case study on uber eats

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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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.

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

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Cracking the code of Uber Eats: }

Cracking the code of Uber Eats:

A case study

Uber Eats is an online food ordering and delivery platform that was launched by Uber back in August 2014. It originally began in California as one of the experimental services UberFRESH to deliver convenience-store items. One year later, the platform was renamed Uber Eats. For the first time, the company has broken a product out into its own standalone app. Since then, the company has come a long way to become a significant representation of the modern digital culture. During the Covid pandemic, it had a 70% increase in gross booking and drove more than 50% of the total revenue of Uber in 2021 [1] . Today, it operates in over 6,000 cities across 45 nations, and it is continuously expanding.

Few companies (Google, Amazon, Apple) can compete well in two markets at the same time. Uber has won the ride-hailing market in terms of market share. Is the company doing just as well in the food delivery market? During Uber’s recent Q3 earnings call, the company reported a revenue growth of $8.3 billion, which increased 72% YoY. Among that, Mobility Revenue grew 73% YoY and 8% QoQ to $3.8 billion, and Delivery revenue grew 24% YoY and 3% QoQ to $2.8 billion [2] . Unarguably, the solid earnings prove that Uber Eats, with over 81 million users world-widely, is succeeding in the food delivery industry [3].

In this article, we conduct an Uber Eats case study on a global scale. By leveraging Dashmote’s Data Analytics SaaS platform, we summarised a number of key features on this platform around the globe. It includes the growth of digital storefronts in Q3, the most popular cuisine types, and the top-listed beverage brands. After reading the article, you will gain a more sophisticated understanding of the general popularity of Uber Eats, and its current food and beverage trends.

Uber Eats 2022 Q3 digital storefronts growth

According to our Q3 food delivery data, the growth in Uber Eats‘ digital storefronts in major European countries has been slowing down. Uber Eats NL and Switzerland saw a quarter-on-quarter decrease in restaurant listings on its platform. Belgium and France grew by less than 1%. In the UK, after a double-digit growth of 10.75% in Q2, the growth in restaurant listings decreased dramatically to 0.52% in Q3. However, in Germany, it saw a staggering QoQ growth of 36.47%. This is not mistaken. In fact, the company is growing its German delivery business and plans to include 70 cities by the end of the year, expanding from its roster of 14 cities in March 2022 [4] . Our data clearly reflects this expansion.

Uber Eats is the 2nd biggest food delivery platform in the U.S., controlling over 25% of the food delivery market [5] . Our data shows that the U.S. remained the company’ largest market. It has around 450k restaurants listed on its platform and a QoQ growth of 1.85%. This restaurant base is 4 times the size in Japan. 

Popular Cuisine types on Uber Eats

According to Dashmote’s data, fast food, burger, and American cuisine are the dominating choices across the largest markets for Uber Eats. In NZ, Asian food ranked as the 3 rd most listed cuisine type after fast food and burger.

One would expect Uber Eats France to showcase some French cuisine. Mistakenly, burgers, American, and fast food make up the top 3 cuisines in France. Moreover, Italian cuisine has been ruling the world for the last decades, but not on Uber Eats. Italian food, such as pasta and pizza, did not make it to the top 3 for most of the major countries where Uber Eats operates in.

A key takeaway from this data is that global consumers increasingly value convenient and fast food, and a key aspect driving the food delivery industry is the fast and busy life of people. Understanding the key trends on Uber Eats will benefit your business in adapting to consumer demands and discovering opportunities in the market.

Top listed beverage brands on Uber Eats

Our data shows that Coca-Cola remained the biggest beverage brand on Uber Eats across all major markets. In the US and the UK, Coca-Cola is now around double the size of Pepsi in terms of brand listing. Sprite and Fanta make it to the top 5 listed brands for most of the countries that are in scope. Moreover, we discovered some dark horses in the top listed beverage brands in some major countries, as shown in the visual below.

Overall, Uber Eats, along with the online food delivery industry, has witnessed an immense expansion since the pandemic began. However, our data shows that the market growth, in terms of restaurant listings, has been slowing down in Q3 2022. This can be also reflected in Uber's Q3 revenue reports, where Delivery revenue grew 24% YoY but only 3% QoQ.

After all, Uber Eats is still a success story in the food delivery industry with growing popularity. Understanding the food and beverage trends on the platform is essential for companies that can expand into the aggregator territory. Dashmote is the leading big data and AI analytics company in the food & beverage industry. We help F&B enterprises by empowering leaders and analysts to track and analyse publicly available data to contribute to making strategic decisions for your brand. Do you want to know more about retrieving market insights across food delivery and F&B?

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How To Develop A Successful Food Delivery App Like UberEats

Food ordering is not a novel concept, but on-demand mobile apps have significantly enhanced the process, making it more seamless, faster, and convenient. As a result, the food delivery app industry has become well-established. It’s projected to reach $63.5 billion by 2025, driven in part by the accelerated adoption due to the impact of COVID-19. Given the success of UberEats in this industry, we aim to uncover the strategies behind Uber Eats case study and provide a comprehensive guide on how to create an app similar to UberEats.

1. Uber Eats Case Study: Business Model

Uber Eats is one of the 20 most-used apps in recent years. Its business model has inspired millions of food delivery startups to join the game. The UberEats app is both a restaurant aggregator and a delivery agent. Thus, a food delivery app like Uber performs two different features:

• UberEats uses a traditional food delivery model, listing partners-restaurants in a single app.
• At the same time, UberEats handles order delivery. The company uses its own logistics network to deliver orders from restaurants that don’t have a delivery option.

Besides, the food delivery application provides users with many functions, making food ordering even more convenient. The most notable food delivery app features are:

• Tailored restaurant recommendations
• Advanced search filters
• Order tracking 
• Customizable delivery details

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2. How Does UberEats Make Money?

To raise profit, the company applies three main monetization strategies, including:

• Delivery Fee: Before 2018, UberEats has had a flat rate of $4.99 delivery fee. Now the company uses a pricing calculator. It estimates a delivery order fee based on the distance between customers and restaurants. Thus, the delivery fee varies from $2 to $8 per order.
• Revenue Sharing from Restaurants: The platform charges restaurants from 15% to 40% fee for each order received via UberEats.
• Advertising: Another source of UberEats revenue is a marketing fee. Restaurant partners pay for promotion via the app search and come up as the first search result. This popular monetization strategy among restaurants increases their visibility on the app.

3. How To Make A Food Delivery App: A Step-by-step Guide

To make apps like UberEats popular among users, you need something more than copying UberEats feature list and monetization model. In this section, we have gathered handy insights on how to develop a unique food ordering app that can surpass UberEats. 

Step 1: Watch The Food Delivery Industry For Hot Trends

To be ahead of competitors, you need to be aware of the most current food delivery industry trends, including new delivery channels. In order to achieve this, consider the following food ordering trends:

a/. Social Media

To make your app unique in your niche, think about ordering via social media accounts. The first company that used this ordering option was Domino’s Pizza. Domino’s Pizza customers can use their Twitter account to order pizzas. In order to achieve this, app users need to tweet a pizza emoji to the Domino’s Pizza Twitter account. 

But how does Domino’s Pizza know what type of pizza you want and your delivery address? Here’s how: 

• Before taking advantage of this service, Domino’s Pizza customers need to create a “pizza profile” on Domino’s online delivery service.
• The customers save their default orders, also known as Easy Orders.
• Then, app users link this pizza profile with their Twitter account. 

b./ Virtual Assistant

Chabot has become a handy assistant in many areas, including food ordering. This technology allows ordering via messengers and requests food by a single word. Let’s check some examples:

• Domino’s pizza is at the top of the technological wave again. The company has developed Dom, a chatbot for ordering food via Twitter and Facebook messengers. Dom also informs customers about the latest deals and vouchers. 
• Grubhub is another example of the successful use of modern technologies. The delivery marketplace has integrated its system with Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant. Now, Grubhub customers can reorder any of their last three purchases made via the platform. Besides placing orders, Alexa also tells the estimated delivery time. 
• Just Eat has decided to keep up with the current trends and integrate Alexa into their ordering system as well. Thanks to new Amazon hardware, Echo Show , Just Eat can place orders by voice and check the courier’s location.

c./ Smartwatch

Wearable devices have quickly become an integral segment of the consumer electronics industry. And, by August 2019, there have been over 38 million smartwatches sold globally. Some businesses use Android and Apple smart devices. Some examples are:

• Domino’s was a pioneer who launched a food ordering app for Android watches which simplifies ordering. 
• OrderUp is another brand that has decided to enter the wearable devices market. The company introduced its latest app for the Apple Watch. Now, OrderUp customers can place orders, track delivery statuses, and see the estimated time of arrival.

Step 2: Choose Food Delivery Model

During this stage, you need to select a food delivery model that will work for your business and meet your goals. There are two main models currently presented on the food delivery market. They are: 

Step 3: Research Your Target Market 

To develop an outstanding food delivery app, you need to know your customers or your target audience. Why? Simply because once you understand who will be using your products, it is easy to build an app that ideally meets your target audiences’ needs. 

Your target audience could be narrow, such as gluten-free raw vegans, or broad, like pizza lovers. 

To draw a clear picture of your target audience, use demographic criteria and create a target customer profile. In order to achieve this, you need to clarify the following points:

Social characteristics, including income, gender, nationality, age, and so on. 

• How do your target customers spend their free time? 
• What potential customer problems your product may solve?
• What feeling will your product provoke from your customers?
• Why should your customers use your product, rather than competitors? 

By clarifying all of these points, you will have a good idea of your target customers. 

Step 4: Choose The Main Features Of UberEats-like Food Delivery Services

When developing a mobile app like Uber for food delivery, consider the following features: 

• Registration and Login: Think about log in via email and social media profiles, such as Facebook and Twitter. 
• Search: Empower your food delivery app with search by meal, filters, as well as the food category. This section should include pictures of dishes, the process, and a description of the meal.
• Order placing: Once users select the meal they want they can add it to the shopping cart. 
• Order checkout: After users select their food, they can place their orders. This section of the food delivery app like Uber should include all selected dishes, and the total price the user should pay.
• Payment: When the order is ready, allow your users to pay for it via the built-in payment gateway. Our advice is to integrate several payment systems, such as PayPal, Stripe, MangoPay. We applied this strategy to custom marketplace development. Besides these payment options, let your customer have a Cash on Delivery option.
• Notifications: You can notify your customers about the order status via push notifications and SMS.
• Order Tracking: Empower your food delivery app like UberEats with real-time order tracking by using the CoreLocation framework for iOS apps and Google Location API for Android apps. Besides, Mapkits and Google Maps will help your couriers to find the best route to the customer’s location.
• Reviews and ratings: Let your app users share their experience via reviews, and rate restaurants on your platform. User reviews will add dynamic content to your app and social proof.

Step 5: Select The Technology Stack of Food Delivery App Development 

Depending on the business model of your food delivery startup, you might need different technologies. Still, we have gathered an essential tech stack for Uber-like apps in the table below:

• Restaurant listing:
• Grubhub API
• FourSquare API
• Payment gateway:
• Find user location:
• Core Location Framework
• Google Places API
• Google Maps
• Push notifications:
• Urban Airship
• Firebase Cloud Messaging

4. How Much Does It Cost to Develop A Food Delivery App?

T he cost of the mobile app consists of many elements, including the number of platforms, feature list, the number of integrations, and so on. Your mobile development team will come up with a precise app estimation only after the discovery (inception) phase.  The discovery (inception) phase is the first step you and your development team take to build a solid foundation for app development. This stage includes several components, such as:

Functional specification

• UX/UI design 
• Visual prototypes

After this stage, you will have a clear vision of the end solution. In our experience, this phase takes 4-6 weeks. The product discovery phase can help you with:

• Defining the scope of work 
• Developing the project roadmap 
• Setting a realistic MVP budget 
• Planning your resources
• Testing the app MVP with a target audience 
• Developing a solid investment pitch

So, how much will the food delivery app cost? We need from 50 hours to create UI/UX design, from 66 hours to build the app’s back-end, while the development stage may take from 120 hours per each platform. 

5. In a nutshell

The popularity of food ordering services makes on-demand food apps a prospective niche for investments. Still, to stand out from the crowd, you should adopt current food ordering industry trends. For your future food delivery app, you can apply either an Order-Only or Order and Delivery Model. With the app MVP, you can gather insights from your target audience and add other features during the second development stage.

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• Hotline: +1 408 663 8600 (US); +612 8006 1349 (AUS); +84 32 675 2886 (VN)
• Email: [email protected]

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Uber’s Strategy for Global Success

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

• Apple Podcasts

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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How Uber Disrupted An Industry With An Explosive Approach

Table of contents.

In this strategy study, we’re going to delve into a company that impacted everything from people’s everyday lives and entrepreneurial dreams to the startup world and city legislature.

Its story and strategy are fascinating, often problematic, and definitely worth exploring. So let’s embark on a different kind of Uber ride.

Despite disrupting transport around the globe, Uber defines itself as a technology company , not a transport company - hence their legal name Uber Technologies Inc. It was one of the first companies to embrace and define “the sharing economy” concept and created a two-sided digital marketplace for drivers and riders.

Uber’s mission was to make transportation as easy to access as running water and they wanted to do it in a different way - without owning its own vehicle fleet like your regular taxi company. 

That asset-light strategy is what makes Uber so incredibly scalable and it proved to be a huge draw for investors. Since Uber’s launch in 2010, the company has attracted over $25 billion in VC funding.

Their business model and immense financial backing helped Uber achieve:

• Present in 10,500+ cities across 70 countries
• 131 million monthly active platform customers
• Nearly 23 million rides per day worldwide
• Over 5 million drivers worldwide
• 118 million users in 2021
• Annual revenue of $17.4 billion in 2021
• A 68% share of the US rideshare market .

Uber’s numbers are astronomical and the company is a perfect example of a disruptive and transformative brand. However, as we dive deeper into Uber’s strategy, you’ll see that Uber faced and is still facing many challenges - the biggest one among them being its (un)profitability.

But let us start at the very beginning...

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It all began on a cold night in Paris...

It was a snowy winter night in Paris in 2008. Two friends and successful startup founders, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, were attending the annual tech conference LeWeb. More importantly, they were trying to get a cab but couldn’t find one.

What if you could just request a ride from your phone?

This idea, based on a very real need at that moment, is what sparked the creation of Uber.

After the conference, the entrepreneurs went their separate ways, but when Camp returned to San Francisco, he continued to be fixated on the idea and bought the domain name UberCab.com. 

In 2009, Camp was still CEO of StumbleUpon, but he began working on a prototype of UberCab as a side project. At the time, UberCab was still an idea for a shared luxury cab service that could be ordered via an app.

Camp had managed to persuade Kalanick to join UberCab in an advisory role and on July 5, 2010, the first Uber rider requested a trip across San Francisco. Kalanick became Uber’s CEO in December 2010, while Ryan Graves, Uber’s first CEO, assumed the role of the COO and board member.

Uber’s app, enabled its users to order a ride with a tap of a button . A GPS identified the rider’s location, and the cost was automatically charged to the card on the user account. Uber’s simplicity fueled its early popularity among users as well as investors and the startup quickly became one of the hottest companies in San Francisco.

By October 2010, the company received its first major funding of $1.25 million and in 2011 its growth skyrocketed. Early in the year, the company raised $11 million and went on to expand to New York, Seattle, Boston, Chicago, Washington D.C. as well as abroad in Paris.

Yes, just a year after the first Uber ride was requested, Uber had already launched internationally in Paris, where the idea for Uber first took root.

In December at the 2011 LeWeb Conference, the very conference “responsible for Uber’s inception”, Kalanick announced that Uber raised another $32 million in Series B and that investors like Jeff Bezos and Goldman Sachs got on board.

In 2012, Uber launched its arguably most popular service UberX. UberX provided an option of ordering a more affordable car as an alternative to its original black car service. That’s when Uber became really appealing to the mass market.

Behind Uber’s explosive growth are an innovative business model and growth strategy that we must explore before diving into Uber’s global expansion.

Key takeaway #1: build solutions for real-world problems

Successful products and services identify real problems and figure out how technology can be leveraged to solve them. Uber’s founders made sure they’re going to be able to get a ride during a cold winter night by using mobile technology to transform on-demand transportation.

All about Uber’s scalable business model

When talking about Uber’s business model, we need to mention that since its launch, Uber has expanded and diversified its services. It’s no longer just a ride-hailing service - it also offers food delivery (Uber Eats) and trucking (Uber Freight).

However, for the sake of simplicity, we’ll mostly focus on Uber's core business of ridesharing and the business model revolving around it. 

The basic idea behind Uber is to connect riders that need to get somewhere with drivers that are willing to take them there. Riders create the demand while drivers provide the “supply” and Uber acts as the marketplace where both parties can seamlessly connect.

As you can see, Uber has two key users and it has to provide strong value propositions for both drivers and passengers in order to attract enough users for the platform to function as intended.

Let’s see why passengers and drivers use Uber.

Uber’s value propositions

• Convenient on-demand ride bookings
• Real-time tracking
• Cheaper rates compared to taxis
• Accurate estimated time of arrival
• Automatic credit card rides
• Lower wait time for a ride
• Upfront pricing
• Multiple ride options

For drivers

• Highly flexible source of income for people who own (or are willing to loan) a car
• Completely flexible working hours
• Good trip allocation
• Assistance in getting vehicle loans
• Weekly or even daily payments

Uber’s target market

While the appeal of Uber is quite obvious, who exactly do they target?

As evident from the value propositions, Uber has two main target segments - passengers who want a fuss-free experience ride from A to B and drivers that want flexibility and some extra income, usually on the side.

When it comes to passengers, Uber’s website’s headline for a long time was: Everyone’s private driver . That instantly lets us know that Uber’s target market is very, very wide. It’s everyone who needs a ride .

While targeting several customer segments with different cost-conscious and more luxurious service options, what’s perhaps more important is how Uber reached its audience at the very beginning as you can’t just target everyone from the get-go.

It’s all about passionate early adopters

Uber did a masterful job attracting its first users - passengers as well as drivers. When it comes to launching a marketplace the first few weeks are absolutely crucial as there needs to be enough supply and demand for service to feel worthwhile.

Uber developed a highly targeted and localized early adopter strategy in the Silicon Valley area. They knew that launching there meant that the company will be interacting regularly with the tech community who are continually looking for new tools and services that improve their quality of life. People there were ideal early adopters and Uber reached them by sponsoring tech events, providing free rides, and in general driving awareness among this audience.

San Francisco also has notoriously spotty cab service which was perfect for Uber. As early adopters, completely fed up with the taxi situation in the city, tried Uber, they took to blogs, social media and every other way possible to tell their friends about this new way to ride.

The Uber experience became a vector for growth as early adopters impressed their friends with the ability to call a black car from their phone with a couple of taps. These new riders were immediately wowed by the experience and became new users and advocates within the span of a single car ride.

Uber also knew that attendees of their sponsored events were well connected and highly likely to share their experiences with friends, tech press, and social media audiences after trying Uber.

By seeding this audience, they were able to create a growth engine that hinged not just on word of mouth, but by showcasing the service to one's friends which quickly led to a growing network of passionate customers.

Uber combined that initial campaign with its referral marketing strategy where users can give friends free rides while earning credits themselves. This “give money-get money” program gave first-timers a more concrete reason to try the service. It’s been massively successful both for Uber and for certain “superfans”, one of whom earned over $50,000 in referral credits . Drivers also get referral incentives, thereby making acquisition on both driver and rider sides faster and easier.

That’s how Uber quickly got a lot of passionate users who were actually Uber’s first target market. Of course, every company wants passionate users, but as you’ll see, Uber needed them to win against the myriad taxi regulations in major cities.

Uber’s early adopters were people that weren’t happy with the existing state of the transportation industry in their cities. They quickly became advocates for the company in various forums as Uber fought against old regulations. It was a very clever move to identify and cultivate these customers early on. By making customer convenience and service a priority, Uber took the role of “disruptor” and turned it into a part of the company’s image and brand. They joined a broader socioeconomic movement towards changing old industries in ways that benefited consumers. 

It’s safe to say that if Uber wasn’t backed by its passionate users, it wouldn’t be able to expand nearly as fast as it did. In fact, the disruptive socioeconomic movement became a key part of Uber’s early business model.

Adapting to local markets

Despite targeting everyone, Uber still takes into account local experience. As Uber expanded it segmented its audiences and precisely targeted them by region and immediate needs.

For example, in countries like India and Thailand, the average customer must deal with higher traffic congestion and reduced purchasing power than a North American city. In these regions, Uber expanded its offerings with a rickshaw and motorbike service, which are more affordable and often faster transport options.

What enables Uber to adapt its services to the local condition? It’s arguably the most important part of Uber’s business model and quick expansion...

An asset-light strategy

As we said Uber is not a transport company and therefore does not need the assets a traditional taxi company requires.

By being “just” an online platform connecting drivers with passengers via their smartphones eliminates Uber’s need to establish a brick and mortar presence in each new city to which it expands operations. This model eliminates many barriers to Uber’s growth and drastically increases its scalability. It also unlocks the potential for Uber to expand into contiguous service segments such as food delivery (Uber Eats) without drastic changes to the company’s operating model. 

The majority of Uber drivers use their own cars which means that Uber doesn’t need to invest in a fleet of company-owned vehicles or the insurance and repair costs that come with it. It also doesn’t need dispatchers or call centers as the whole process of hailing a ride takes place on their app. 

So, compared to a traditional cab company, Uber doesn’t have to deal with:

• servicing and maintaining a fleet of taxis,
• call center agents,
• administration,
• parking fees,
• recruiting and training drivers and issuing permits.

This means massive savings in fixed and variable costs as well as the agility to respond more quickly and effectively to market changes relative to its competitors.

That’s why Uber was able to expand extremely quickly and in a span of 10 years appeared all over the globe. No taxi or transport company is able to achieve that.

Their lack of assets shows how they save money and expand at relatively low costs - but how does Uber actually make money?

How does Uber make money?

You can probably guess that Uber’s ridesharing service makes money by taking a cut of each ride that happens through their platform. While this is correct, Uber’s revenue model consists of more than just trip commissions - even without taking into account its other services like Uber Eats and Uber Freight. Let’s take a look at other revenue streams their business model enables.

Trip commissions and surge pricing

Uber provides the drivers on its platform with a robust supply of ride requests to accept, fulfill, and make income. When passengers pay for the ride through the app, Uber takes their commission and transfers the rest to the driver. Uber claims that they charge their drivers a 25% fee on all fares, yet reports vary.

However, Uber’s trip rates are not always the same. Uber utilizes a surge pricing model , which is also a cornerstone of Uber’s business model.

It takes advantage of the dynamic relationship between supply and demand and willingness to pay. When there are more passengers than available drivers in a given area, the algorithm increases rates in order to equilibrate this discrepancy. The first benefit of this model is that it attracts drivers to areas offering higher rates, thus increasing their numbers in regions of high demand. Second, it narrows the initial pool of potential passengers based on how much they value a ride, allowing Uber to more accurately segment their customer base and satisfy those users who need their service the most. 

Thus the surge pricing model serves the purpose of capturing the highest possible margins for the company and its drivers while establishing a targeted base of users that value Uber rides the most. These users might also be enticed to upgrade their chosen option to a premium one the next time they use Uber, which is considerably more profitable for the company.

Leasing to drivers

Uber runs a vehicle leasing program in many of its target countries to help new drivers get onboard faster. Drivers have to pay an upfront security deposit for the vehicle and payments are automatically deducted on a weekly basis from the driver’s earnings.

Advertising

There are millions of people around the world that interact with Uber cars every day. Not just the ones who use it for rides but also the ones who see them. That’s a huge opportunity for local as well as global brands that can take advantage of Uber’s on-car advertising .

Brands can advertise on cartop video screens, car wrappings, or car stickers. All three ways display ads on the car and are a fairly traditional form of advertisement, yet Uber with their huge number of drivers can get some money out of it. Of course, drivers that are willing to use their cars as moving ads also earn some additional income.

Understanding Uber’s business model is important if we want to understand the company’s extremely fast and aggressive global expansion, which is something Uber is quite famous for.

Key takeaway #2: plan for scalability

Building a scalable business model is critical, especially if the company’s revenue depends on the quantity of its service. Uber has built its platform in such a way that it is easy for it to expand to new markets and serve millions of users at the same time without a significant increase in its operational costs.

Uber expansion strategy

Uber’s initial global expansion it’s an amazing showcase of the company’s “ask for forgiveness instead of permission” approach . As we’ll see later, Uber’s culture has completely changed since then, but its early expansion is what brought the company mercurial success as well as plenty of backlash and issues of all kinds.

Uber employed an almost warlike mentality when going into a new market and the company’s sole focus was winning. This was first visible in San Francisco even before it went global.

Uber received a cease and desist order in San Francisco soon after its launch in 2010. It ignored it and issued the following response , that might be seen a bit on the arrogant side:

“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 and keep our service available for our truly Uber users and their drivers.

Our commitment is to facilitate an improved transportation option that provides safe, reliable, and convenient travel. That will not change. We will continue full speed ahead with the mission of making San Francisco city a great place to live and travel.”

They were relying on their passionate supporters and on their lobbying efforts to put things in order. Not just that, while this is playing out, they're continuing to push forward and expand into other parts of the world. That’s how aggressive they were from the get-go.

Going to Paris - because they can

Uber recognized early that international expansion should be a priority if the company wanted to achieve exponential growth and made Paris its 3rd launch city and 1st city outside the US.

In fact, when they launched in Paris, they launched as sort of a prototype, just to show that they can do it without too much difficulty. 

As Mina Radhakrishnan, Uber’s first Head of Product said in a blog post :

“At Uber, we launched our first international city, Paris, in 30 days. There was a lot of manual work to continue launching in other countries and languages while we didn’t have a core set of international systems  – we had to charge everyone in US dollars for several months. In parallel, we built out the foundations and kept moving pieces onto the new infrastructure, which allowed Uber to keep momentum and still scale.”

While Paris served as an enticing showcase for new investors it also made Uber realize they need an expansion playbook.

Uber’s unusual expansion playbook

At first Uber treated each city as an individual project. They would investigate what needed to be done on a case-by-case basis, and it involved a whole lot of work manpower. 

However, there was a market that needed to be monopolized and they needed to act quickly.

Uber soon realized that looking at each city as a project was too slow. Instead, they developed a process based on the lessons learned from their initial projects and created their aggressive expansion playbook.

Here’s Uber’s plan when expanding to a new city:

• Secretly enter a new market. Recruit drivers and customers through company ambassadors who gain commission and Uber credit. Offer first-time customers free rides to create a strong customer and to exploit a legal loophole for promotion. 
• Ignore threats of legal action. Make a case that customers want Uber to be there. 
• Ignore government sting operations. When the government threatens Uber’s drivers with fines, reassure them that Uber will cover any penalties, legal costs or other repercussions using the massive sums of money invested in the company.
• Start lobbying the state government. Start pushing for regulations that legalize its operations. Create a positive public image and gain the support of influential local charities and other key community stakeholders. Involve customers in petitions.
• Monopolize the market. Hire more drivers, pour more money into promotion, and manufacture PR stunts like delivering puppies or ice cream.
• Undermine the competition. Recruit drivers from competitors by offering them high sign-up fees and often employ other tactics to disrupt their services.

This was the overarching process, and there is obviously a multitude of smaller processes within each of the six steps. The playbook was implemented by a new, local team with a separate entrepreneurial manager who was overseen by Kalanick, the CEO at the time.

While the process was extremely aggressive it’s also how Uber increased its valuation from $3.7 to $41.2 billion in just 15 months. 

The main thing Uber did with this playbook was to launch its service seemingly out of the blue which gave the authorities no time to react before it was firmly established in the city.

While this playbook is responsible for Uber’s early success the approach was often challenged and frowned upon.

War on all fronts

Unsurprisingly Uber has been heavily criticized for aggressively lobbying, following unfair labor practices, jeopardizing the security of passengers and drivers, and playing with local laws by requiring no permits. There were too many scandals and issues to cover them all.

Uber’s warlike approach worked better in countries with legal systems based on common law. In common law countries like the US, Canada, and the UK, laws and regulations are more flexible and subject to judicial interpretation. Uber was therefore afforded greater latitude when arguing the legality of its case in the courts of law. 

In the U.S., Uber used consumer enthusiasm for its service to bring pressure on local politicians to develop rules that allow it to operate. However, such an approach is difficult in civil law countries like China, France, Germany, Spain, and much of continental Europe.

This resulted in plenty of bans, penalties, and losses on various markets .

Uber has been banned from operating in parts of France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium. It has been accused of willfully ignoring and breaking the law, placing both drivers and riders in peril. In the Netherlands, the company had to pay around 2.3 million euros to settle a case, after being accused of operating an illegal taxi service from 2014 to 2015. 

Uber also faced issues in countries where the relationship between Uber and its drivers meets the definition of the employer-employee relationship. This is one of the reasons why the app was temporarily banned from operating in Colombia and faced similar legal issues in Chile and Argentina.

Its presence in various countries has generated an incredible backlash – protests, riots, and clashes with angry labor unions - especially cab drivers.

Uber also completely mismanaged their launch in China and lost billions trying to establish themselves on the Chinese market. Here’s where their process completely failed them.

When Uber came to China, it didn't fully anticipate all the changes it would have to make. In China, besides having an established competitor in Didi, Google Maps didn't work, so Uber had to completely redo their location services.

Uber also relied on credit cards for payments, and in China, consumers increasingly used apps to do their payments. However, the main apps consumers used ( WeChat and Alipay), were 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.

The Chinese policy regarding competition is also very different from the policy in the United States and much of Europe. The Chinese government wants to promote domestic firms and aggressive tactics are not really an option, because when push comes to shove, the government is likely to come down on the side of the domestic company.

Despite many problems and failures, Uber made impressive headway in foreign markets. But their success also made them a target. Well-funded local challengers soon replicated and improved upon Uber’s model and quickly limited Uber’s market share or pushed them out of their markets.

Tactical retreat from some markets

After Uber hired a new CEO in 2017 and started cleaning house at the end of 2017 (more on this later), it switched to a much less aggressive expansion strategy. In 2018 they decided to retreat from some markets instead of trying to “win at all costs”.

While some may see retreat as a failure, Uber’s early and aggressively sought international position actually provided an opportunity. Instead of completely giving up on markets, Uber used its leverage as an established player to acquire stakes in local competitors . Uber acquired 15.4% of Chinese Didi, 38% of Russia’s Yandex Taxi, and 23.2% of Southeast Asia’s Grab. 

Uber also vowed to do a “reset” in Germany, where it operated a very limited service in Berlin. 

Uber is still left fighting in India against rival Ola where the two have been locked in a costly battle for years over dominance in India’s ride-hailing market. The rivalry is more awkward now that both companies share a mutual large investor: SoftBank. 

Uber’s early super aggressive expansion policies reflected its combative corporate culture which soon tarnished the brand’s image.

Key takeaway #3: being ultra-aggressive is a double-edged sword

There’s no denying that without its extremely fast expansion Uber wouldn’t be the brand that we know today. But as scandals mounted and as Uber lost millions and billions of dollars in certain markets, we should ask ourselves if things could have been done differently. Ignoring local regulations, while it did work in some cases and was extremely costly in others, was never ethical. And we can probably all agree that even if a company adopts an aggressive playbook, it should do all it can to act ethically as well.

Uber’s toxic culture comes to light

Uber needed three key elements in place if it wanted to thrive as a global business.

• A set of country managers who are responsible for their individual markets.
• An understanding of how those markets differ.
• A unified executive team, which creates a centralized command center.

Under Kalanick, Uber actually had the first two. There were strong regional managers and a decentralized command structure that allowed them to enthusiastically implement Uber’s playbook.

However, Uber was lacking a unified executive team to coordinate global operations, including the activity of the individual country managers.

Not just that, back-biting, undermining, and infighting were the rule, not the exception, and executive meetings were often canceled at the last minute.

When we look at Uber’s playbook, that’s not really surprising. Uber always played to win and they did a really good job at recruiting teams of people who really wanted to win as well.

One of the downsides of this course of action is that if you exclusively focus on winning and getting around the existing regulations it quickly blurs the line of what's ethical and what's not ethical - not just when expanding, but inside the company as well.

It also brings into the company a certain kind of people - people that enjoy treating every encounter as a confrontation . Constantly fighting skirmishes outside and inside the company is not just exhausting but affects the morale at the company and the corporate culture.

Uber’s cultural guidelines weren’t helping. They ranged from the sober “Be Yourself” to full-on bro-tastic maxims like “Superpumped” and “Always be hustling”.

As the company scaled rapidly, so did its toxic culture and questionable business tactics. These led to a constant stream of nasty and very public challenges. They included political infighting, allegations of corporate espionage, and criminal investigations.

Then there were the many run-ins with regulators, taxi firms, and even Uber’s own drivers. Uber saw a backlash in some of its key markets which came to a head with the #DeleteUber campaign.

The old Uber logo didn’t help either. It emphasized the public’s perception of Uber’s hostility, imposing itself on customers with all-caps on black background, reflecting Uber’s hyper-masculine attitude.

While Kalanick did build a hugely successful business, an increasingly toxic culture had become a poison and tarnished the brand.

“The radical scale success of Uber that was unprecedented at the time, I think, led to a culture that was highly confident, a culture that was confrontational, a culture that to some extent celebrated breaking the rules . All of which made possible what Uber built, but which created a blind spot as to individual's respect, respect for diversity of different viewpoints, et cetera, that led to Susan Fowler's blog – which by the way wasn't the only difficult occurrence happening at the company,” says Dara Khosrowshahi, the current CEO of Uber.

Exposed by a blog post

The blog post Khosrowshahi mentions was published by a former Uber engineer Susan Fowler in February 2017. She described a toxic culture at the company where sexual harassment was rampant and managers cannibalized each other. 

Her post received so much attention that Uber decided to respond by having the law firm Perkins Coie do an investigation into her allegations.

The CEO and co-founder of Uber, Travis Kalanick, began facing heavy scrutiny over Uber’s company culture. Earlier in 2017 Bloomberg also posted a video of him arguing with an uber driver over falling fare rates, which certainly didn’t help his case and further tarnished Uber’s brand.

The company finally recognized a crucial if simple truth: to maintain a sustainable brand long-term, Uber had to be honest about what it stood for. It postured itself as a cutting-edge, progressive company, yet its corporate culture was the opposite of progressive. The brand teetered on the brink of outright hypocrisy.

Kalanick resigned as CEO on June 20, 2017, and there were numerous other personnel casualties of Uber’s very public self-reflection.

The need to rebrand was clear: without a complete brand overhaul, Uber risked totaling its business and Uber decided to undergo a massive effort to restore its image and set itself up for the future.

Key takeaway #4: recognize when it’s time for a cultural shift

While the “always be hustling” mantra and “win at all costs” people might be required to succeed at a startup, there’s a time when such thinking should be left behind. As Uber grew and expanded it never really took a hard look at the corporate culture it created. It wasn’t a small startup anymore, it became a huge company and should’ve therefore acted more responsibly sooner. In the end, it was forced into an overhaul, but not before its toxic culture tarnished the brand.

Uber rebrands and goes public

When Uber decided to turn things around there were two major areas they focused on - one was their corporate culture and values and the other was their brand .

Khosrowshahi, the new CEO of Uber, said that they asked their employees what should represent the culture of Uber going forward.

He recaps the conversations and answers:

“We celebrate differences. We want to be a different company but we also celebrate differences and backgrounds and where you come from and religion and sexuality, et cetera, and we believe that no matter what you bring to the table, you should be able to contribute to what we call Uber.

The simplest answer that I hear repeated over and over is: We do the right thing, period. We didn't want to define to the employee what the right thing is. You know what the right thing is. Let's do that and, period, that's what we do.”

Listening, observing, and learning became the foundations of Uber’s cultural overhaul.

Since the change, some Uber executives even go the extra mile to participate as normal Uber drivers and experience what Uber’s drivers experience. The importance of getting one’s hands dirty is a part of the refreshed culture. 

They started calling their drivers “driver-partners”.

“Now we have a fundamental connection there that is reflected in the

organization, we have a driver product team, and we now fundamentally build our

product with the driver. We talk to them, we have a dialogue with them, and we build with

them. That kind of connectivity with our driver-partners, I think, creates a win-win and it

creates mutual respect,” says Khosrowshahi.

The current CEO also recognized that executives can get out of touch with reality and said that whenever he goes from city to city he meets with drivers and asks them what they like and what they don’t like.

Uber also changed its approach to communication with governments and regulators. Before all the conversations and the dialogue was happening through lawyers, now Uber is trying to talk about their requests and find a compromise wherever they can’t agree with authorities.

While Uber is still facing challenges and there are still many dissatisfied parties, the company has changed its warlike and aggressive approach and is trying to make things work in a different, more humane way.

A new, more emphatic brand

Uber also embarked on a major rebranding intended to capture an accessible, progressive style that reflected the best of the company. 

The company understood it faced a critical mission: it had to persuade customers that its lousy reputation left the building when its former CEO was replaced.

Uber opted for a complete redesign to overhaul the brand from the ground up. 

Their new logo is the foundation of a substantial rebranding effort – one that incorporates a sense of mobility, accessibility, and friendliness not found in previous iterations. The company’s goal was to create a cohesive brand system described as “instantly recognizable, works around the world, and is efficient to execute” .

The agency Wolff-Olins summed up the project goals on their case study site :

“The brand needed to work around the world. Its highest growth areas are in regions outside of the US, such as Latin America and India, where Wolff Olins has a considerable depth of experience. Instead of pursuing a complex identity system, localized through color and pattern, we moved towards a universal ‘beyond simple global brand. Teams in diverse markets can make it relevant to their audiences with culturally specific content.”

What began as everyone’s personal driver is now all about moving forward and moving together .

The fresh logo was supplemented by creatives that included photos of people from around the world — serving two purposes. Firstly, it represents Uber’s global market, and secondly, adding this human element made the brand a whole lot more relatable. It’s no longer just a tech startup in Silicon Valley — it’s also the drivers you meet every morning, the co-riders you pool with every evening.

Arguably the best example of Uber’s new branding direction is their marketing campaign What moves you, moves us . It’s a campaign that focuses on the drivers and is built on empathy. It acknowledges and shows appreciation for their drivers' hard work and shows the customers who and what they’re supporting when they choose to ride with Uber.

More recently, Uber acknowledged the hard work of frontline healthcare workers during the Covid-19 pandemic with a #GratefulUK campaign. The company offered them free rides and free meals during the Christmas period and encouraged people to share letters, drawings, poems, or doodles thanking the workers. 

Overhauling the brand’s image and corporate culture were not the only major changes that happened after Uber’s scandalous years and Kalanick’s resignation. Another major step towards the maturity of the company happened in 2019 when Uber decided to go Public.

Going public - to boost reputation, get more money, or both?

In less than two years after the rebrand began, Uber decided to go public. Filing for IPO was likely a part of Uber’s rebranding plan. 

Why? People tend to look at public companies as more mature. Going public also provides a sense of accountability because public companies have to report on a quarterly basis and are subject to the regulatory process. It opens the company up to an entire set of investors who drive transparency. That’s exactly what Uber needed after all the previous scandals.

Of course, the public market also provides greater liquidity and more readily available money, which Uber needed as well as it was losing billions of dollars on a yearly basis.

However, Uber's IPO didn’t go as well as expected. Uber’s valuation predictions hovered around $120 billion , which would’ve made it the most valuable company to ever go public. In the end, Uber priced its stock at $45 apiece for a valuation of $82.4 billion , which was lower than many expected yet it is still one of the most valuable exits in history. Uber’s stock began falling right away, but we won’t go further into that.

What’s more important - the company has become public which means new pressure from big investors and shareholders every quarter to stem their losses. And as we’ll see later on, Uber’s eventual profitability is not nearly guaranteed.

Before we dive into the questions of profitability, we should examine how Uber defined itself as an innovative company and how it evolved in the last 10 years.

Key takeaway #5: when you need to change, show dedication

Although the jury is still out on how successful Uber’s rebranding actually is, it’s clear that they’ve undergone major steps to repair their reputation. And there’s really no other way to do it. If you want to rescue a tarnished brand, you have to show that you’re truly dedicated to making it work and aren’t just trying to save face for your own sake.

Uber innovation & diversification strategy

Although Uber is known as the main disruptor in the transport industry, the company is actually not the ridesharing pioneer, but a fast follower in the sector.

Uber’s competitor Lyft and former competitor Sidecar (which shuttered back in 2015) are the ones that pioneered ridesharing as it is known today, which entails using non-professional, non-commercially insured vehicles and drivers. 

Uber initially worked exclusively with commercially licensed, insured, and regulated entities (known as Black Cars in many areas) before transitioning to the current ridesharing model.

While Uber was a fast follower, it expanded quicker and more aggressively and offered a better user experience which led to market dominance in many regions. 

In fact, Uber followed a market entry pattern that has proven successful for business entities in the past – Myspace preceded Facebook, Yahoo preceded Google, and Blackberry preceded Apple’s iPhone. Historical patterns of transformation suggest that being first does have its advantages, but entering the market early and iterating quickly is even more vital when it comes to dominating a market. 

Uber’s expansion playbook is a prime example of how quickly they adapted their model and grabbed the opportunity of extremely fast expansion which was possible because of the significant funding the company received.

Their activation of early adopters and passionate customers to support Uber via petitions and pressure on local authorities can also be seen as an innovative approach to one of the ridesharing market’s main challenges.

A flexible pricing model

Uber’s surge pricing model is another example of a simple yet ingenious solution to a very real problem of the taxi industry - how to get a ride when you simply can’t get a cab . That can happen during peak traffic times or during bad weather.

When Uber’s demand for rides is higher than the supply the prices surge. That means users can almost always get a ride if they’re prepared to pay enough. 

Researcher Oliver Senn analyzed satellite data on weather conditions over a two-month period, and he obtained 830 million GPS records of 80 million taxi trips. The data shows that it was not the high demand for taxis that resulted in a perceived shortage on rainy days; instead, it appeared that many cabbies simply did not pick up passengers, fearing accidents on the wet roads. However, Uber entices their drivers with higher prices and therefore higher earnings when there’s a shortage of rides. 

While plenty of users don’t like the surge pricing, it proved to be a way to get more drivers in the area to take advantage of higher earnings when there’s a shortage of available rides.

Reviews ensure a better service

Another massive differentiator between Uber and traditional taxis is that Uber has rating systems for both drivers and passengers. A review system by itself is nothing new, but it hasn’t been used in the transport industry before - especially not on an individual basis.

The system is a simple solution to the question: “How will drivers and passengers behave?”

It promotes trust in Uber and better behavior on the parts of both driver and passenger as it weeds out the bad users. 

More than just a ridesharing service

Over the years Uber has become more than just a ridesharing company. It’s leveraging its underlying technology to test new services that have the potential to generate additional revenue and fuel Uber’s ambitions.

By introducing new services that add incremental value for users, Uber creates opportunities to capture a larger share of their consumer’s wallets, while also retaining and generating additional income for drivers as well.

There are two main services that stuck around: Uber Freight and Uber Eats.

Uber Freight

Uber Freight is basically Uber for trucks. Uber launched its own on-demand trucking app in 2017 with the core idea of seamlessly matching shippers with carriers. 

In August 2018, it was spun off into a separate business unit, a move that simultaneously allowed it to gain momentum and burn more cash. After spinning off of Uber, the freight company underwent an expansion. 

In 2020 an investment firm Greenbriar Equity Group has committed to invest $500 million in a Series A preferred stock financing for Uber Freight. When announcing the investment Uber said it will maintain majority ownership in Uber Freight and will use the funds to continue to scale its logistics platform, which helps truck drivers connect with shipping companies.

Uber Eats food delivery service launched in 2016 and it was a logical next step for Uber as it aligns with its ridesharing business and helps it utilize its large fleet of drivers. It launched as a separate app and grew in popularity at a rapid pace.

Uber Eats ensured that Uber’s customers used the company’s services more often than ever before. Users who used both Uber and Uber Eats booked an average of 11.5 trips per month, versus only 4.9 trips for those using only a single Uber service.

Consumers benefited from an additional convenient service, and drivers gained a new source of trips which generated a more steady stream of bookings throughout the day, which in turn increased the overall supply of drivers.

With drivers now busier and making more consistent income, they have less reason to dual-app and drive for a competing service like Lyft.

Uber Eats was also huge for Uber during the Covid-19 pandemic. While Uber’s ride-hailing segment contracted by 24%, Uber Eats increased revenues by over 200% in 2020 and prevented a much higher loss of revenue that would have occurred if Uber hadn’t diversified its services.

Uber Revenue by Segment

YearMobilityDeliveryFreightOther2018$8.9 Billion$0.7 Billion$0.3 Billion$0.1 Billion2019$10.4 Billion$1.3 Billion$0.7 Billion$1.3 Billion2020$7.9 Billion$4.8 Billion$0.9 Billion$1.3 Billion

Dreaming of self-driving cars

You may have heard of Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group(ATG) which was established in 2016 with the purpose of developing self-driving cars. Kalanick, the CEO at the time, saw it as an essential investment and there’s no doubt that fully self-driving cars would immensely benefit Uber.

However, ATG brought high costs and safety challenges . Throughout the course of a pandemic-stricken year, Uber has made efforts to stem losses in its ride-hailing business and control business costs. That’s why at the end of 2020 ATG was acquired by its start-up competitor Aurora Innovation. In fact, Uber handed its equity in ATG to Aurora and then invested $400 million into Aurora, which will give Uber a 26% stake in the company. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will also join Aurora’s board.

“With the addition of ATG, Aurora will have an incredibly strong team and technology, a clear path to several markets, and the resources to deliver,” Chris Urmson, co-founder and CEO of Aurora, said in a statement. “Simply put, Aurora will be the company best positioned to deliver the self-driving products necessary to make transportation and logistics safer, more accessible, and less expensive.”

Uber positioned itself to be right there once Aurora develops their self-driving car, which just might be the key to Uber’s profitability in the future.

Looking towards the future

While Uber’s plans for the future after the pandemic are not set in stone, Khosrowshahi says that people should think about Uber not as a service but as a transportation platform or as an Amazon of transportation. He said that people will be able to take a bus, to take a car, to take a train or to take a taxi using Uber. It would be a win for the consumer because the more choices they've got, the more pricing they've got, the better the product is.

Uber is aiming to pivot their strategy so that it is more inclusive. How they are planning to do that is yet to be seen, but we can be certain they’re going to try and offer new services and further diversify their product as that might be their only option if the company wants to become profitable.

Key takeaway #6: keep innovating and evolving

Uber doesn’t rest on its laurels of being the first prominent rideshare app. Its founders understood really well that the competition will grow over time and they can only stay ahead if they evolve and diversify. They keep adding new features and new services while constantly looking to invest in new technologies.

Will Uber ever be profitable?

Although Uber claims that it will soon become profitable, there are many sceptics that think it won’t happen - and with a good reason.

Uber has been losing billions of dollars during the last few years. Although Uber losses improved in 2020 due to Uber Eats, the company still lost $6.77 billion . Uber plans to minimize losses in 2021, yet due to the ongoing pandemic, Uber had to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives to get drivers back on the streets once the Covid situation improved and the demand increased.

Hubert Horan , a transportation industry expert who has published in-depth analyses of the company's financial outlook, has this to say about Uber’s profitability:

"Not only can I not imagine any remotely plausible explanation as to how Uber could suddenly become profitable after eleven years of massive losses, but absolutely no one has attempted to lay out a financial analysis making such a case. Not the company, not Wall Street analysts, not academics — no one."

In its S-1, a document that every company must file with the SEC if it wants to go public, Uber itself acknowledged and warned that it was possible it would never become profitable .

How come such a successful company that is a magnet for investors still struggles with such heavy losses?

The thing is Uber doesn't really have an edge over its competitors. A smartphone app that matches passengers with drivers can be — and has been — replicated by countless other companies. And once there are competitors, Uber doesn’t offer a service that would be that much more efficient. 

As it often does, it all comes down to costs-leadership . The need for human drivers that have to earn a living wage seems to be a vexing problem for the ride-hailing industry. It just costs too much. 

That's why Uber once staked so much of its future on self-driving cars, which could potentially reduce the company’s per-mile cost by 80% . But as you know, Uber has already sold its self-driving research center.

The typical explanation of the Uber model is that its focus has been on growth, not profit. Huge investments allowed Uber to keep scaling up until it was everywhere and ensured that the populace relied on its service. According to Horan, its plan was to "eliminate all meaningful competition and then profit from this quasi-monopoly power" in the exact same way that Amazon has managed to do for e-commerce. Except that it hasn't worked as competition is still here and Uber’s core service is not that different from it.

Uber’s push for profitability might be the reason that as of April 2021, the cost of a ride had increased by 40% as the New York Times reported . Why? The increase might be due to the shortage of drivers at the time. Uber is notorious for not paying drivers enough (according to the drivers), but that only works until the point that a critical number of them decide that it isn't worth any of their time. 

To counter that Uber has to raise fares, but then it runs the risk of losing a big part of their market and their revenue, even with higher per-passenger fares.

What’s the solution? That’s probably the most important question in Uber’s history and one that will define its future. It’s also the reason Uber is trying to position itself as a transportation platform and not just a ridesharing service as profitability continues to be an industry-wide problem.

Key takeaway #7: have a clear plan on how to become profitable

Although Uber is one of the fastest-growing and arguably one of the most successful companies in the last decades, it’s still not profitable and it’s a fair question if it ever will be. This shows that growth is not everything and if you want to run a sustainable business you have to know how it will eventually become profitable.

Uber’s SWOT analysis

Let’s recap everything we’ve covered during this strategy study in a concise SWOT analysis.

Global brand recognition

Uber’s brand is unmistakable and has become a synonym for “ridesharing.” Uber is present in over 60 countries worldwide and is the first ridesharing brand that comes to mind when new users are looking for ridesharing apps.

A strong market position

Uber is the largest ridesharing platform in the U.S. and worldwide. Currently, Uber’s market share in the US is 68% and 32,4% worldwide. In an industry that’s all about the quantity that’s extremely important.

Knows how to diversify

One of Uber’s key success factors is its ability to adapt and innovate to encompass changing needs. This can be seen in its diversification into logistics with Uber Freight and broadening its services to offer groceries and food delivery with UberEats. Diversification plays a huge part in Uber’s total revenue.

Dynamic pricing model

Uber’s surge pricing strategy has been good for its drivers. Drivers can earn more at night, in bad weather conditions, and during the holidays. This encourages more drivers to take ride requests to meet demand surges.

Low operational costs

Uber is based on low fixed investments and minimal physical assets. It has a fleet of cars they don’t actually own and no full-time drivers which helps to keep operational costs down. 

Convenient to use

That’s the whole point of Uber. Anyone can order a ride with a few taps on their screen, learn the price of the ride and pay it through the app.

More affordable than cabs

Uber was and still is more affordable than most cabs and its competition. However, that might change with the recent price surges.

Generally good service due to the review system

Uber riders have the ability to rate their trip and the driver. As drivers are always trying to improve their ratings, riders will most likely experience good service.

Bad publicity due to scandals

Despite Uber’s rebranding, stories of former sexual harassment scandals, driver fraud, and reports of very low driver’s wages reflect poorly on the company’s image and might alienate drivers as well as riders.

Substantial losses

Uber has lost billions of dollars year after year, which is starting to affect its image and spending. Nobody really knows if the company can become profitable and when or how it might happen.

Low-profit margins

Uber has to keep its fares low and can’t increase its commission per trip leading to low-profit margins. As we’ve seen, Uber's unprofitability has already prompted it to withdraw from China, Russia, and Southeast Asia. 

Dependency on their workforce

Uber is heavily dependent on its drivers. They are essentially Uber’s brand ambassadors 24/7. However, their behavior is unpredictable and the company’s image is hurt every time a scandalous story reaches the news. Many drivers have been accused of harassment and abuse.

The main service can be easily replicated

The ridesharing industry has a relatively low barrier of entry and Uber’s main functionality can be easily replicated by potential competitors which happened in Southeast Asia.

Opportunities

Further diversification

Uber Eats exploded during the recent Covid-19 Pandemic and significantly increased Uber’s revenue in 2020. Uber Freight also grew by 64% in Q2 of 2021 and earned $348 million. Further diversification might be one of the more viable paths towards Uber’s profitability.

Self-driving cars

While not there yet, driverless technology would significantly lower Uber’s operational costs while eliminating scandalous stories caused by their drivers’ bad behavior.

New markets

There are still many untapped growth opportunities in many countries. In fact, t he acquisition of Careem by Uber with $3.1 billion has opened the door to an incredible business opportunity for the company in the Middle East.

Local laws and regulations Uber has previously ignored

Increasing pressures from local authorities require Uber to comply with certain laws, which the company skirted when setting up in different countries. Non-compliance with local laws incurs fines and results in bad publicity. At the same time, the communities of traditional taxis are pushing heavily on the enforcement of some type of regulation. 

Low driver’s wages

Uber drivers reportedly earn less than minimum wage in many locations. Drivers have become more active in various locations in advocating for their “fair share” and are pressuring Uber to increase their wages, which would make it even harder to become profitable.

Employee retention

Unsatisfied drivers may switch to rival platforms due to better incentives from competitors from the ride-hailing market or from other parts of the sharing economy.

More and more competition

As the ridesharing market becomes more saturated, it will become more difficult for Uber to retain customers as shifting to other services if they offer lower prices is very easy. This goes for services like food delivery as well.

Final thoughts and key lessons

Uber is a fascinating company with a fascinating story. It’s one of the most famous disruptors in the last decade, yet its technology is not really disruptive. But the way it uses it and combines it with its business model certainly is!

If there’s one thing that defines Uber it’s determination .

Determination to stick to their brand strategy of a technological company and an industry disruptor. Determination to quickly expand across the globe even if it means taking on regulators and local authorities. Determination to right the ship and overhaul the culture once they recognized their mistakes.

What allowed Uber to do all of the above while adapting to different challenges and markets is its lack of assets . That’s where the company really shines - they solved a big real-world problem with the fewest possible assets. 

Uber is not a shining example of a company that did everything right. 

But no one can argue that it looked for an opening, grabbed the chance, and achieved amazing things. 

It’s a walking lesson that sometimes you have to grab the opportunity before it’s too late, learn on the flight, and do your best to correct your mistakes as you go .

In the end, Uber disrupted an entire industry and achieved a multi-billion-dollar IPO. Who knows what would’ve happened if they waited to have everything figured out?

Recap: Growth by the numbers

Uber’s 2020 data is skewed by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, that’s why we decided to use the data from 2019 instead.

The ultimate list of strategic takeaways:

• Create a flexible business model and stick to it.

Uber always identified itself as an asset-light technology company. That allowed it to quickly expand, adapt and diversify. Uber’s potential because of its scalability and flexibility is what made it so attractive to the founders.

• Recognize what you need to do to succeed and don’t waver.

Uber knew that it needed to scale and reach new users fast if it wanted to grab its market share before the competition. Their super aggressive expansion is controversial but it did achieve its goal and positioned Uber as the rideshare leader. 

• Don’t neglect your corporate culture.

Uber’s many scandals combined with its toxic corporate culture tarnished Uber’s image and almost ended in disaster. If your early dogma is to hustle, recognize when it’s time for a cultural shift and make sure your values, brand, and culture are in sync.

• Diversify and evolve to stay ahead of the competition.

Look for new opportunities and add new features or services to capture them. Uber’s asset-light flexible service allowed it to explore other complementary industries and Uber Eats significantly limited Uber’s losses during the pandemic. If there are low barriers to entry into the industry, the company should be proactive and take steps to stay ahead of emerging competition.

How UberEats Used Personalized Recommendations to Increase Revenue

Increase in Revenue per Customer

When Uber launched their Eats service in Singapore, a key objective was to increase repeat orders on the application to maximize lifetime value. 

Analyses showed that high-value customers that ordered frequently did so by having consistent variety in restaurant and cuisine selection.

The key opportunity was to create more personalized ways to up-sell customers into ordering different varieties of restaurants to increase repeat orders and thus customer lifetime value.

A collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm was developed which recommended new restaurants for users to order from based on their order history and behavior. 

This was applied to Uber’s re-marketing campaigns via push, e-mail, and in-app notifications to incentivize users to order from different types of restaurants.

The strategy applied to Uber’s marketing campaigns successfully converted users into selecting different varieties of restaurants, increasing orders and revenue per customer by 7%.

Our data scientists have worked with companies like

Driving more sales.

The results were immediate. For every $100 Bok a Bok invested in Sponsored Listings, the business return was $1,900 a 19-fold return on their investment).*

“Uber Eats brings in a lot of business for us, and Sponsored Listings and promotions have definitely increased sales**,” adds Prindle. “They are the easiest to work with of all our delivery partners, and metrics they supply on the back end are really helpful.”

As Prindle and the Bok a Bok team look toward the future, they have plans to open a fifth location without a dining room. Instead, it will have a takeout window and focus solely on pickup and delivery.

Generally I’m not at my desk, sitting in front of a computer. When it comes to Uber Eats, it’s so nice to go into Uber Eats Manager and get a quick sense of how much business it’s bringing in for us.

Alex Prindle - Owner, Bok a Bok

How do Sponsored Listings work?

A Sponsored Listing is a new ad format that can help you increase your visibility in the app’s home feed and search results. You set a weekly budget and decide a bid method, which is how much to pay when someone clicks your ad. For example, Bok a Bok is showcased in the home feed and appears in search results when Uber Eats users look for fried chicken in Seattle. The listings are marked “Sponsored.”

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Uber Eats Manager

How Uber Eats Unifies Data from 50+ Social Media and Marketing Accounts

Main Challenge

Uber Eats, which operates in hundreds of cities across dozens of countries, was managing a massive influx of data from a wide range of sources. But the data management platform they were using wasn’t handling it very well. Consequently, two data analysts spent all their time collecting and manually cleaning this data, leaving little time for extracting valuable insights.

Key Outcomes

• 50+ man-hours saved weekly . The two data analysts now only spend ⅓ of their time on data management and ⅔ on more strategic tasks. • 0 unwanted barriers to data accessibility . Any team member with access to Dataddo can use its no-code interface to move data as needed, without the intervention of engineers. • Complete view of all marketing decisions . Out-of-the-box connectors enable Uber Eats to access data points previously inaccessible via manual data collection.

• Dataddo automatically collects and cleans data from 50+ accounts on global marketing platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Brandwatch, and Socialbakers. • The data is funneled to Looker Studio, Google Sheets, and BigQuery for analysis and storage. • All data connections are centrally manageable via Dataddo's transparent interface.

Read the Full Story

case-studies-company.company-story.subtitle

You already know Uber. The app which launched ride-sharing to the forefront garnered so much success that, in 2014, it moved easily to the food delivery industry. Uber Eats is currently available in hundreds of cities in dozens of countries. With such a large operation, large sets of data are constantly being collected. So, how does Uber Eats handle their big data and inform their data-driven decisions?

The Challenge: 50+ Accounts, Inadequate Tools

As a large company that's spread all over the world, Uber Eats requires cutting-edge data solutions to be able to collect and analyze their data. Their previous data management platform was simply not able to handle the data from all of Uber Eats' sources. Uber Eats requires many features and abilities from their data architecture, such as interoperability with online data sources , scalability, resiliency, flexibility, process automation, and the ability to share raw data. Before Dataddo, two data analysts spent 100% of their time managing data from various global marketing platforms. This included logging into 50+ accounts every day and manually cleaning data in order to create the required reports.

The Solution: One Central Data Management Platform

By using Dataddo, Uber Eats was able to centralize their data management and analytics operations, channeling all of their analytics data into a single dashboarding and reporting platform. Dataddo synchronized data from multiple data sources, including social media accounts like Facebook and Instagram , and social listening platforms such as Brandwatch and Socialbakers . This resulted in hours of saved time by eliminating manual data collection and cleaning processes.

Outcomes: Two-Thirds Less Time Spent on Data Management

With the implementation of Dataddo, Uber Eats is uncovering valuable new insights. They are able to sync all their data sources with all their data destinations, as well as access new data points previously lost in manual processes. This saves their analysts two-thirds of the time they used to spend on data management, which is over 50 man-hours per week! Of course, this time is now spent on what's really important: gaining valuable insights from data in order to push company goals. Dataddo's no-code interface is also a major advantage. " The data team at Uber Eats appreciates Dataddo's user-friendly interface that is designed for operation by non-technical team members in order to minimize the need for excessive training to support efficient project delivery. " - Amalia Bornstein, Global Social & Content Marketing Data Analyst, Uber Eats Now, anyone in their team with access to the no-code Dataddo platform can easily manipulate and send data to their desired destination. No more headaches or custom ETL engineering when implementing new, web-based marketing services.

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Uber Eats Case Study

Our award-winning 15+ series with UberEats has been scaled and localized to educate customers, drivers, and restaurants alike, in a variety of unified visual styles.

Explainly has partnered with the Uber Eats B2B marketing team since 2022 to create a wide breadth of stunning, cohesive, award-winning videos. Our two primary video types include smooth, upbeat explainers that convey the benefits of being a merchant on Uber Eats, as well as bold, stylized product videos created to build a library of content supporting their online resources for Uber’s merchants. These videos are even adding flare to Uber’s booths at in-person tradeshows and conferences, as seen in this picture!

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While every Explainly project begins with a script that is drawn into sketches then illustrated storyboards, this series involved increased pre-production translation efforts across the board, in order to create numerous localized versions of each video. With a recent brand update, we were tasked with matching their beautiful new illustration style, which lent itself to some videos that are simple, straightforward, and engaging. On several of our award-winning pieces, we collaborated with Uber to create a more elevated style that combined 3D and 2D hand-drawn cel animation, resulting in some of our most elevated videos to date. We then added voice over, music, and sound effects to complete each of our final animated videos!

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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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By Peter Ramsey

A deeper dive into the UX

1. "i didn't even want pancakes", 2. the knowledge gap, 3. split-concentration, the experience of being an uber driver.

Most of you will be familiar with the experience of either riding in an Uber , or having food delivered by one—the convenience is enchanting.

Watching a tiny car bounce around a map as the driver makes their way to you is a UX delight so powerful, that it's been copied across many verticals.

But my experience of the driver-side app had been limited to me watching the driver's docked iPhone navigate us to our destination, during a ride. I didn't know what happened before or after.

So, I joined 4 million others, and became an actual Uber Driver. 

I then immersed myself in the role; going online at different times of the day, completing deliveries, cancelling orders and hovering outside KFC waiting for my next ride.

Let's get to the point: the UX is surprisingly awkward .

Let's look at the experience of making my first delivery on Uber Eats.

👇 What are these? Below are UX issues mentioned in the presentation, but that I felt were worth discussing in more detail. These are worthwhile conversations to have internally, and consider if they impact your product or service.

Imagine that you're being served in a restaurant, and you're asked what you'd like to order. As you're reading the menu, you say " Oh, the pancakes look great, do they... ".

Immediately—before you've even finished your sentence—the chef walks to your table with the pancakes, places them in front of you, and walks off.

It may sound trivial, but let's digest why that would feel uncomfortable :

1. You accidentally made a decision

i.e., you didn't realise that your actions constituted a decision.

2. You now feel regret

i.e., did you even want the pancakes after all?

Accidental decisions carry the burden of regret, because they often feel like they were made against your will.

You want your users to feel like they made a decision, not that a decision was made for them. And in most instances, you can substitute 'decision', for an 'action'.

i.e., clicking on a CTA is both an action, and a decision.

As you saw earlier, I accidentally accepted my first order , when faced with this modal:

From a data perspective , Uber are probably happy with their conversion rates: a very high number of drivers will accept their first order—but it's a misleading metric.

It's undoubtably an awkward design, and I wonder how many drivers start their Uber careers by accidentally accepting an order, and then just rolling with it.

In short: every action should be intentional, and fake CTAs are almost never a good decision.

There's another decision-making issue with Uber: new drivers starting deliveries prematurely .

In the study, I tapped 'Start delivery' when I was sat outside McDonalds, not when I had collected the order—an error that could probably be eradicated with a clearer design.

Remember: there's essentially no in-app onboarding or education.

This type of error is extremely common, and we call it a 🚧 Knowledge Gap . 

This is where the app is optimised for returning users, but fails to educate new ones.

A powerful UX exercise is to imagine what a human representative would say if they were physically sat next to a new user, whilst they were learning to use the app.

In this instance, I'm convinced that they would say: " Okay, now go and collect the food, and  then when you're back in the car, press this button ".

And if you believe that a human sat next to you would feel the need to say something, your app should be screaming it at you.

The context that you need to collect the food first is what was missing here. That may have been predictable after a simple knowledge gap exercise.

Navigation apps (e.g., Google Maps, Waze, native in-car navigation) re-orient your map automatically, when your view is deemed no longer useful.

i.e., you'd zoomed into a particular junction, and now you're half a mile down the road.

The Uber Driver app doesn't, and it renders the navigation fairly useless.

To make this worse, the 're-centre' button was hidden behind a sticky footer.

This is an example of a task with split-concentration (i.e., split between driving the car, and using the app).

In a laboratory environment, the Uber Driver app may perform perfectly. But in reality—and when the user has a split-concentration—it fails.

Split-concentration isn't common enough to feature in a UX course, and designers rarely talk about it—but it does happen. 

For example, using the Spotify app while running on a treadmill.

In these instances, you need to simplify the UI, and really focus on making things easy to use while completing another task.

Having used both the Uber Rider, and Uber Driver apps, it feels like they've invested most of their attention into the consumer experience.

Perhaps drivers are more willing to put up with bad UX, as they're earning money and have already invested time into the platform.

But a consumer has more choice—and is paying for the service.

So, despite this possibly being a rational trade-off in the short term, it's certainly a lacklustre user experience for the 4 million Uber Drivers worldwide.

🔥 The biggest UX takeaway from this study:

Try the knowledge gap exercise with your team: walk through the process of someone using your product for the first time, and imagine that you're sat next to them as they do it.

What do you feel the need to say to them? Which knowledge gaps are you filling with your voice? Most of these will feel intuitive—write them down.

That was an easy way to consume 50 hours of UX research, right?

What will you dive into next?

All of the UX analysis on Built for Mars is original, and was researched and written by me, Peter Ramsey.

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Up: Home : Miscellaneous > The Rise of the ‘Gig Economy’: A Case Study of Uber

The Rise of the ‘Gig Economy’: A Case Study of Uber

Gig workers are those who work small jobs, commonly referred to as ‘gigs’, instead of, or perhaps on top of, a full-time job and are paid for the amount of ‘gigs’ they undertake. Their employment status is somewhat confusing to many. Given the digital revolution, it is becoming hard to avoid articles discussing the so-called gig economy given the increasing amount of new companies operating under such a casual structure. Certain couriers, Deliveroo, Uber and AirBnB are just some examples of companies which fall under the gig economy category and there are increasing reports discussing the legal rights of those ‘employed’ by such companies. Indeed, Uber is a prime example: a recent ruling declared that its drivers cannot be classified as self-employed, as Uber wanted, and are thus entitled to the national living wage and holiday pay. Airbnb is also undergoing legal action in New York given a new law which enables the escalating of fines on homeowners who rent out their property for less than 30 days. As court cases and employment tribunals against such companies are on the rise, this blog discusses how regulatory rules are affecting these companies. It also takes account of the huge tax windfall that the UK government could gain as a result.

There currently exists a huge disequilibrium between legislation and the gig economy. It is for this reason that recent legal cases are so substantial. The employment tribunal ruling in October last year that left Uber in defeat, declared that the two drivers involved in the case were not independent contractors but workers to whom certain employment rights are due. This undermines the advertising of ‘gig economy’ work as a new type of employment and redefines this sphere of employment for similar workers. The result is an increasing need to address how companies operating under a casual structure run their businesses given that they will need to provide some employment rights to their workers. This could potentially undermine the informal business model they currently operate under and could also affect certain rules Uber apply to their workers. For example, currently, Uber drivers must provide their own vehicle, pay all fuel costs, pay their own insurance and cover all further maintenance costs for their vehicle. They must also pay a 25% service fee to Uber. This must be done whilst meeting Uber’s car and insurance requirements. If individuals are deemed as ‘workers’ or even ‘employees’, Uber may be required to be more involved in supporting the upkeep and maintenance of their workers’ equipment. Furthermore, companies offering ‘flexible labour’ could face a 10% hike in payroll costs if recent court rulings set a new precedent.

In addition, if the Uber court ruling is to set the tone for future disputes, the UK government could land a large tax windfall. If those involved in ‘gig economy’ work are deemed as workers or employees, rather than self-employed individuals, this would mean that employer national insurance contributions will grow, meaning increased revenue for the government. This is because those defined as self-employed pay less national insurance than those employed by a company. The potential windfall could be huge. As Robert Booth from The Guardian outlines, “…the exchequer is facing a £6bn shortfall in national insurance revenue by the beginning of the next decade as a result of the rapid growth of self-employment in the UK” (Booth, 2017). Such growth has, in part, been fuelled by the rise of companies such as Uber and Deliveroo, as well as certain couriers. With around 25,000-40,000 Uber drivers in the UK, new employment rights and resulting increased national insurance contributions would be welcomed by the government.

Overall, much needs to be done to close the gap between legislation and the gig economy in order to provide clarity to both workers and companies alike. We may begin to see this slowly happening over the coming years.

Booth, R. (22 February 2017) Amazon, Deliveroo and Uber “still viable” with no gig economy workers. The Guardian

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