process seamless for  drivers and passengers.
• Feedback and Rating system: After each trip, drivers and riders will rate each other. This ensures a level of quality control and trust within the platform.
• Diverse services: Uber has diversified its services over the years.From luxury rides (Uber Black) to economical options (UberX) to carpooling (UberPOOL), it meets a variety of customer needs. In addition, it also expanded into other areas such as food delivery using UberEats.
• Global presence: Uber operates in many cities and countries around the world, adapting to local regulations and market conditions.

Is it sustainable? 

The sustainability of Uber’s business model has been a topic of debate for many reasons:

• Regulatory challenges: Uber has faced regulatory hurdles in many cities and countries. Traditional taxi services have protested against Uber, leading to bans or restrictions in certain areas.
• Financial concerns: As of my last update in January 2022, Uber has yet to achieve consistent profitability. Although revenue is significant, the company still spends heavily on promotions, driver incentives and expansion efforts.
• Reputation management: Uber has faced criticism and negative publicity on many fronts, from safety concerns to corporate culture issues. Addressing these concerns is critical for its long-term sustainability.
• Competition: In many markets, local competitors (such as Ola in India, Didi in China, and Lyft in the United States) are challenging Uber. These competitors often have a better understanding of local market and can offer stiff competition.
• Relationship with the driver: Classifying Uber drivers as independent contractors rather than employees has been controversial. Drivers’ desire for better pay and benefits has led to legal battles in some areas.
• Diversification: On the positive side, Uber’s diversification into areas such as food delivery (UberEats) and freight (Uber Freight) could provide additional revenue streams and enhance the company’s sustainability.

A unique Business model with sharing economic approach – The term “unique” in the business context refers to innovations that significantly change industries and markets, often displacing long-standing, market-leading companies, products, and alliances.

Uber’s business model proves this definition. Instead of following a traditional asset ownership model  (like a taxi or fleet), Uber relies on a “sharing economy” approach.

• Sharing economy:  At its core, the sharing economy is a social-economic system built around  sharing resources. This is usually a platform that makes it easy for you to borrow or rent assets owned by others.  In Uber’s case, that means connecting drivers willing to share their personal vehicles with passengers looking for a ride.
• Asset-Light model: One of the main advantages of this approach is that Uber does not incur the costs and liabilities associated with owning a fleet of vehicles. Instead, it focuses on maintaining and improving the platform that connects drivers and riders.
• Win-win scenario:  Drivers have the opportunity to work on their terms and earn money using the asset they already own (their car), while riders benefit from convenient and more affordable transportation option.

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A click from the nearest available car

The easy to use and immediate services of Uber are unbelievable in comparison with the traditional taxi industry

With the Uber app:

• Instant access: Users can hail a ride with just a few taps on their smartphone. The application interface displays the number of available vehicles in real time, helping users know the distance of the nearest driver.
• Transparent prices:  Before confirming a ride, users get an estimated fare, ensuring there are no surprises at the end of the trip.
• Real-time tracking:  Once a ride is booked, users can track the driver’s progress to their location and get an estimated time of arrival.
• Cashless transactions: The entire payment process is managed in the app, eliminating the need for cash and making the end of the ride smooth and hassle-free.

Serves All Age Groups and backgrounds

Uber’s appearance is not limited to a specific demographic. Its user-friendly design and diverse services offering target a wide range of audiences:

• For young and tech-savvy people: The convenience of booking a ride via a smartphone app attracts the younger generation,who are used to digital solutions based on their needs.
• For the elder: Even for those who aren’t tech-savvy, Uber makes an effort to make its platform accessible. Features like the ability to book a ride for someone else or the ability to hail a ride without an app in certain areas are aimed at older users.
• Diverse Service Range:  Whether it’s a luxury car service (Uber Black), a economical ride (UberX), or a carpooling option (UberPOOL), there’s something for everyone, regardless of  budget or preference. what they like.
• Wide range of services: Uber has also taken steps to ensure its service is inclusive. Features like Uber WAV (wheelchair accessible vehicle) and efforts to provide services to undeserved areas demonstrate their commitment to meeting all walks of life and needs.

Provides Financial and Economic Value

The sharing economy’s primary allure lies in its ability to unlock significant financial and economic value:

• Optimized Resource Utilization : Traditional business models often involve underutilized assets. For instance, a car might sit idle in a driveway for hours or a room might remain vacant in a house. The sharing economy taps into this dormant value, allowing individuals to monetize these underused assets by renting or sharing them.
• Cost Savings for Consumers : By bypassing traditional middlemen and infrastructure costs, services in the sharing economy often provide more competitive pricing. For example, staying in an Airbnb can be cheaper than a hotel, and using platforms like Task Rabbit can offer affordable services compared to established businesses.
• Economic Stimulus : The sharing economy injects money into local economies. Hosts, drivers, or service providers earn directly from their assets or skills, often supplementing their primary income sources.

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Attracts Investors

The potential and rapid growth of the sharing economy have not gone unnoticed by the investment community:

• High Valuations : Companies operating within the sharing economy, like Airbnb, Uber, and We Work, have achieved multi-billion dollar valuations in relatively short time frames.
• Venture Capital Influx : The innovative nature and scalability of sharing economy platforms have attracted significant venture capital. Investors see the potential for high returns, especially if these platforms can achieve dominant positions in their respective markets.
• Future Potential : As technology continues to evolve and more sectors become ripe for disruption, investors anticipate that the sharing economy model will permeate even more industries, offering further investment opportunities.

Fast Growing Industry

The sharing economy’s growth trajectory has been nothing short of meteoric:

• Rapid Adoption : The convenience, cost-effectiveness, and user-centric design of sharing economy platforms have led to swift adoption rates among consumers. Many people now prefer to hail a ride on Uber or rent a vacation home on Airbnb rather than use traditional services.
• Global Expansion : While the sharing economy began primarily in Western countries, its reach has quickly expanded globally. Markets in Asia, Africa, and South America are experiencing surges in sharing economy platforms tailored to local needs.
• Diverse Sectors : Initially, the sharing economy was most prominent in sectors like transportation and accommodation. However, its principles are now being applied to diverse areas, including finance (peer-to-peer lending), fashion (clothing rentals), and even agriculture (equipment sharing).

Uber’s Financial Value and Revenue:

• 2014: Uber reported a net revenue of $400 million.
• 2015: Uber’s net revenue surged significantly, reaching approximately $2 billion.
• 2016: The company’s growth trajectory continued with a net revenue of around $6.5 billion.
• 2017: Uber’s net revenue reached $7.5 billion, marking a steady increase.
• 2018: The revenue figures for this year stood at approximately $11.3 billion.
• 2019: Uber reported a net revenue of around $14.1 billion.
• 2020: Despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Uber managed a net revenue of about $11.1 billion.
• 2021: The company’s net revenue rebounded to approximately $15 billion.
• 2022: As of the latest data, Uber’s net revenue is projected to be around $16.5 billion.

Uber Driver Earnings:

• 2014: Drivers could earn up to $20 per hour.
• 2015-2016: The earnings for drivers remained relatively stable, with many reporting earnings in the range of $18 to $25 per hour, depending on the city and demand.
• 2017: Some reports suggested that driver earnings slightly decreased to an average of $17 to $23 per hour.
• 2018: With more drivers joining the platform and increased competition, the average hourly earnings hovered around $16 to $22.
• 2019: Driver earnings saw a slight uptick, with many earning between $17 to $24 per hour.
• 2020: The pandemic impacted driver earnings due to reduced demand, with many drivers reporting earnings of $15 to $20 per hour.
• 2021: As the demand for ride share services began to recover, driver earnings ranged from $18 to $25 per hour.
• 2022: The latest data suggests that drivers can earn anywhere from $19 to $26 per hour, depending on factors like location, time of day, and promotions.

It’s essential to note that these figures are approximate averages and can vary based on several factors, including location, demand, promotions, and individual driver performance.

Attracts Investors:Since its founding,Uber has attracted investors and significant attention from the venture capital community.

Its innovative approach to transportation and  rapid growth have made it a top candidate for investment.

• Valuation:Uber’s value has skyrocketed over the years. In 2015, it was valued by investors at a staggering $51 billion, making it one of the most valuable startups in the world at the time.
• High-Profile Investments:Several leading companies soon realized Uber’s potential and decided to invest.These include:

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Menlo Ventures:An early-stage venture capital firm that has backed several successful technology companies.

Google Ventures (GV): AlphabetInc’s venture capital arm.  (Google’s parent company) has invested in Uber, strengthening its position in the technology industry.

Fidelity:A multinational financial services company saw the potential benefits of Uber’s growth.

BlackRock:Another major global investment management firm has backed Uber.

Fast-Growing Industry:Uber’s impact on the transportation industry is undeniable. Its growth metrics reflect the success and  demand for its services.

Daily Trips: According to the latest data, Uber makes an average of 25 million trips per day. This number shows the  scale of the company’s operations and the level of trust users have in the company’s services.

Total Trips:Since its founding in 2010, Uber has facilitated  42 billion trips worldwide. This number not only highlights the company’s growth but also its global reach and acceptance.

It’s important to note that while these numbers provide insight into Uber’s growth and investor interest, the company’s journey has been filled with challenges, controversies, and competition.

However, its ability to attract investors and its rapid growth in the industry have highlighted its importance in the sharing economy and the transportation sector more generally.

  Type of services from uber

Uber black:.

• Description: Uber Black is the company’s original luxury service. It offers riders  a more premium experience than standard services.

Vehicle Type: High-end black luxury sedans often come from brands such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW or Audi.

Registration & Insurance: All Uber Black vehicles are commercially registered and insured, ensuring a higher level of safety and professionalism.

Driver Requirements: Uber Black drivers typically have professional driving experience and are expected to provide a higher level of service.    

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• Description:The Uber SUV is similar to the Uber Black but offers a larger vehicle for those who need more space.

Vehicle Type: High-end black luxury SUVs like Cadillac Escalades or Lincoln Navigators.

Registration & Insurance: Like Uber Black, all vehicles are commercially registered and insured.

Capacity: Designed to accommodate larger groups or passengers with more luggage.

• Description: UberX is Uber’s  most popular and standard service, providing affordable rides for everyday use.

Vehicle Type:Typical everyday cars, which can range from a Toyota Prius to a Honda Accord. Model year requirements varies by city, but  generally it’s a 2000  or newer model (in some cities, 2005 or newer).

Driver Requirements Drivers must have a clean driving record and pass a background check.

Vehicle Requirements: Specific car brands and models are accepted, and vehicles must be in good condition.

• Description: Uber XL is designed for larger groups, offering vehicles with more seating capacity than UberX.

Vehicle Type: Larger vehicles like minivans or SUVs.

Capacity: Can comfortably fit 6 passengers or more.

Pricing: While it’s priced higher than UberX due to the larger vehicle size, it’s still more affordable than the luxury options.    

Uber Select:

• Description: Uber Select is a mid-tier luxury service, offering high-end cars without the premium price of Uber Black.

Vehicle Type: Luxury sedans and SUVs, but not as high-end as Uber Black or SUV.

Availability: Only available in select cities.

Pricing: Positioned between UberX and Uber Black in terms of pricing.

• Description: Uber Pool is a carpooling service, allowing passengers to share rides with others heading in the same direction.

Shared Rides: Passengers share the vehicle with others, making stops along the way to pick up and drop off.

Pricing: It’s cheaper than UberX since the cost is split among multiple passengers.

Availability: Only available in select cities and often in high-demand areas.

It’s important to note that the availability and specifics of these services can vary based on the region and local regulations. Always refer to Uber’s official website or app for the most up-to-date information for a specific location.

• Digital Convenience:  With Uber, the entire process is digitized. Customers use the Uber app to request a ride. Once the ride is confirmed, they can track the driver’s location in real time and know the estimated arrival time.
• Feedback system:  After the ride, customers can rate the driver, providing a feedback loop that helps ensure service quality.

Regular Taxi:

• Traditional Hailing:  Traditionally, customers hail a taxi on the street by waving or hailing an available taxi.
• Book in advance by phone:  They can also contact the taxi company in advance, who will then send the driver to the designated location. This method often requires waiting and lacks Uber’s real-time tracking feature.

Driver Options

Flexibility: Drivers use their own car, eliminating the need for a dedicated taxi license in many areas. This has democratized access to the ride-sharing economy, allowing more people to make money without large initial investments.

Regular Taxi: License: Traditional taxi drivers often require a specific taxi license to operate. It can be theirs, or they can rent one.

Dispatch service:  Many taxi drivers pay a monthly fee to a dispatch service, which provides them with booking services.  Some drivers also rent both the car and the license, which increases their overall costs.

Financially Interested Parties

Simplify stakeholders:  The main stakeholders are Uber itself (which receives a commission on each trip), the drivers, and the investors who funded Uber’s operations and growth.

Complex ecosystem: The traditional taxi model has involves many stakeholders, including  licensing agencies that manage and issue taxi licenses,  taxi companies that might own and operate fleets, individual drivers, and taxi license holders who might lease their licenses to other drivers.

The impact of the Uber model on the typical taxi industry and its key partners.

• Passengers benefit from greater reliability and convenience: With Uber, passengers have witnessed a paradigm shift in the way they hail and use transportation services. The Uber app offers real-time tracking, estimated arrival times, and transparent pricing. Passengers no longer have to stand on street corners waiting for a taxi to pass.  Instead, you’re just a few clicks away from a reliable ride, often with shorter wait times than traditional taxis.
• Drivers have higher income by Moving to Uber: Many drivers have reported higher incomes after leaving traditional taxi services for Uber. The flexibility to choose their own schedule, coupled with flexible pricing during periods of high demand, allows them to maximize their revenue.  Additionally, paying directly through the app eliminates the risk of unpaid tickets.
• Taxi companies are losing revenue:  Traditional taxi companies have faced a significant decline in revenue  due to the rise of ride-sharing platforms such as Uber. The convenience and often lower prices offered by Uber have caused many drivers to  switch, leaving taxi companies with fewer customers and reduced revenue.
• Loss of license validity: In many cities, taxi licenses (often called “medallions”) were once very valuable, sometimes costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, with the advent of Uber and other ride-sharing platforms,  demand for these licenses has decreased, causing their value to drop significantly.
• Licensing agency loses sales revenue due to reduced license value: As the value of taxi licenses declines, licensing authorities face a decline in revenue from selling and renewing these licenses. With fewer individuals and businesses interested in purchasing taxi licenses, these authorities have seen  their revenue sources streams.

Management: How does Uber manage Two sides of its market?

Two-way market:

Uber operates in a two-sided market, connecting drivers (supply side) and riders (demand side).

Managing this balance is crucial. Too many drivers and not enough riders can lead to driver dissatisfaction, while too many riders and not enough drivers can lead to long wait times and unhappy customers. Uber uses surge pricing  to manage this balance, raising prices at times of high demand to attract more drivers and vice versa.

Two groups of agents  interact through a “platform”, where one group’s benefit from joining the platform depends on the size of the other group joining the platform.  -Armstrong M. Regulatory approach

What do you think about Uber’s soft approach to regulation?

Uber’s business model has unique characteristics that make it difficult to classify the company into a specific industry.

Technology is at the heart of the network,delivering an unprecedented breakthrough model.

Uber has faced  criticism and backlash from taxi corporations, but has received praise and support from  customers.

By exploiting their position as a disruptive innovator, they have placed themselves in a position to influence the public.

In 2014, Uber hired David Plouffe to lead the company’s communications and public policy department.

Regulatory approach:

What’s the verdict on Uber’s cowardly approach?

Uber’s entry into the transportation market is nothing short of a revolution. But  innovation often comes with controversy, especially when it challenges established standards and regulations.

• Unique Business model:  Uber’s business model has blurred the lines between traditional taxi services and technology platforms. By positioning itself as a technology company that connects riders with drivers rather than a transportation service provider, Uber is operating in a regulatory gray area.  This has made it difficult for regulators to classify and manage companies within existing frameworks.
• Disruption at Its Core:At the heart of Uber’s model is technology.  By leveraging smartphones, GPS, and data analytics, Uber has introduced an unprecedented disruptive model to the transportation industry. This technological approach not only brings convenience to users but also poses significant challenges to traditional taxi services and regulators.
• Mixture of reactions: Although Uber has faced  criticism and backlash from taxi groups and some regulators, it has been praised by  users. The convenience, transparency, and generally lower costs associated with this platform have made it a favorite among runners.  This response dichotomy highlights the tension between innovation and regulation.
•  Exploiting the position of disruptive innovators:  Uber’s strategy isn’t just about providing rides. By positioning itself as a disruptive innovator, the company has achieved significant public influence. This influence often helps shape public opinion and, in some cases, even management decisions.
• Recruitment strategy in 2024: In an effort to strengthen its position and navigate the complex regulatory landscape, Uber hired David Plouffe in 2014 to lead the company’s public policy and communications department. Plouffe, with his political acumen,is seen as a strategic addition to Uber’s team, helping the company interact more effectively with regulators and stakeholders.

Safety Concerns and Challenges:

• Incidents related to False documents:  One of the biggest concerns that has emerged over the years has been incidents involving Uber drivers using false documents. There have been cases of drivers successfully passing Uber’s background checks using false or borrowed documents. Such incidents not only raise questions about the platform’s verification process but also pose potential risks for riders.
• Uber’s proactive response to security concerns: Uber quickly recognized its security concerns and took a number of steps to address them. The company has continuously developed its background check procedures, cooperated with law enforcement, and invested in driver safety training.  Uber’s commitment to safety is evident through its efforts to improve safety procedures and respond to feedback from passengers and drivers.
• Advanced security features: Uber has introduced several safety features to keep rider and drivers safe:
• Real-time identity check:  Periodic prompts driver to take a real-time selfie before accepting a ride, ensuring that the driver is using the app that is appropriate for the account holder.
• Driver profile:  Riders can view detailed profiles of their drivers, including ratings, compliments and number of trips taken.  This transparency allows riders to know more about the person driving them.
• Two-factor authentication:  To prevent unauthorized access, Uber has implemented two-factor authentication for its drivers. This additional layer of security ensures that only registered drivers can access the app.

The future of Ride sharing

The world of transportation is changing rapidly, and ride-sharing services, led by Uber, at the forefront of this transformation.

Traditional transportation methods are being challenged as consumers seek more convenient alternatives.

In 2019, the mobility market saw significant advancements, including record electric vehicle sales  records and regulations promoting shared mobility.

Global automakers have faced challenges such as stricter emissions regulations and trade tensions. Uber’s journey offers a insights into the future of ride-sharing.

Adapting to regulations, technology and consumer preferences will be essential.  By 2030, there is a huge opportunity for ride-sharing platforms, with highly connected vehicles worth between $450 billion and $750 billion.

Uber’s journey resembles disruptions in other industries, such as digital streaming vs. cable TV and online marketplaces vs brick-and-mortar stores.

Survival depends on the ability to adapt.

Uber identified gaps in the taxi model, used technology to fill them, and expanded rapidly.

This success demonstrates the power of innovation.

In short, the future of ride-sharing services led by Uber looks promising. As technology evolves and consumer preferences change, flexibility and adaptability will be critical.

Traditional industries may view these changes as threats or opportunities; the choice is theirs.    

Uber’s journey is a testament to innovation and adaptability in today’s rapidly evolving digital world.

Despite legal battles & internal problems, Uber has thrived, expanding to 737 cities in 84 countries, and providing more than 5 billion rides.

This shows his resilience. In the era of digital transformation, businesses must innovate to avoid obsolescence.

Uber has leveraged technology to disrupt the taxi industry, focusing on user-friendly applications and customer convenience.

However, achieving profitability remains a challenging. This emphasizes the need for adaptability.

In short, Uber’s journey highlights the importance of resilience, innovation, and adaptability.

At Protocloud Technologies , we provide website and mobile application development services.

We can help entrepreneurs and small business owners create a ride-sharing app like Uber, allowing them to successfully navigate a growing market.

Global Ride-sharing Trends

Passenger experience with uber, peer-to-peer business model, ride-sharing app development, ride-sharing future trends, ride-sharing revolution, sharing economy, two-sided market strategy, uber business model, uber financial growth, uber vs traditional taxi, uber's global impact, uber's regulatory challenges, bharat arora.

I'm Bharat Arora, the CEO and Co-founder of Protocloud Technologies, an IT Consulting Company. I have a strong interest in the latest trends and technologies emerging across various domains. As an entrepreneur in the IT sector, it's my responsibility to equip my audience with insights into the latest market trends.

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Uber Marketing Strategy: a brief overview

Uber marketing strategy integrates print and media advertising, sales promotions, events and experiences, public relations and others. Particularly, Uber marketing strategy is mainly based on the word-of-mouth. Moreover, media in general and social media in particular play instrumental roles in terms of increasing the levels of Uber brand awareness in the global scale.

At the same time, it is important to note that during the past few years, Uber-related messages communicated by the media have been mainly focused on scandals involving Uber, thus damaging the company’s brand image. Uber sales and marketing costs amounted to USD 3,58 USD 4,63 and USD 3,15 billions in 2020, 2019 and 2018 respectively. [1]

Uber’s “rider-focused ad spend has increased twentyfold in the last year and a half.” [2] However, Chief Operating Officer Barney Harford has announced his plans to decrease marketing expenses as part of his attempts “bring a dose of financial discipline.” [3]

Uber 7ps of marketing focuses on product and price elements of the marketing mix to a greater extent compared to other elements. Specifically, the global transportation technology company is increasing the range of its services to target greater numbers of customer segments. At the same time, the majority of Uber services are cheaper than traditional taxi, illustrating company’s focus on cost element of the marketing mix.

Uber’s unique selling proposition is associated with cost efficiency, increasing service range and high level of customer convenience. Particularly, customers greatly appreciate convenience aspect of Uber value proposition. Accordingly, the global transportation technology company targets wide customer segment in terms of geographical location, age, social status and other criteria.

Uber Technologies Inc. Report contains the above analysis of Uber marketing strategy. The report illustrates the application of the major analytical strategic frameworks in business studies such as SWOT, PESTEL, Porter’s Five Forces, Value Chain analysis, Ansoff Matrix and McKinsey 7S Model on Uber. Moreover, the report contains analyses of Uber leadership, organizational structure and organizational culture. The report also comprises discussions of Uber business strategy, ecosystem and addresses issues of corporate social responsibility.

[1] Annual Report 2020 (2021) Uber Technologies Inc.

[2] Schiff, A. (2017) “Uber Is Upping Its Ad Spend And Doubling Down On Data” Ad Exchanger, Available at: https://adexchanger.com/mobile/uber-upping-ad-spend-doubling-data/

[3] Hook, L. (2017) “New Uber COO wants more strategy and less controversy” Financial Times, Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/46f68336-e5f3-11e7-8b99-0191e45377ec

TheBigMarketing.com

Uber Eats Marketing Strategy 2024: A Case Study

Uber Eats, the food delivery branch of Uber, has changed the online food scene greatly. It uses many smart marketing steps. This way, it leads the market, grows its users, and keeps customers coming back.

We will look at what makes Uber Eats’ marketing work so well. This covers using social media , rewarding customers, and always looking for new ways to be better than rivals. Uber Eats makes sure it connects with people who use the service.

Key Takeaways:

• Uber Eats’ marketing strategy includes digital marketing, growth tactics, and ads
• Using social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube is key for making people aware of the brand
• Getting customers to come back through referral programs and rewards is important for keeping them
• Having partnerships and sponsoring events helps Uber Eats stay on top and reach more areas
• By entering new areas and bringing out new items, Uber Eats meets the changing needs of customers

Leveraging Social Media Platforms for Brand Awareness

Uber Eats uses a full approach for digital marketing . This means they focus a lot on social media. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube are key for them. They use these to reach out and create a strong online community.

They catch their audience’s eye with great visuals, helpful videos, and content made by other users. This strategy helps Uber Eats start real conversations. It brings excitement and curiosity about their brand. More and more users find their way to Uber Eats because of this.

Uber Eats is great at making content that looks good on social media. They share images and videos that make you want to order food. These visuals are not just pretty. They make people curious and interested in seeing more from Uber Eats.

Uber Eats also gets their customers to help with brand awareness. They ask them to post their food stories and photos with special hashtags. This content from users doesn’t just show proof that people enjoy Uber Eats. It also gets more people to share and talk about their services.

Uber Eats tailors their content for each social media platform. On Instagram, it’s all about beautiful food photos. On Facebook, they share videos that inform you about new eating spots. This makes sure that they reach the right people in the right way on each platform.

With this mixed tactic in social media, Uber Eats expands its reach. They connect better with people and get them more involved. Their smart use of social media has made them top in the food delivery game.

Incentivizing Customer Loyalty

Uber Eats knows how important loyal customers are. They reward users for sticking with them. Rewards come from referral programs and loyalty schemes.

One key strategy is the referral program. Customers invite friends and family to join. When these new users buy something, both the person who invited them and the new customer get discounts.

Uber Eats also has loyalty programs for regular customers. These programs offer things like special discounts and personalized deals. They show Uber Eats’ thanks and keep users coming back.

Their approach to keeping customers happy works well. It brings in new people and keeps existing customers coming back. This boosts loyalty and keeps users happy.

Strategic Partnerships and Event Sponsorships

Uber Eats knows how important partnerships and sponsorships are. They team up with local businesses and sponsor events. This helps them reach more people and offer great deals to their customers. Both Uber Eats and its partners benefit from this.

By working with local businesses, Uber Eats gets access to new customers. This increases its presence in the market. These partnerships also open doors to promote each other’s services, attracting more customers.

Sponsoring events is key to Uber Eats’ marketing. They support events that match their brand and connect with potential customers. This could be anything from music festivals to sports events.

Event sponsorships also allow Uber Eats to give out special deals. This draws in new customers and improves their experience. It helps make Uber Eats the top choice at events.

Uber Eats uses these strategies to grow and maintain its market presence. Through partnerships and sponsorships, they reach new customers and offer unique benefits. This cements Uber Eats as a leading name in food delivery.

Expanding into New Markets and Launching Innovative Products

Uber Eats is always on the lookout for new markets and innovative products. By doing thorough market research and listening to what customers say, it stays ahead. It makes sure its services are what users need and want.

The company understands what people in different areas like and need. By looking at market trends and finding new opportunities, Uber Eats grows. This helps it reach more customers who want easy online food delivery.

Moreover, to lead the food delivery market, Uber Eats keeps innovating. Its research and development team works hard. They create new products and features that make things better for customers and restaurants.

The Role of Market Expansion

Getting into new markets is key for Uber Eats to grow. This brings in more customers and a variety of restaurants. It means users get a lot more choices of food.

Also, by reaching more markets , Uber Eats can work more effectively. It can get better deals with restaurants, deliver faster, and offer better prices to its customers.

Innovative Products Driving User Engagement

Uber Eats aims to keep customers happy by bringing in new products. It makes sure its app is easy to use and efficient. Features like easy order tracking help a lot.

For example, the “Uber Eats Pass” is a subscription that offers free deliveries on certain orders and discounts. This keeps customers coming back more often.

There’s also a “Virtual Kitchen” feature for delivery-only restaurants. It’s a smart way for new food businesses to start with less cost.

By moving into new markets and offering new products, Uber Eats stays on top. It’s committed to giving users a great dining experience at home. It keeps pushing technology forward to meet customers’ needs.

Uber Eats keeps leading in food delivery by expanding and innovating. It adapts to user needs and offers top convenience, choice, and value.

Maintaining Brand Consistency Across Platforms

Uber Eats is successful because it keeps its brand the same on different platforms. This makes Uber Eats stand out in the busy online food world.

Uber knows that a unified brand connects well with people. It combines its messages, look, and tone. This makes the brand strong, trusted, and liked by its customers.

On social media, Uber Eats’ content matches its brand. It uses the same colors, fonts, and designs. This makes customers feel at home, no matter where they see Uber Eats.

Uber Eats also keeps its tone the same everywhere. It does this on social media, in ads, and when talking to customers. This shows its brand personality and values.

Because it focuses on being consistent, Uber Eats has built a strong image. People can easily recognize and feel close to the brand. This creates a smooth and unified experience, which makes people think highly of Uber Eats.

Brand Consistency in Action

Let’s see why keeping the brand consistent is crucial:

Uber Eats is consistent on social media, its website and app, and in ads. This makes the brand memorable and liked, helping Uber Eats grow.

Image showing how important it is for a brand to stay consistent to be strong and recognized by customers.

Strategic Use of Incentives and Discounts

Uber uses incentives and discounts to draw and keep customers. These offers improve the customer experience. They make Uber Eats a top choice for online food delivery.

Referral Programs

Uber Eats rewards customers for bringing in new users. Through referral programs, customers get discounts or credits. This happens when their referred friends make a first purchase. It boosts loyalty and grows Uber Eats’ community.

Loyalty Programs

Uber Eats has loyalty programs to thank its regular customers. By joining, customers get points or rewards for how much they order. These can be exchanged for future discounts or special perks. It encourages more frequent use of Uber Eats.

Discounted Fares

Uber Eats sometimes reduces prices on selected restaurants or meals. This makes favorite dishes more budget-friendly. It shows the value Uber Eats adds for its customers.

Promotional Codes

Uber Eats often gives out promo codes that provide discounts. These codes are shared through social media, emails, and local business partnerships. Using these codes, customers can save money. This makes Uber Eats their go-to choice over other services.

Uber Eats’ strategy of using incentives and discounts is key to its growth. It includes referral and loyalty programs, plus discounted fares and promo codes. This makes Uber Eats both popular and a strong brand in the food delivery world.

Local Partnerships for Enhanced Customer Experience

Uber Eats is committed to an awesome customer experience. It works with local spots and sponsors events for special deals. This makes using Uber Eats more fun and affordable.

These partnerships mean you get lots of food choices nearby. Uber Eats teams up with famous restaurants. So, you can try different foods easily on their platform.

For example, Uber Eats and XYZ Bistro joined forces. Now, Uber Eats users get cool discounts at XYZ Bistro. This deal helps XYZ Bistro get more customers and gives you great offers on your meals.

Uber Eats also supports events to make your experience better. They provide special discounts at local festivals and concerts. This way, you enjoy lower prices and a good time, all thanks to Uber Eats.

They were a sponsor at the XYZ Food Festival. Attendees got a discount code from Uber Eats. Aligning with events like this connects Uber Eats to the local food scene and with you during fun times.

Through these efforts, Uber Eats boosts your experience by offering unique deals. By working with local spots and sponsoring events, they bring convenience, savings, and a sense of community. Uber Eats is a top choice for food delivery because of this.

Expanding Online Food Delivery with Uber Eats

Uber Eats has changed the way we get food by offering online delivery. Customers can pick their favorite meals from many restaurants. This makes getting food delivered easy and adds to the enjoyment of using Uber Eats.

On the Uber Eats app or website, you can look at lots of food types. Whether you want lunch, dinner, or just a snack, Uber Eats has many options. This variety meets all kinds of food cravings.

After you order, Uber Eats connects you with a delivery person. They make sure your food arrives fast and fresh. You can see where your order is at every step. This keeps you informed until your food arrives.

Uber Eats is now a big name in online food delivery. It meets the demand for easy and safe food delivery. This helps customers and gives local restaurants a chance to make more money. They can get their food to more people.

Uber Eats is working hard to grow and offer great service. It’s easy to use, has many restaurants, and delivers quickly. Uber Eats is a top choice for online food delivery. It gives you lots of food options right where you are.

In conclusion, Uber Eats’ case study shows its amazing success. This is thanks to its well-planned marketing strategies. The use of digital marketing, rewards for customers, partnerships, and growth in the market has made Uber Eats a top choice in the online food delivery sector.

Uber Eats has made the most of digital marketing. Platforms like social media and targeted ads helped reach its audience. With eye-catching visuals and helpful content, Uber Eats grew its online presence and brand awareness.

Uber Eats has also used customer rewards well. Programs like referrals and loyalty schemes have kept customers coming back. These rewards have led customers to suggest Uber Eats to others, growing the platform’s user base.

By partnering with local stores and sponsoring events, Uber Eats has widened its reach. These partnerships have allowed Uber Eats to offer special deals and discounts. This has helped it stay a top choice for customers looking for food delivery.

To wrap it up, Uber Eats’ marketing strategies have clearly worked well. The blend of digital marketing, rewards for users, smart partnerships, and growth plans has led to its big success in the busy online food delivery market.

What is the marketing strategy of Uber Eats?

How does uber eats leverage social media platforms, how does uber eats incentivize customer loyalty, does uber eats form partnerships with local businesses, how does uber eats expand into new markets, how does uber eats maintain brand consistency, does uber eats offer incentives and discounts to customers, does uber eats partner with local businesses for enhanced customer experiences, what services does uber eats offer, what can we learn from the uber eats marketing strategy, related posts.

Editorial Team

Tim hortons marketing strategy 2024: a case study, twitch marketing strategy 2024: a case study.

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How to Rebrand Your Startup: An Uber Case Study

Rebranding is tricky. For one thing, there’s no guarantee it’s going to work, and your rebranding attempts can have an unintended effect. Instead of creating a new image for your company, your rebrand can simply remind customers of your previous image (or faults).

The basics of branding

Before we talk about rebranding, let’s brush up on the basics of branding. You have to crawl before you walk, and there’s no sense in talking about rebranding until we’ve identified these brand-building best practices :

• Optimize customer experiences
• Be consistent with your brand messaging
• Align content marketing with brand image
• Find some good “brand ambassadors,” i.e. people who can represent your brand to the public

Even more than the visual aspects of your company, branding is about creating great experiences for customers and showcasing your unique qualities through your content marketing and brand representatives.

To examine this further, let’s look at a case study. Uber’s rebranding efforts present a fascinating opportunity to see what it takes to rebrand your startup in a business world where everything is moving faster than it ever has before.

Related: How the Gig Economy Makes Having a Side Hustle Easier Than Ever

The uber brand.

Like all on-demand businesses in the growing gig economy, Uber has an interesting branding predicament. It’s a technology company, and a platform that facilitates connections between customers and contractors. Yet, there’s a very real sense in which contractors represent Uber’s brand.

Uber has the dual responsibility of keeping contractors and customers happy. In that sense, it would seem that Uber is also a people-driven business: a great deal of its brand image depends on the people who make it possible.

Uber’s rebrand attempt

Over two years ago, Inc. took a look at Uber’s rebrand and found it lacking. At the outset, this came down to something very simple and symbolic: the new logo. A good logo isn’t just catchy and underpinned by a deep concept, it’s a symbol of your company’s values.

In the article, Inc. contributor, Justin Bariso. pointed to a blog post by ex-CEO Travis Kalanick. While the post was meant to explain Uber’s logo, it instead betrayed where Uber’s heart was. The logo is made up of “bits and atoms,” and the bits and atoms represent Uber’s biggest investors: Google Ventures (bits) and TPG Capital (atoms). Right away, this tells you that Kalanick and Co. didn’t value their drivers and riders nearly as much as they valued their investors.

After that moment of rebranding in 2016, things got messy. A timeline of Uber’s troubles from 2017 tells the story. In January, Uber kept operating when President Trump instituted his controversial travel ban, which earned the company bad press. Then, a former engineer named Susan Fowler revealed she’d been sexually harassed and ignored by Uber executives when she complained. There are plenty more problems to enumerate, but suffice it to say, Uber’s image took a black eye and Travis Kalanick was forced to resign as a result.

Uber’s true rebrand

Fast forward to May of 2018 when Uber customers received an email, ostensibly from new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi.

“I’m so excited to write Uber’s next chapter with you,” Khosrowshahi said. “It starts with new leaders, a better company culture, and improvements to our app…”

Uber is reassuring its audience to view it as a company that listens, a company that values its customers and cares about its drivers. After two years of rolling out what appeared to be a rebrand, including a new logo and a new look for its website, Uber is embarking on the real work of rebranding.

Now, the company is attempting to turn its drivers into brand ambassadors, change the image of its company culture, and improve the customer experience.

What does this entail for those of us who want to get some takeaways here to apply to the rebranding of our own startups?

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What rebranding really is.

Rebranding goes so much deeper than your logo and the way your website looks. Think of it like this: when you’re rebranding, your brand is a person trying to make up for past mistakes. New clothes aren’t going to do the job; it’s the actions that count.

Rebranding is a complete overhaul of how your company represents itself to the world, and as such, you must be authentic.

Uber’s new chief brand officer, Bozoma Saint John, is in charge of changing the company’s image. In an interview with CBS’ Gayle King , Saint John said she wants to start by focusing on “rebuilding Uber’s relationship with riders and drivers.”

She understands that a brand portrays itself first and foremost through its touchpoints with consumers. In Uber’s case, drivers are the company’s primary brand ambassadors and its primary consumer touchpoints. While a CEO can make for a fine ambassador, employees and contractors are your company’s best ambassadors. Any rebranding efforts should focus on cultivating a culture that turns them into positive brand ambassadors.

Here are some other takeaways from Uber’s attempt to rebrand itself:

• Your images, logo and design must correspond to what you value
• You’re a startup — move fast . Make quick, smart decisions about how you’ll prioritize, then do quick, intuitive work on your rebrand
• Use the resources you have to get the word out . That includes social media, press releases, blog posts and emails
• Start from the top down . As a leader, review how you represent your startup, as it informs how your brand will interact with the world
• Surround yourself with good people . Uber was rife with complaints of harassment, bullying and intimidation. Make sure your company culture reflects your company values, and you won’t have to worry about the complaints of harassment, bullying and intimidation that Uber faced

Rebranding is about going deeper and truly grasping what you value as a company. Then, create consistent messages and imagery that illustrates those values to your customers. Remember, this is a conversation with your audience: say what you mean to say, and the rest is up to them.

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• startup culture

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Uber Eats delivers a 10% increase in campaign reach with Display & Video 360

• Display & Video 360
• Google Marketing Platform
• Ads Data Hub
• Become the go-to food delivery app by associating Uber Eats with key cultural moments.
• Build brand awareness.

The Approach

• Increased visibility during football tentpole events by securing coveted deals through Programmatic Guaranteed - included on CTV devices.
• Used Display & Video 360 to unify ad strategy and simplify campaign execution across different publishers.
• Increased campaign reach by better controlling ad frequency across channels.

The Results

• Increased campaign reach by 10%.
• Reached over 76 million people, of which 25% were CTV viewers.
• Saved and reinvested the equivalent of 150% of platform fee by passing unnecessary impressions.

The food delivery industry had massive growth the past year as more people ordered from home. To set themselves apart from the competition, Uber Eats launched their new “Tonight I’ll be eating” campaign to build their brand with celebrities and key cultural moments. For example, sponsoring the football season in the US. In doing so, they shifted their digital marketing strategy to not only focus on customer acquisition but also drive brand awareness. To effectively reach people where they are, Uber Eats decided to supplement their TV strategy with video ads on laptops, mobile and connected TV.

Massive reach through Programmatic Guaranteed

When assessing this challenge, Uber and their media team at MediaCom found that using Display & Video 360 would give them access to the largest and most diverse pool of inventory sources – from display and video to audio and connected TV (CTV). Because inventory is hard to come by and expensive around high-visibility events such as football games, the Uber Eats team used Programmatic Guaranteed in Display & Video 360 to secure in-demand deals. They harnessed an inventory package curated by their Google account management team to reach their audience across YouTube, Spotify, Hulu, ESPN, Roku and more. Securing relevant inventory early via Programmatic Guaranteed helped Uber pace out deals and better control budgets. Combining this variety of channels in one platform helped Uber reach over 76 million users, among which 25% were CTV users, a growing audience.

Effective cross-channel frequency management

Not only did the Uber Eats team know that ad saturation could be detrimental to their brand, they also knew it could negatively impact campaign performance. So Uber Eats turned to Ads Data Hub to run customized analysis and understand which ad frequency drove the best campaign results. They uncovered that after 7 weekly ad exposures, effectiveness went down. With these insights in mind and all inventory sources and formats in one place, Uber Eats could effectively manage and control ad exposure. YouTube is fundamental to how Uber Eats reaches the 18-35 demographics which are lighter TV viewers so using a tool that could manage frequency across that inventory and their other buys was critical.

“Display & Video 360’s capacity to control ad frequency across YouTube and our other video buys makes it the ideal partner.”

Hanna El Hourani , Global Head of Programmatic, Uber

Uber Eats set a cross-channel frequency goal and skipped bids exceeding the ideal ad exposure. Uber Eats particularly valued how frequency management works for Programmatic Guaranteed deals. Once their overall campaign frequency goal was reached, Display & Video 360 aimed at stopping showing more ads from the Programmatic Guaranteed deals while still prioritizing and ensuring that the agreed number of impressions was delivered.

“Display & Video 360 gives us the ability to execute everything in one shell. That allows for a more precise control of frequency and reach across our entire media buy. It also creates operational efficiency for the team.”

Joe Fried , Global Digital Director, MediaCom

As a result, Uber Eats was able to reach 10% more people than they would have without a unified approach. By passing on unnecessary impressions, Uber also limited budget waste. In fact, they saved and reinvested the equivalent of 150% of their platform fees.

Looking Ahead

“in 2022, i expect us to shift away from a tv-first strategy. we’re planning on using display & video 360 to boost our media investment across various ctv partners”.

In the future, Uber Eats will keep using Display & Video 360 as their preferred demand side platform partner. After seeing success with CTV they expect this channel to take on some of the heavy lifting that linear TV was previously doing.

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Uber CRM Case Study: The Taxi Gaint

• Category : Case Studies
• Last updated on June 11, 2023
• By Viktor. A
• No Comments

Uber was born from the question,  “What if you could request a ride from your phone?”

This question was from Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp when they could not get a cab in Paris in 2008. Uber primarily focuses on perfecting the imperfect to meet customers’ needs.

Uber re-imagined the taxicab experience, making it more convenient, predictable, affordable, and fun. Its global ride-sharing app disrupted modern transportation as we know it, at one point making Uber the most valuable startup company in the world.

Uber has implemented different CRM strategies to strengthen their customer relationships. They don’t joke about the needs of their customers. They partnered with other businesses to execute a complex idea to satisfy their customers.  This is the powerful secret that fueled their popularity.

You’ve got to have a little hustle in you. I think that’s where the world is going. People will not own cars; they’ll have a service that takes them where they want to go, when they want to go there. And that’s what Uber is. – Travis Kalanick

In this Uber’s CRM case study article, we’ll discuss how Uber’s CRM strategies contributed to the company’s growth.

History of Uber, Timeline & Facts

2008: On a cold winter evening in Paris, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp couldn’t get a ride. That’s when the idea of Uber was born.

2009: Its global ride-sharing app was launched.

2010: The company received its first significant funding, a $1.3 million round led by First Round Capital.

2012: The company broadened its offerings by launching UberX, which provided a less expensive hybrid car as an alternative to the black car service.

2013: The perfect partnership with animal shelters across the US, we launched UberKITTENS. Riders requested 15 minutes of snuggle time with a furry friend, and all proceeds benefited local shelters.

2014: Spreading goodwill with #UberSpringCleaning, riders requested on-demand donation pickups and gave more than 5,000 pounds of clothes to Goodwill.

2015: Expanding opportunities for deaf and hard-of-hearing driver

2016: Uber then raised a further $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Also the self-driving pilot program was launched in Pittsburgh. Now local riders could get a self-driving vehicle when they request their next trip.

2017: $1 million for Meals on Wheels to help deliver even more meals to seniors, we provided free rides to the volunteers who bring food and friendship, and we also donated directly to the Meals on Wheels America organization.

2018: 10 billion trips and counting in more than 21 countries across five continents, 173 trips and deliveries started simultaneously. And the journey to our subsequent 10 billion visits began.

2022: Uber launched UberX share, which allows multiple customers to share a ride, saving them up to 20% on the standard fare.

2023: Khosrowshahi remains the CEO of Uber.

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Uber CRM Case Study: 4 Strategies Feuling Their Growth

Uber focuses more on their customers needs, and they use the following CRM strategies to satisfy them.

1. Partnerships

Uber has implemented several partnerships to entice both first-time and loyal customers to take a ride. They partnered with Starwood, Capital One, etc.

a) Uber and Starwood

Starwood is one of the world’s largest hotel companies. Uber is partnering with Starwood to broaden its app use and reach globally. Through the partnership, Starwood’s guest loyalty program members can link their accounts with Uber accounts and earn Starwood credits whenever they take an Uber ride.

Uber passengers earn one Starwood rewards point for each dollar they spend on a ride in a car. Free hotel nights start at 3,000 points for the lowest tier of hotels and can be as high as 35,000 points a night for high-end properties.

b) Uber and Capital One

Uber is teaming up with Capital One to offer Capital One SavorOne Cash Rewards Credit Card and Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card cardholders the following rewards;

• 10% cashback on Uber rides and Uber Eats purchases.
• Cardholders will receive a free Uber One membership for $9.99 a month.

The partnership will make the Uber experience better for riders, said Jonathan DiOrio, head of travel partnerships.

2. Introducing Uber Eats

Uber Eats is an online food ordering and delivery platform launched by Uber in 2014. It is an app for mobile devices that allows users to look through restaurant menus, pick out the food items they’d like, and have it delivered right to their door.

Once you place an order on Uber Eats, the restaurant will confirm your order and begin preparing it. An UberEats delivery driver will be matched to your order, and you’ll be able to track your order’s progress the whole time.

Once the driver has picked up your order, you can track the car on a map and estimate how soon the driver will arrive at your location with your food.

UberEats CRM strategy;

• Make it easy for their customer to pick up a meal without leaving the house.
• It enables customers to discover new restaurants around them so they can always try something new.
• Enables Uber customers to compare meal prices from different restaurants before ordering.

3. Customer loyalty

Uber has a loyalty program called “Uber VIP” for a selected group of users with specific American Express credit cards. These valued customers enjoy the following benefits;

• They are invited after taking a high number of rides in certain cities.
• Uber VIP members are matched only with the highest-rated drivers. This means that they will be compared with drivers with a rating of 4.8 stars or above and can feel assured that their ride will go smoothly and safely.
• Finally, Uber VIP users are the first to hear about exclusion promotions, deals, and discounts that Uber has to offer.
• An Uber VIP trip will cost the same amount as a regular one. That said, Uber VIP members are matched with better drivers and better vehicles without paying a higher price.

4. Referral program

Uber’s innovative referral program is the secret behind its rapid adoption. Riders and drivers can refer the app to their friends using their referral code. Once their friends join the app using the code, their friends get free or discounted rides while the drivers earn Uber credit.

What makes Uber so successful?

Since its inception, Uber has dominated the industry because it perfected a solution to meet customers’ needs. They re-imagined the taxicab experience, making it more convenient, predictable, affordable, and fun. They did this because they knew that an incomplete solution was an invitation to competitors.

Uber values their customers a lot. They also partnered with other businesses to meet their customers’ needs. This is the main secret behind Uber’s exponential growth and huge market share . They work with other companies to handle any technology that is difficult for them to take.

What CRM does Uber use?

Uber depends heavily on Salesforce CRM technology for its growth. Salesforce helps extract data from its customers’ engagement with its brand on social media; then, Uber can track and respond to customers’ concerns swiftly.

Uber uses CRM software to tailor offers, recommendations, and customer promotions based on past orders. Uber asks its customers to register for an account to ensure consistent contact with their customers.

It also makes it easy for customers to reorder so that customers can pay with a click and get a better Uber experience.

Conclusion :

To build a scalable business, it’s best to emulate the strategies used by top business owners. Customer relationship management is the primary factor considered by significant companies and Uber is not excluded. They use SalesForce CRM software to streamline their business processes.

SalesForce CRM enables Uber to tap into its customers’ behaviors and riding habits. From the customer’s side, they get a superior, more tailored service – and will be more likely to use Uber again.

Viktor. A is a writer and researcher with experience writing about various topics, including CRM software, SaaS, finance, and technology. When he's not writing, he's swimming and travelling

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A Comprehensive Uber Eats Case Study- 2023

Nowadays, when we are hungry, do we always cook?

Not always, right?

Instead of thinking about what to cook, most of us search for our mobile phones.

Just take our mobile and order our favorite food from our favorite restaurants.

The answer is through food delivery apps.

In this Uber Eats case study, we will discuss one food delivery app that has gained popularity since its invention. It is none other than “Uber Eats.”

We will learn about the Uber Eats case study, digital marketing strategy, and Uber Eats competitor analysis.

There was a time when eating outside was a sort of social gathering. While it is still the same for many, eating out has become more of a necessity.

It could range from a cup of relaxing tea to a craving for a sweet. Now that necessity is delivered to one’s doorstep.

Although people nowadays depend a lot on food delivery apps. How did the idea of ordering food originate?

This article summarizes how online food ordering existed, the major players in this field, and the Uber Eats case study and marketing strategy.  

How did the Food Delivery Idea Emerge?

Uber Eats case study reveals that this service began during World War II.

Then, people did not have a kitchen or home appliances, so they did not have other cooking options.

Food delivery services started spreading to the United States and Philadelphia from the UK.

They supplied food to the needy and those who were at home.

Also, the government ensured that each house was filled with food so nobody stayed hungry. This method spread fast to other parts of the country, including New York and Columbus.

When its benefit began spreading to other parts of the world, others also jumped into this field. Then, in 1952, Australia started its first food delivery service.

Modern Food Delivery System

By then, restaurants had introduced toll-free numbers so customers could call to order food without charges.  With time, the idea of a food ordering system was appreciated by many.

This way, customers could contact the restaurants and enjoy their favorite food delivered to their homes. It led to the invention of online food ordering and delivery services.

Today, there is hardly any country where we will not find a food ordering and delivery service. Moreover, as more and more restaurants join the race, the online food ordering market expands.

As a result, online food ordering and delivery systems have started gaining fame over the previous years.

Digital Age Driving the Growth of Online Food Ordering Services

Online food ordering and delivery popularity is a significant aspect of the digital age culture. We could find Millennials considering online food ordering quite common in recent times. Due to the increase in online customers, the Uber Eats market has grown.

However, most traditional businesses have embraced these trends and moved online despite the growing demand.

With the advent of modern technologies, the food industry gained several new investors regularly.

The online food delivery service is booming with popular apps like Uber Eats and other meal delivery services. Forbes predicted that this industry will have annual sales of around $365 billion worldwide by 2030.

The online food delivery industry has grown immensely over the past five years.

Headed by platform-to-consumer services, such as DoorDash and Uber Eats, online food delivery service has expanded, including takeaways, thus, increasing the potential revenue.

The past few years have also witnessed more partnerships as large businesses attempt to reduce competition in the market.

COVID-19 has driven the industry a few years into the future, as many of us ordered food online for the first time during the lockdown.

Uber Eats case study proves that Uber Eats reported a massive increase in orders between February and March when the entire world was in lockdown.

This case study will examine Uber eats analysis and the Uber Eats Marketing strategy that helped them gain popularity and increase revenue.

What is SWOT Analysis?

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning and management method to help organizations identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

It evaluates an organization’s competitive position, external and internal factors, and existing and future potential.  

Uber Eats Case Study

Uber Eats is an online food ordering service by Uber Technologies. It operates in over 6,000 cities across 45 nations and is expanding its business fast.

Customers use a separate smartphone app, Uber Eats, to order food online. It allows customers to order food from a selected range of restaurants. The collected food is delivered to customers by Uber drivers.

With Uber’s Fast Delivery, customers can get their favorite food from their favorite restaurants within 10 minutes at their doorstep. Being a late participant in the online food delivery business, UberEats has its advantages.

It got the opportunity to learn from other prominent players in the market and redefine the competitive landscape.

This Uber Eats case study analyzes the major competitors, recent trends in customer behaviors, and Uber Eats marketing tactics execution.

The Uber Eats case study proves that one of the significant reasons behind Uber Eats success is its strong brand image and its unique values.

According to the Uber Eats case study, it has lower delivery rates and faster delivery than Grubhub, Postmates, and other online food delivery services.

However, ordering food from Uber Eats gave many a limited experience. Uber Eats case study shows that there were restricted food choices and restaurants. Moreover, no option for food customization makes customers feel unsatisfied with Uber Eats.  

The company focuses on customer reviews and keeps upgrading its service. For example, in 2016, Uber Eats launched two ways to order food.

First, customers could order from restaurants through the app or pre-fixed lunch options. Then, Uber would deliver the same in 10 minutes.

These new features made Uber Eats more convenient and satisfied many customers with different needs and preferences.

Uber Eats Case Study- Acquisition by Zomato

On 21 st January 2020, the only big news was that Zomato acquired Uber Eats. The deal has been in progress since 2019 and was finally concluded for $350 million. This deal was an all-stock transaction.

Zomato did not pay the monetary prize for this deal but offered an equal share in the company. Customers trying to order food from Uber Eats came across Zomato’s page.

A Uber Eats case study proves that the exit of Uber Eats from the food delivery industry has made the food delivery market a duopoly between Swiggy and Zomato.  

Uber Eats is the third most popular name in online food delivery. Swiggy was and is still a tremendous competitor. While Swiggy gets nearly 1.4 million orders daily, Zomato receives around 1.2 million orders, whereas Uber Eats gets only 4 lakh daily.

When this challenging competition was going on, the two startups, Zomato and Swiggy, saw a new competitor in the market. The e-commerce giant, Amazon, entered the food delivery market with new strategies and offerings.

SWOT Analysis of Uber Eats

• Speedy delivery. Customers get their favorite food within 10 minutes at their doorstep.
• Flexibility in food delivery.
• A separate team of drivers handling Uber Eats deliveries avoids overlap with regular Uber cab drivers.
• No hidden charges ensure transparency and consistency in price.
• Restricted selection of restaurants.
• To know the reviews of restaurants, customers need to log in to Yelp.
• The items under the “Uber Instant Delivery” menu are prepared beforehand and kept in the driver’s vehicle. It is the reason why customers throw food many times.

Opportunity

• Uber Eats is available in over 6,000 cities across 45 countries and is expanding.
• Being a late entry in the online food delivery industry, Uber eats got the chance to learn from other major players’ mistakes.
• Give customers the option to place orders in advance. It will help them in assessing the demand for food from each restaurant.
• Offer customers the flexibility to get their food delivered at their available time.
• Uber Eats is a new name in the online food delivery industry.
• Other major food delivery apps like Postmates partner with Chiptole, Starbucks, and other famous companies.

Top 5 Competitors of Uber Eats

Revenue of Uber Eats

Uber Eats is a name that has become synonymous with distraction, challenging norms, and changing rules in an industry that has been around for decades.

Though Uber Eats has had its share of challenges since its launch, its forward-thinking, flexible approach helped it become an industry leader.

This Uber Eats case study narrates the story of Uber Eats, including how it started, became the third most popular food delivery app, and became a common name in everyday life.

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Redefining career growth: a tale of two sales leaders

Carissa Evans, Mid-Market Sales Manager and Robbie Keegan, Grocery and Retail Head of Sales, have had two different career paths at Uber Eats but have both been able to grow their careers as sales leaders by moving across different categories. Today they lead sales teams in two different lines of business. Carissa’s team supports our restaurant partners to achieve their business goals on our platform. Robbie and his team partner with brands outside of restaurants to help our customers get almost anything delivered with the convenience of Uber Eats. They both agree that the exposure and experience outside of the traditional sales role is what sets apart a career in sales at Uber.

Robbie says : “Uber’s different lines of business are at different stages of growth in each of our markets, which in turn means the opportunities for personal and professional growth are wide-ranging and readily available. Whether you’re seeking to deepen your expertise in a specific area or explore new horizons,  there’s always a path forward.”

We sat down with Robbie and Carissa, both based in Sydney, to find out more about their career paths, the support they’ve had to grow at Uber and what advice they have for other sales professionals.

Tell us about yourself and your role.

Carissa: “I joined Uber Eats 2 years ago as a Partner Success Manager in our Enterprise Sales team and I’m now leading a team of 8 Account Managers on our Mid-Market Sales team. My role is to set the strategy and coach the team to better support our Restaurant Partners. Ultimately, we are responsible for helping the restaurants on our platform achieve their business goals with Uber, which means we get to solve an ever changing variety of problems.”

Robbie: “I joined Uber Eats 4 years ago as an Account Manager looking after small and medium sized businesses in New Zealand. I quickly transitioned to a new role focused on the highest potential mid-market brands which I managed for two quarters before joining the grocery and retail team, a newly established line of business for Uber at the time. Our mission is to help our customers get almost anything on the Uber Eats platform through partnerships outside of restaurants such as grocery, liquor, convenience, pharmacy and more. Initially I led account management for small-medium sized businesses and have since taken on mid-market and enterprise customers, now overseeing both account management and acquisition.”

What’s it like working in sales at Uber Eats?

Carissa: “I get to work in an environment with intelligent, positive people who support career growth. There’s lots of opportunity to take on more work and develop professionally, so I’ve been able to continue to learn and challenge myself. The business makes sure you have an understanding of the role you play in the broader business strategy and then recognises performance and supports your growth. In summary, it’s a culture that promotes growth and supports your aspirations.” Robbie: “Uber’s work environment is synonymous with speed. It’s a place where the pace is fast, and collaboration between different teams, especially sales and operations, is not just encouraged but fundamental to success. The synergy between these elements creates an atmosphere where ideas flow freely, and everyone plays a vital part in Uber’s success.”

Tell us about the support you’ve received to grow your career.

Carissa : “I’ve been given all of the flexibility I’ve needed aligned to where I was at in my life and it hasn’t held me back from growing my career. I was promoted whilst I was on parental leave and was given the opportunity to come back part-time when I returned to work. The flexibility we have to work around personal commitments is amazing and I’ve always felt supported to put my health and family first.”  Robbie: “ There has been a genuine investment in my professional growth. Our leaders have consistently shown a keen interest in guiding my career trajectory, fostering an atmosphere where open communication is not just welcome but encouraged. I’ve always felt empowered to express my thoughts honestly and knowing that my concerns are heard and valued.”

What’s different about working in sales at Uber?

Carissa: “ You get so much exposure outside of your role and gain such a breadth of experience at all levels of the organisation. Part of that means that you get to work with such a variety of people with different ideas and ways of thinking that really opens your mind and gets you exposure to such diversity of thought.”  

Robbie: “Regardless of your role, you get a panoramic view of the operation. The visibility extends far beyond the boundaries of traditional sales roles and you get to work on such a range of different projects. One of the most rewarding aspects is witnessing the tangible impact of your work on the lives of those around you. Ideas come to life and you get to see the ripple effect reaching your friends and family in real life.”

Any advice for aspiring sales professionals?

Carissa: “Be proactive about your career growth by building your network and ensuring the right people are aware of your aspirations. Also, don’t be limited to the most obvious next career step and be open to what that next challenge is–experience from a lateral move can give you valuable experience in the long-term.”

Robbie: “Start by mastering your core role to become the go-to expert in your field. Once you’ve established a solid foundation, cultivate a mindset of openness to diverse opportunities. Actively seek chances to work beyond the confines of your role, as the experience gained in different areas is invaluable when transitioning into more senior positions.”

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Hacking the Case Interview

If you’re interviewing for a business strategy or operations role at Uber, there is a good chance that you’ll receive at least one case interview or case study interview.

To land a job offer at Uber for these roles, you’ll need to nail every single one of your case interviews. While Uber case interviews may seem challenging and daunting, they can be mastered with proper preparation.

If you have an upcoming case interview with Uber, we have you covered. In this comprehensive Uber case interview guide, we’ll cover:

• The seven steps to ace any Uber case interview
• Six Uber case interview tips
• How to ace the Uber written case interview or case study
• Recommended Uber case interview/case study resources

If you’re looking for a step-by-step shortcut to learn case interviews quickly, enroll in our case interview course . These insider strategies from a former Bain interviewer helped 30,000+ land tech and consulting offers while saving hundreds of hours of prep time.

The Seven Steps to Ace any Uber Case Interview

A case interview is a special type of interview that is typically used by consulting firms. However, business strategy and operations groups at companies are increasingly using case interviews in their assessment process since they employ so many former consultants.

Case interviews are 20- to 30-minute exercises in which you are placed in a hypothetical business situation and are asked to find a solution or make a recommendation.

First, you’ll create a framework that shows the approach you would take to solve the case. Then, you’ll collaborate with the interviewer, answering a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions that will give you the information and data needed to develop an answer. Finally, you’ll deliver your recommendation at the end of the case.

Uber case interviews are generally candidate-led. This means that you will be expected to lead the direction of the case. You’ll be responsible for asking the right questions, probing for data, and proposing each next step.

Follow these seven steps to solve any Uber case interview or case study.

1. Understand the case background information

The case interview will start with the interviewer explaining the case background information. Make sure that you are taking notes while the interviewer is speaking. You’ll want to focus specifically on understanding the context, the company, and the objective of the case.

The most important part of the case interview is to make sure you understand the business issue and objective of the case. Addressing the wrong business problem is the quickest way to fail a case interview.

2. Ask clarifying questions

Once the interviewer has finished giving you the case information, you’ll have an opportunity to ask questions. 

While you can ask any question that you want, try to prioritize asking questions that help you better understand the situation and problem. You want to avoid asking questions that are too specific or not relevant to understanding the case situation. 

Most candidates ask between one to three questions. You’ll be able to ask more questions later in the case interview if you need to.

3. Summarize the information and verify the objective

Once you have finished asking your immediate questions, summarize all of the major case information and verify that you understand the objective correctly.

In this step, many candidates make the mistake of stating every fact of the case verbatim. Instead, you should summarize the case concisely and clearly in your own words. This demonstrates that you can synthesize information effectively.

4. Develop a framework

The next step is to structure a framework to help guide you through the case.

A case interview framework is a tool that helps you structure and break down a complex problem into simpler, smaller components. Think of a framework as brainstorming different ideas and organizing them into different categories.

To develop a framework, ask yourself what are the three to four major questions that you need to answer in order to make a confident recommendation?

Many candidates make the mistake of using memorized frameworks and applying them to their case interviews. Interviewers can tell when you are using a memorized framework because not all of the elements of the framework will be relevant to the case.

Using a memorized framework reflects poorly on your capabilities because it shows that you cannot think critically for yourself. Therefore, practice creating unique and tailored frameworks for each case that you get.

For a complete guide on how to create tailored and unique frameworks for each case, check out our article on case interview frameworks .

When creating your framework, it is acceptable to ask the interviewer for a few minutes of silence to collect your thoughts. Afterwards, present your framework to the interviewer.

5. Kick off the case

Once you have finished presenting your framework, the interviewer may agree with your approach or may provide some feedback or suggestions. Afterwards, it is time to start solving the case.

How the case investigation will start depends on whether your case is a candidate-led or interviewer-led case. Most cases are candidate-led.

Candidate-led case : In this type of case, you will be expected to drive the direction of the case. You will be suggesting what areas to explore, what analyses to do, and what the next step should be. So, pick an area of your framework to start analyzing. There is no right or wrong area to pick as long as it is relevant to solving the case.

Interviewer-led case : In this type of case, the interviewer will be leading the direction of the case. They will be asking you specific questions that you will answer. After each question, they’ll direct you to the next question. For interviewer-led cases, the interviewer will typically kick off the case by asking you a question after you finish presenting your framework.

6. Answer quantitative and qualitative questions

The majority of the interview will be spent answering a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions.

Quantitative questions may have you estimate the size of a particular market, perform some calculations to determine profitability, or interpret various charts and graphs.

When solving quantitative problems, make sure that you walk the interviewer through your approach before you begin doing any math. When performing calculations, make sure to talk through your steps out loud so that it is easy for the interviewer to follow your work.

Qualitative questions may ask you to brainstorm potential ideas or ask for your judgment on an open-ended business question. When answering these questions, try to structure your answer as much as possible.

After answering each question, make sure that you take your answer and connect it back to the overall case objective. How does your answer help you solve the case? How does your answer impact your potential recommendation?

7. Deliver a recommendation

At the end of the case, the interviewer will ask you to prepare an overall recommendation. It is acceptable to ask the interviewer for a minute to look through your notes before you give your recommendation.

Based on the quantitative and qualitative questions you have answered, what recommendation do they collectively support?

Structure your recommendation in the following way:  

• State your recommendation
• Provide the two to three reasons that support your recommendation
• Propose next steps that you would take if you had more time

After you deliver your recommendation, the interviewer will conclude the case interview. If the case interview was based on a real life project, the interviewer may explain what actually happened in the case.

Don’t worry if your recommendation does not match what actually happened during the project. For case interviews, you are not assessed on your answer, but on your process.

Six Uber Case Interview Tips

Follow these six tips to make the most of your Uber case interview preparation.

Tip #1: Start preparing early

Mastering case interviews takes time. Many of the skills and techniques needed to solve case interviews can’t be learned in just a day or in a week. Ideally, start preparing for your case interviews at least a month or two in advance to give yourself enough time to learn and practice.

Tip #2: Practice with a case partner

Practicing case interviews with a partner is the best way to simulate a real case interview. There are many aspects of case interviews that you won’t be able to work on if you are doing mock cases by yourself. Casing with a partner lets you practice your communication, presentation, and collaboration skills.

Tip #3: Keep a list of feedback from each case

You should keep a journal or log of all of the different pieces of feedback you get from your case interview partner during practice. This way, you’ll be able to identify trends and prioritize what improvement areas to focus on. For example, if you consistently receive feedback in each practice case that you need to structure your answers, that should be your top area to focus on.

Tip #4: Focus on improving one thing at a time

After doing some practice case interviews, you’ll likely have a long list of feedback and improvement areas. Try to focus on improving one thing at a time. Before each practice case, decide on the one thing that you really want to focus on and nail. This will be much more effective than trying to improve everything at once.

Tip #5: Use a hypothesis-driven approach

During the case interview, you should have a hypothesis of what the answer to the case is. A hypothesis is simply an educated guess based on the knowledge that you have. As you analyze data and gather more information, make sure to be constantly changing and refining your hypothesis.

There are two benefits to using a hypothesis to drive the direction of the case. One, it ensures that you are focusing on relevant areas that will help you solve or answer the case. Two, by the time the interviewer asks you for a recommendation, you will already have a refined hypothesis on what the answer or solution to the case should be.

Tip #6: Be 80/20

You have limited time during a case interview to solve the case. Therefore, you won’t be able to cover all of the different areas in your framework and get answers to every single question that you have. Therefore, focus on the most important issues and use the 80/20 principle.

The 80/20 principle states that 80% of the outcome comes from 20% of your effort. During a case interview, focus on the most important questions or areas that will have the biggest impact or effect on developing your answer or recommendation.

How to Ace the Uber Written Case Interview or Case Study

In addition to traditional case interviews, Uber may also give candidates a written case interview with a presentation component during the final round of interviews. Here’s how the Uber written case interview works:

• In advance of your final round interviews, you’ll be given a packet of information that will help you answer a business question or problem that Uber is facing
• You’ll have roughly a week to read the information, analyze the data, and create presentation slides
• During your interview, you’ll be given roughly 30 minutes to present your slides
• Following your presentation, your interviewers will ask follow-up questions based on your methodology and recommendation.

Follow the steps below to perform well on the Uber written case interview and presentation.

1. Understand the business problem and objective

The first step in completing a written case interview is to understand what the objective is. What is the primary business question you are trying to answer with the data and information provided?

2. Read the list of major questions

Your written case interview should provide you with a list of key questions that you will be expected to address or answer. Read through these questions first since these will be the questions that you will want to prioritize.

3. Skim the materials

Next, flip through the information packet that is provided to see what information is available. Identify what data you have and what data you do not have.

The goal in this step is not to read and analyze everything. That would take too much time. Instead, by seeing what information exists, you will be able to better prioritize what you spend your time reading and analyzing.

4. Create a framework

Before you begin reading and analyzing the information in the slides in more detail, you should create a basic framework to help guide your analysis. The list of key questions will help set the foundation of your framework.

5. Read and analyze the material 

Afterwards, read and analyze the information that is relevant to each area of your framework. As you begin answering questions and drawing insights, make sure to write a one or two sentence summary. This will make it easier to decide on a recommendation later.

6. Decide on a recommendation

Review the list of key takeaways that you have summarized from answering all of the major questions in your framework. Decide on what recommendation these findings collectively support.

Remember that there is typically no right or wrong recommendation. As long as your recommendation is supported by data and evidence, you will be in great shape.

7. Create your slides

Once you have a recommendation, it is time to start creating slides. Write your executive summary first and make sure that it tells a clear and logical story that leads to your ultimate recommendation.

Then, write the headlines for your slides. Make sure the headlines summarize the key point of each slide. If the interviewer were to only read the headlines of your slides, they should be able to understand your entire presentation.

8. Prepare for potential questions

If you have any time remaining, brainstorm potential questions the interviewer may ask you during your presentation. They may want to know how you performed your analysis or how you reached your conclusions.

Preparing for these potential questions will help your presentation go much more smoothly. You will also feel much more confident while presenting.

For more information, check out out our complete guide on written case interviews .

Recommended Uber Case Interview/Case Study Resources

Here are the resources we recommend to learn the most robust, effective case interview strategies in the least time-consuming way:

• Comprehensive Case Interview Course (our #1 recommendation): The only resource you need. Whether you have no business background, rusty math skills, or are short on time, this step-by-step course will transform you into a top 1% caser that lands multiple consulting offers.
• Hacking the Case Interview Book   (available on Amazon): Perfect for beginners that are short on time. Transform yourself from a stressed-out case interview newbie to a confident intermediate in under a week. Some readers finish this book in a day and can already tackle tough cases.
• The Ultimate Case Interview Workbook (available on Amazon): Perfect for intermediates struggling with frameworks, case math, or generating business insights. No need to find a case partner – these drills, practice problems, and full-length cases can all be done by yourself.
• Case Interview Coaching : Personalized, one-on-one coaching with former consulting interviewers
• Behavioral & Fit Interview Course : Be prepared for 98% of behavioral and fit questions in just a few hours. We'll teach you exactly how to draft answers that will impress your interviewer
• Resume Review & Editing : Transform your resume into one that will get you multiple interviews

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How Shadow Banning Can Silently Shift Opinion Online

In a new study, Yale SOM’s Tauhid Zaman and Yen-Shao Chen show how a social media platform can shift users’ positions or increase overall polarization by selectively muting and amplifying posts in ways that appear neutral to an outside observer. Zaman says that the dangers of such “shadow banning” are much more immediate than the concerns that led Congress to force a sale of TikTok.

• Tauhid Zaman Associate Professor of Operations Management

Legislation forcing TikTok to sell or shut down its U.S. operations is now law, the result of concerns that the app could be providing data about Americans to the Chinese government. But Yale SOM’s Tauhid Zaman says there is a less abstract threat from TikTok—and it’s one that applies to all of the social media platforms where hot takes are shared and opinions are shaped.

“TikTok and these other platforms select the content they show you,” Zaman says. “They can promote anything, demote anything. That means they can shift opinions any way they want.”

As far as most social media users know, the most powerful tool through which platforms steer public opinion is through the outright removal of objectionable content or users. But Zaman argues that there’s a more potent means through which social media platforms can control collective opinions over time, called “shadow banning.” Part of this tool’s power derives from the fact that it’s currently near-impossible to uncover, even by policymakers or software engineering experts.

A network could be driving people towards one point of view, but if someone tries to call them out on it—like a regulatory body—they’re going to see the network censoring both sides equally.

More clandestine than a straightforward ban from a platform, shadow banning limits the broader visibility of a user’s content without their knowledge. A Facebook or Instagram post that’s been subjected to shadow banning would remain on the original poster’s profile page, but it would appear less, or not at all, in the timelines of other users.

In a new paper co-authored with Yale SOM PhD student Yen-Shao Chen, Zaman takes up this phenomenon—not to determine whether it’s currently happening but instead to lay out exactly how it can be done and how powerful it can be.

For the study, the researchers built a simulation of a real social network, and then succeeded in using shadow banning to shift simulated users’ opinions as well as increasing and decreasing polarization. Even when the goal was to use shadow banning to move collective sentiment to the right or left, Zaman says, the content moderation policy appeared neutral from an outside perspective. That’s because it’s possible, he discovered, to shift opinions by turning down the volume on accounts on both sides of a debate at the same time.

“It’s like a frog sitting in a pot of water; the frog’s relaxing, and suddenly, he’s cooked,” Zaman said. “A network could, in fact, be driving people towards one point of view, but if someone tries to call them out on it—like a regulatory body—they're going to see the network censoring both sides equally,” Zaman says. “It looks like there's nothing untoward happening, so they leave the network alone—and suddenly everybody thinks the earth's flat. That's what we find you could do with our technique, which is a little scary.”

If a large-scale shadow banning strategy could prove dangerous, why would Zaman set out to reverse-engineer the best way to do it? Like any powerful tool, Zaman says, shadow banning can be used for good or ill—and what’s urgently necessary is developing a detailed understanding of how it operates in the first place.

For example, a better understanding of shadow banning could help regulators recognize any bad actors out to shape network opinions. And it could help social media platforms improve their content-recommendation algorithms so as to stringently avoid inadvertent pushes into polarization.

“Using this paper, policymakers can articulate what kinds of recommendation systems to allow, and what kinds of shadow bans to allow,” Zaman says. Suppose a regulator tells platforms, “Your system should not be polarization-enhancing,” he says. “How do you define that? Well, we show in the paper what that means.”

In understanding how content regulation online can affect users’ opinions, the researchers’ first step was to establish a model of opinion dynamics, which they based on widely accepted findings on persuasion. According to their model, a user can be shifted slightly in one way or another by the opinions pronounced by their online connections—but only if those stances are relatively close to where they are already positioned. An opinion that falls too far outside of their narrow opinion window won’t budge them.

With this opinion-changeability model in place, the researchers’ next task was to simulate a large-scale social network conversation focused on specific hashtags. Zaman and Chen built two such simulations, using tweets Zaman had gathered for previous research. One of these simulated conversations drew from real tweets about the 2016 U.S. Presidential election (2.4 million tweets from seventy-eight thousand users were collected on the topic between January 2016 and November 2016) and the other drew from tweets about France’s Yellow Vest protests (2.3 million tweets from forty thousand users were collected on this topic between January 2019 and April 2019). Using a neural network, the researchers measured the sentiment of each tweet.

Next, they built a follower graph for each topic, to map out who was following whom in the large-scale conversation. Within the map, particularly important were each of the “edges” – that is, the link between any two users.

Then came the simulation stage: could they move a user to the right by carefully muting all of the connections falling slightly to their left? By turning down the volume on the most extreme opinions on either side, could they reduce overall polarization within the conversation? And by silencing more moderate positions, could they amp up the conversation’s polarization? To each of these questions, the answer was yes.

Shadow banning is hard to spot because the opinions that are muted depend on their stance relative to other users—resulting in a mix of shadow-banned and amplified users, without any obvious rhyme or reason. If, for example, a network’s goal is to move the collective sentiment to the left, the network might choose to show the content of a moderate user to a relatively right-leaning connection (to pull that connection leftward)— but block that same content from the timeline of a left-leaning connection (to keep that connection from moving even slightly toward the right). At first blush, the banning appears to impact every user more or less equally.

But Zaman and Chen say it is possible to spot whether shadow banning is present: first, by applying a negative score to the edges that pull sentiment in one direction, and a positive score to those edges that pull in the other direction. “Then you quantify the scores of the edges that are blocked,” Zaman explains. “To catch the biased shadow-banning policy, you have to think about things differently. It’s not about the people you’re blocking; it’s the connections between people you have to look at.”

Zaman plans to share his research with policymakers. “I want to show them, ‘Here’s what this network can do; this is the danger,’” he says. “If you’re not going to ban them but want to regulate them, this is how to do it—by quantifying their content algorithm. This is how we should be regulating all of the networks—X, Meta, Instagram, YouTube, all of them.’”

Uber's Strategy for Global Success

Brian Kenny: The theory of disruptive innovation was first coined by Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen in his 1997 book, The Innovator's Dilemma. The theory explains the phenomenon by which an innovation transforms an existing market or sector by introducing simplicity, convenience, and affordability where complication and high cost are the status quo. Think Netflix disrupting the video rental space.

Over the years, the term has been applied liberally and not always correctly to other examples, but every so often, an idea comes along that really fits the bill. Enter Uber, the ridesharing behemoth that turned the car service industry on its head. In a few short years after launching in 2010, Uber became the largest car service in the world, as measured in ride count. Last year, Uber drove 6.2 billion riders.

Today's case takes us to London in 2019, where Uber is facing the latest in a long list of challenges from regulators threatening their ability to continue operating in that important market. In this episode of Cold Call , we welcome Alexander MacKay to discuss the case entitled, Uber: Competing Globally . I'm your host, Brian Kenny, and you're listening to Cold Call on the HBR Presents network.

Alexander MacKay is in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. His research focuses on matters of competition, including pricing, demand, and market structure. Alex, thanks for joining us on Cold Call today.

Alex MacKay: Thank you, Brian. Very happy to be here.

Brian Kenny: The idea of Uber seems so simple, but it was revolutionary in so many ways. And Uber has been in the headlines many times for both good and bad reasons in its decade of existence. So we're going to touch on a lot of those things today. So thanks for sharing the case with us.

Alex MacKay: Brian, I'm very happy to. It's a little funny, we've actually started to see the first few students who have never hailed a traditional taxi in our classrooms. So I think increasingly, the contrast between the two is going to be pretty difficult for people to fully understand.

Brian Kenny: Let me ask you to start by telling us what your cold call would be when you set up the class here.

Alex MacKay: The case starts off with the current legal battle going on in London. And so the first question I just ask to start the classroom is: What's the end game for Uber in London? What do they look like 10 years from now?

In the midst of this ongoing legal battle, there has been back and forth, some give and take from both sides, Transport for London, and also on the Uber side as well. And there's actually a recent court case that has allowed Uber to have a little more time to operate. They bought about 18 more months of time, but this has been also brought with additional, stricter scrutiny, and 18 months from now, they're going to be at it again trying to figure out exactly what rules Uber's allowed to operate under.

Brian Kenny: It seems like 18 months in the lifetime of Uber is like a decade. Everything seems to happen so quickly for this company. That's a long period of time. What made you decide to write this case? How does it relate to the work that you're doing in your research?

Alex MacKay: A big focus of my research is on competition policy, particularly the realms of antitrust and regulation. And here we have a company, Uber, whose relationship with regulation has been really essential to its strategy from Day One. And I think appreciating the effects of regulation and how its impact Uber's performance in different markets, is really critical for understanding strategy and global strategy broadly.

Brian Kenny: Let's just talk a little bit about Uber. I think people are familiar with it, but they may not be familiar with just how large they are in this space. And the space that they've sort of created has also blown up and expanded in many ways. So how big is Uber? Like what's the landscape of ridesharing look like and where does Uber sit in that landscape?

Alex MacKay: Uber globally is the biggest ridesharing company. In 2018, they had over $10 billion in revenue for both ridesharing and their Uber Eats platform. And you mentioned in the introduction, that they had over 6 billion rides in 2019. That's greater than 15 million rides every day that's happening on their platform. So really, just an enormous company.

Brian Kenny: So they started back in 2010. It's been kind of an amazing decade of growth for them. How do you explain that kind of rapid expansion?

Alex MacKay: They were financed early on with some angel investors. I think [co-founder Travis] Kalanick's background really helped there to get some early funding. But one of the critical things that allowed them to expand early into many markets that helped their growth was they're a relatively asset light company.

On the ground, they certainly need sales teams, they need translation work to move into different markets, but because the main asset they were providing in these different markets was software, and drivers were bringing their own cars and riders were bringing their own phones, the key pieces of hardware that you need to operate this market, they really didn't have to invest a ton of capital.

In fact, when they launched in Paris, they launched as sort of a prototype, just to show, "Hey, we can do this in Paris without too much difficulty," as their first international market. So being able to really scale it across different markets really allowed them to grow. I think by 2015, their market cap was $60 billion, five years after founding, which is just an incredible rate of growth.

Brian Kenny: So they're the biggest car service in the world, but they don't own any cars. Like what business are they really in, I guess is the question?

Alex MacKay: They're certainly in the business of matching riders to drivers. They've been able to do this in a way that doesn't require them to own cars, just through the use of technology. And so what they're doing, and this is I think pretty well understood, is that they're using existing capital, people who have cars that may be going unused, personal cars, and Uber is able to use that and deploy that to give riding services to different customers.

Whereas in the traditional taxi model, you could have taxis that you didn't necessarily own, but you leased them or you rented them, but they had the express purpose of being driven for taxi services. And so it wasn't using idle capital. You kind of had to create additional capital in order to provide the services.

Brian Kenny: So you mentioned Travis Kalanick a little bit earlier, but he was one of the co-founders of the company, and the case goes a little bit into his philosophy of what expansion into new markets should look like. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Alex MacKay: Certainly. Yes. And I think it might even be helpful to talk a bit about his background, which I think provides a little more context before Uber. He dropped out of UCLA to work on his first company, Scour, and that was a peer-to-peer file sharing service, a lot like Napster, and actually predated Napster. And where he was operating was sort of an evolving legal gray area. Eventually, Scour got sued for $250 billion by a collection of entertainment companies and had to file for bankruptcy.

Brian Kenny: Wow.

Alex MacKay: He followed that up with his next venture, Red Swoosh, and that was software aimed at allowing users to share network bandwidth. So again, it was a little bit ahead of its time, making use of recent advances in technology. Early on though, they got in trouble with the IRS. They weren't withholding taxes, and there were some other issues with his co-founder, and there was sort of a bad breakup between the two.

Despite this, he persevered and ended up selling the company for $23 million in 2007. And after that, his next big thing was Uber. So one thing I just want to point out is that at all three of these companies, he was looking to do something that leveraged new technology to change the world. And by nature, sometimes businesses like that operate in a legal gray area and you have very difficult decisions to make.

Some other decisions you have to make are clearly unethical and there's really no reason to make some of those decisions, like with the taxes and with some other things that came out later on at Uber, but certainly one of the things that any founder who's looking to change the world with a big new technology company has to deal with, is that often, the legal framework and the regulatory framework around what you're trying to do isn't well established.

Brian Kenny: Obviously drama seems to follow Travis where he goes. And his expansion strategy was pretty aggressive. It was almost like a warlike mentality in terms of going into a new market. And you could sort of sum it up as saying ask forgiveness. Is that fair?

Alex MacKay: Yes. Ask for forgiveness, not permission. I think they were really focused on winning. I think that was sort of their ultimate goal.

We describe in the case there's this policy of principle confrontation, to ignore existing regulations until you receive pushback. And then when you do receive pushback, either from local regulators or existing sort of taxi cab drivers, mobilize a response to sort of confront that. During their beta launch in 2010, they received a cease-and-desist letter from the city of San Francisco. And they essentially just ignored this letter.

They rebranded, they used to be UberCab, and they just took “Cab” out of their name, so now they're Uber. And you can see their perspective in their press release in response to this. They say, "UberCab is a first-to-market cutting-edge transportation technology, and it must be recognized that the regulations from both city and state regulatory bodies have not been written with these innovations in mind. As such, we are happy to help educate the regulatory bodies on this new generation of technology and work closely with both agencies to ensure compliance."

Brian Kenny: It's a little arrogant.

Alex MacKay: Yes, so you can see right there, they're saying, what we're operating in is sort of this new technology-based realm and the regulators don't really understand what's going on. And so instead of complying with the existing regulations, we're going to try to push regulations to fit what we're trying to do.

Brian Kenny: The case is pretty epic in terms of it sort of cuts a sweeping arc across the world, looking at the challenges that they faced with each market they entered, and none more interesting I think the New York City, which is obviously an enormous market. Can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges they faced going into New York with the cab industry being as prevalent as it was and is?

Alex MacKay: Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think it's pretty well known for people who are familiar with New York that there were restrictions on the number of medallions which allowed taxis to operate. So there was a limited number of taxis that could drive around New York City. This restriction had really driven up the value of these medallions to the taxi owners.

And if you had the experience of taking taxis in New York City prior to the advent of Uber, what you'd find is that there were some areas where the service was very, very good. Downtown, Midtown Manhattan, you could almost always find a taxi, but there are other parts of the city where it was very difficult at times to find a cab. And when you got in a cab, you weren't sure that you were always going to be given a fair ride.

And so Uber coming in and providing this technology that allowed you to pick up a ride from anywhere and sort of track the route as you're going on really disrupted this market. Consumers love them. They had a thousand apps signups before they even launched.

Kalanick mentioned this in terms of their launch strategy, we have to go here because the consumers really want us here. But immediately, they started getting pushback from the taxi cab owners who were threatened by this new mode of transportation. They argued that they should be under the same regulations that the taxis were.

And there were a lot of local government officials that were sort of mobilized against Uber as well. De Blasio, the Mayor of New York, wrote opinion articles against Uber, claiming that they were contributing to congestion. There was a lot of concern that maybe they had some safety issues, and the taxi drivers and the owners brought a lawsuit against Uber for evading these regulations. And then later on, and this was the case in many local governments, de Blasio introduced a bill to put additional restrictions on Uber that would make them look a lot more like a traditional taxi operating model, with limited number of licenses and strict requirements for reporting.

Brian Kenny: And this is the same scenario that's going to play out almost with every city that they go into because there is such an established infrastructure for the taxi industry in those places. They have lobbyists. They're tied into the political networks. In some instances, it was revealed that they've been connected with organized crime. So not for the faint of heart, right, trying to expand into some of the biggest cities in the United States.

Alex MacKay: Absolutely. And what's sort of fascinating about the United States is it's actually a place where a company can engage in this battle over regulation on the ground. And de Blasio writes his opinion article and pushes forward this bill. Uber responds by taking out an ad campaign, over $3 million, opposing these regulations and calling out de Blasio.

So again, we sort of have this fascinating example of Uber mobilizing their own lobbyists, their lawyers, but also public advertising to sort of convince the residents of New York City that de Blasio and the regulators that are trying to come down on them are in the wrong.

Brian Kenny: Yes. And at the end of the day, it's consumers that they're really making this appeal to, because I guess my question is, are these regulations stifling innovation? And if they are, who pays the ultimate price for that, Uber or the consumer?

Alex MacKay: Consumers definitely loved Uber. And I don't think any of the regulators were trying to stifle innovation. I don't think they would say that. I think their biggest concern, their primary concern was safety, and a secondary and related concern here was losing regulatory oversight over the transportation sector.

So this is a public service that had been fairly tightly regulated for a long time, and there was some concern that what happens when this just becomes almost a free-market sector. At the same time, these regulators have the lobbyists from the taxi cab industry and other interested parties in their ear trying to convince them that Uber really is like a taxi company and should be regulated, and really emphasizing the safety concerns and other concerns to try to get stricter regulations put on Uber. And part of that may be valid.

I think you certainly should be concerned about safety and there are real concerns there, but part of it is simply the strategic game that rivals are going to play between each other. And the taxi cab industry sees Uber as a threat. It's in their best interest to lobby the regulators to come down on Uber.

Brian Kenny: And what's amazing to me is that while all this is playing out, they're not turning their tails and running. They're continuing to push forward and expand into other parts of the world. So can you talk a little bit about what it was like trying to go into countries in Latin America, countries in Asia, where the regulations and the regulatory infrastructure is quite different than it is in the US?

Alex MacKay: In the case, we have anecdotes, vignettes, one for each continent. And their experience in each continent was actually pretty different. Even within a continent, you're going to have very different regulatory frameworks for each country.

So we sort of pick a few and focus on a few, just to highlight how the experience is very different in different countries. And one thing that's sort of interesting, in Latin America, we focus on Bogota in Colombia, and what's sort of interesting there is they launched secretly and they were pretty early on considered to be illegal, but they continue to operate despite the official policy of being illegal in Colombia. And they were able to do that in a way that you may not be able to do it so easily in the United States, just because of the different layers of enforcement and policy considerations that are present in Colombia and not necessarily in the United States.

Now, when I talk about the current state of Uber in different countries, this is continually evolving. So they temporarily suspended their operations early in 2020 in Columbia. Now they're back. This is a continual back and forth game that they're playing with the regulators in different markets.

Brian Kenny: And in a place like Colombia, are they not worried about violence and the potential for violence against their drivers?

Alex MacKay: Absolutely. So this is true sort of around the world. I think in certain countries, violence becomes a little bit more of a concern. And what they found in Colombia is they did have more incidents where taxi drivers decided to take things into their own hands and threaten Uber drivers and Uber riders, sometimes with weapons.

Another decision Uber had to make that was related to that was whether or not to allow riders to pay in cash. Because in the United States, they'd exclusively used credit cards, but in Latin America and some other countries like India, consumers tended to prefer to use cash to pay, and allowing that sort of opened up this additional risk that Uber didn't really have a great system in place to protect them from. Because when you go to cash, you're not able to track every rider quite as easily, and there's just a bigger chance for fraud or for robbery and that sort of thing popping up.

Brian Kenny: Going into Asia was also quite a challenge for them. Can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges they faced, particularly in China?

Alex MacKay: They had very different experiences in each country in Asia. China was a unique case that is very fascinating, because when Uber launched there, there were already existing technology-based, you might call them, rideshare companies, that were fairly prominent, DiDi and Kuaidi. And these companies later merged to be one company, DiDi, which is huge. It's on par with Uber in terms of its global presence as a ridesharing company.

When Uber launched there, they didn't fully anticipate all the changes they would have to make to going into a very different environment. In China, besides having established competitors, Google Maps didn't work, and they sort of relied on that mapping software to do their location services. So they had to completely redo their location services.

They also, again, relied on credit cards for payments, and in China, consumers increasingly used apps to do their payments. And this became a little bit of a challenge because the main app that Chinese customers used, they used WeChat and Alipay primarily, they were actually owned by parent companies of the rival ridesharing company. So Uber had to essentially negotiate with its rivals in order to have consumers pay for their ridesharing services. And so here are a few sort of localization issues that you could argue Uber didn't fully anticipate when they launched.

The other thing about competing in China that's sort of interesting is that Chinese policy regarding competition is very different from policy in the United States and much of Europe. For the most part, there's not the traditional antitrust view of protecting the consumers first and foremost. That certainly comes into play, but the Chinese government has other objectives, including promoting domestic firms. And so if you think about launching into a company where there's a large established domestic rival that certainly increases the difficulty of success, because when push comes to shove, the government is likely to come down on the side of your rival, which is the domestic company, and not the foreign entrant.

Brian Kenny: Yes, which is understandable, I guess, to some extent. This sounds exhausting, to be sort of fighting skirmishes on all these fronts in all these different places in the world. How does that affect the morale or tear at the fabric maybe of the culture at a company like Uber, where they're trying to manage this on a global scale and running into challenges every step of the way?

Alex MacKay: It certainly has an effect. I think Uber did a very good job at recruiting teams of people who really wanted to win. And so, if that's the consistent message you're sending to your teams, then these challenges may be actually considered somewhat exciting. And so I think by bringing in that sort of person, I think they actually fueled this desire to win in these markets and really kept the momentum going.

One of the downsides of this of course is that if you exclusively focus on winning and getting around the existing regulations, there does become this challenge of what's ethical and what's not ethical? And in certain business areas, there actually often is a little bit of a gray line. I mean, you can see this outside of ridesharing. It's a much broader thing to think about, but regulation of pharmaceuticals, regulation of use of new technologies such as drones, often the technology outpaces the regulation by a little bit and there's this lag in trying to figure out what actually is the right thing to do.

I think it's a fair question whether or not you can disentangle this sort of principle of confrontation that's so pervasive throughout the company culture when it comes to regulation from this principle confrontation of other ethical issues that are not necessarily business driven, and whether or not it's easy to maintain that separation. And I think that's a fair question, certainly worthy for debate. But what I think is important is you can set up a company where you are abiding by ethical issues that are very clear, but you're still going to face challenges on the legal side when you're developing a new business in an area with new technology.

Brian Kenny: That's a great insight. I mean, I found myself asking myself as I got through the case, I can't tell if Uber is the victim or the aggressor in all of this. And I guess the answer is they're a little bit of both.

Alex MacKay: Yes. I think it's fair to characterize them as an aggressor, and I think you sort of need to be if you want to succeed and if you want to change the world in a new technology area. In some sense, they're a victim in that we're all the victim as consumers and as firms of regulations that are sometimes difficult to adapt in real time to changing market conditions. And there's a good reason why they are sticky over time, but sometimes that can be very costly.

Going back to something we talked about earlier, I think there are hardly any consumers that wanted Uber kicked out of New York City. I think everyone realized this was just so much superior to any other option they had, that they were really willing to fight to keep Uber around in the limited ways they could.

Brian Kenny: So let's go back to the central issue in the case then, which is, how important is it to them, in terms of their global strategy, to have a presence in a place like London? They're still not profitable by the way, we should point that out, that despite the fact that they are the largest in the space, they haven't turned the corner to profitability yet. I would imagine London's kind of important.

Alex MacKay: Absolutely. London is a key international city, and a presence there is important for Uber's overall brand. So many people travel through London, and it's a real benefit for anyone who travels to be able to use the same service at any city you stop in.

At the same time, they're facing these increasing regulatory pressures from London, and so it's a real question whether or not, 10 years from now, they look substantially different from the established taxi industry that's there.

And you can kind of see this battle playing out across different markets. As another example, in Ghana. When they entered there, they actually entered with a framework for understanding. They helped build the regulations for ridesharing services in Ghana when they entered. But over time, that evolved to additional restrictions as the existing taxi companies pushed back on them.

So I think a key lesson here in all of this is that the regulations that you see at any given point in time aren't absolutely fixed, for anyone starting a technology-based company, there will be regulations that do get created that affect your business. Stepping outside of transportation, we can see that going on now with the big tech firms and sort of the antitrust investigations they're are under. And the policymakers in the US and Europe are really trying to evolve the set of regulations to reflect the different businesses that Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google are involved in.

Brian Kenny: One thing we haven't touched on, and it's not touched on in the case obviously because it just sort of started fairly recently, is the pandemic and the implications of the pandemic for the rideshare industry as fewer people find themselves in need of going anywhere. Have you given any thought to that and whether that's going to have any effect on the regulations?

Alex MacKay: It certainly could. Uber is in a somewhat fortunate position, at least if you judge by their market capitalization, with respect to the pandemic. Initially their stocks took a pretty big hit, but rebounded pretty quickly, and part of this is because the primary part of their business is the transportation through Uber X, but they do also offer the delivery services through Uber Eats, and that business has really picked up during this pandemic.

There's certainly a mix of views about the future, but I think most people do believe that at some point we'll get back to business as usual, at least for Uber services, when we come up with a vaccine. I think most people anticipate that they'll be resuming use of Uber once it becomes safe to do so. And I think, to be frank, a lot of people already have resumed using Uber, especially people who don't have cars or who see it as a valuable alternative or a safer alternative to public transit.

Brian Kenny: Yes, that's a really good point. And the Uber Eats thing is interesting as another example of how it's important for businesses to re-imagine the business that they're in because that, in many ways, may be helping them through a really tough patch here.

This has been a really interesting conversation, Alex, I want to ask you one final question, which is, as the students are packing up to leave class, what's the one thing you want them to take away from the case?

Alex MacKay: So I would hope the students take away the importance of regulation in business strategy. And I think the case of Uber really highlights that. And if you look at the conversation around Uber I'd say for the first 10 years of their existence, it was essentially around the superiority of their technology and not so much how they handled regulation. If you think back to the cease-and-desist letter that San Francisco issued in 2010, if Uber had simply stopped operations then, we wouldn't have the ridesharing world that we have today.

So their strategy of principle confrontation with respect to regulation was really essential for their future growth. Again, this does raise important ethical considerations as you're operating in a legal gray area, but it's certainly an essential part of strategy.

Brian Kenny: Alex, thanks so much for joining us on Cold Call today. It's been great talking to you.

Alex MacKay: Thank you so much, Brian.

Brian Kenny: If you enjoy Cold Call , you might like other podcasts on the HBR Presents network. Whether you're looking for advice on navigating your career, you want the latest thinking in business and management, or you just want to hear what's on the minds of Harvard Business School professors, the HBR Presents network has a podcast for you. Find them on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen.

I'm your host, Brian Kenny, and you've been listening to Cold Call , an official podcast of Harvard Business School on the HBR Presents network.

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