...Introduction Uber, a young but famous startup who was founded in 2009, created an innovative business model (Ridesharing services) in transportation industry with the help of modern technological innovations. People just need to tap on Uber app to order a ride. Due to the convenience and reliability of its service, Uber has become a global company who has $51 billion market valuation and operates in 330 cities in more than 60 countries. It can be learned from the case that a product innovation from a startup is changing the ride-service industry or even the transportation industry. This paper will analyze how product innovation helps Uber to be a well-known and highly valued company in just few years. Arguments Based on the case, there are three reasons of Uber’s product innovation success: an innovative business method, good timing of entry and a coherent strategy. An innovative business model As we all know, Uber was created to solve the problem of unmatched rides demand and rides offer due to the difference in space and time in taxi industry. The basic pattern of Uber is to provide an information exchange platform as a form of mobile application to connect passengers who need rides with drivers who can provide ride services. It can be considered as a new application of peer-to-peer model in transportation industry. So Uber actually is a platform provider. This platform helps the form of ridesharing service, which is quite different from traditional way of taking rides...
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...Seneca College UBER Team Short Paper #1 History Founded in 2009 the company was launched in San Francisco, providing cars for hire. Initially, they had marketed themselves as a ride sharing company to make travelling around San Francisco streets easier. It was created by entrepreneurs Travis Kalanick and Garett Camp. In a span of a few years, their Uber smartphone application revolutionized travelling around cities for millions of people around the world (Telegraph). The idea came to light when Kalanick and Camp could not hail a cab on a snowy night in Paris in 2008. They decided to solve the problem by creating an application that would be as simple as pushing a button and getting a car (Vanity Fair). Service The mobile application which is compatible on Android, iOS and Windows Phone enables riders to connect with drivers using their phones GPS capabilities. Thus, allowing both parties to know their locations and eliminating the question of when the ride will actually arrive. Payments are made through the mobile application via credit card – all in the background and completely cashless. Uber operates in 45 countries and cities from Abu Dhabi to Zurich. Furthermore, Uber offers this particular service at different levels:- UberX - which runs daily with economical cars that can seat up to four passengers and costs relatively lower than a taxi UberXL - which runs daily as well with economical cars however, it can seat up to 7 passengers. Thus, resulting in a...
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...UBER In the last few years technology has drastically changed the way some industries do business. The newest company changing the essential nature of their industry is Uber. Uber’s company mission confirms this ambition. They want, “to evolve the way the world moves by seamlessly connecting riders to drivers through their apps”. Uber’s aim is to make cities more accessible, open up more possibilities for riders, and provide more business for drivers. This desire to change the nature of the ride for hire business has challenged the regulatory framework of the taxi industry and has caused a substantial amount of controversy for the company. This controversy hasn’t harmed the company’s bottom line. In fact, Uber is so loved by its users that it has grown to a billion dollar company on word of mouth alone. As Uber launches into each new market, these controversies are played out in the court of public opinion, and the power of Uber supporters and the quality of the experience, create a large amount of defense for the company from the local community. This support has changed laws, helped make easy transitions for Uber in new cities, and through local and national media has reached even more potential customers who would use an innovative new company reinventing a transportation experience that is nearly universally disliked by people everywhere. Uber has been an outstanding innovator who is experiencing great growth and success. This unique ability leads to the question, what...
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...a very large market in itself. In Europe alone, the market of transportation employs 10 million people which represent an astounding 6 percent of the GDP as stated by the European Commission Department. Many businesses have innovated and came up with new ideas that changed the market such as Taxi offices. However, it was no other than Uber that invaded the market roughly in a period of 4 years to be worth $50 billion, as evaluated by Forbes, through integrating modern technology and life styles of people with its services. Uber became the world's largest car service by 2014 and was ranked the 48th most powerful company in America. The reasons that are believed to be behind Uber's success shall be discussed in this paper considering different factors. History It all started on a snowy night in Paris in 2008 when and Garret Camp could not get a cab and vowed to solve the problem with a brilliant app. Camp and Kalanick launched UberCab's mobile compatible application in San Francisco 2011. The company expanded throughout America until going global in 2013 with more than 300 cities in 58 countries at service. Uber does not own any cars and the drivers are not hired by Uber. Instead, Uber acts a portal...
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...legitimately claim its wager in the desert was a worthy bet. On Monday, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, GM said it would put $500m not on black or red, but on pink — the colour associated with start-up Lyft. The ride-sharing company announced a total capital raise of $1bn. That values it at $5.5bn, making it a (distant) second behind taxi app Uber, whose last valuation was a staggering $62.5bn. The money contributed is notable on its own. An also-ran taxi service, Sidecar, just failed. The year 2016 was also supposed to mark a pullback in venture investing, yet the Lyft investment signals the depth of capital still readily available. For General Motors, the investment is the latest acknowledgment that it cannot just dismiss emerging trends in transportation. Increasingly, the developments that it has been talking up — and backing up with dollars — go beyond ride-sharing. They include connected cars, electric vehicles and autonomous driving. GM and Lyft will combine two of those concepts by creating a system for on-demand, self-driving taxi rides. Competitors in these markets include the likes of Apple, Tesla, Uber, and Alphabet. But GM thinks it will emerge a winner should the automobile experience fundamentally change, because it can best add new technologies on to existing volume manufacturing. Also, the relationships it already has with customers could give it...
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...smartphone apps are reshaping the taxi market Oct 19th 2013 | LONDON AND NEW YORK |From the print edition * * All hail the quick, reliable taxi SINCE last month the citizens of Johannesburg have been able to hail and pay for taxis through SnappCab, a local start-up. A tap on SnappCab’s smartphone app summons a cab; a driver accepts on his own phone; and the passenger sees the driver’s name and photo, so he knows whom to expect and when. At journey’s end, he can pay with another tap through a pre-loaded credit card, or in cash. The idea is simple: the app makes it easier to bring together drivers, whose cabs are often empty, and passengers. Time and fuel are saved. Money is made. In many other cities taxi apps have taken off rapidly. Hailo, founded in London by cabbies and techies three years ago, says 60% of the city’s black-cab drivers are now on its books. Several cabs are decked out in Hailo yellow. It has spread to 14 places, most recently Osaka in Japan. Uber began in 2009 in San Francisco, which has a shortage of taxis but a surfeit of geeks looking for problems to solve. Now it can find you a ride in 49 cities in 19 countries. GetTaxi, set up in Tel Aviv in 2010, has reached London, Moscow and New York. Local apps can be found in cities from São Paulo to Singapore. Besides SnappCab, Johannesburg has Uber and Zapacab (which also started in Cape Town earlier this year) plying for trade. Apps have found willing backers. In August Uber raised a staggering $258m from...
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...CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 INTRODUCTION Customer loyalty is both an attitudinal and behavioral tendency to favor one brand over all others, whether due to satisfaction with the product or service, its convenience or performance, or simply familiarity and comfort with the brand. Customer loyalty encourages consumers to shop more consistently, spend a greater share of wallet, and feel positive about a shopping experience, helping attract consumers to familiar brands in the face of a competitive environment. Types of Loyalty To understand customer loyalty one must recognize there are different types and degrees of loyalty. There is monogamous loyalty and there is polygamous. There are also behavioral and attitudinal aspects. A look at these concepts will clarify what “customer loyalty” really is, and this is important because having a solid understanding of the concept is critical if one hopes to design a reward program where loyalty enhancement is the primary objective. Monogamous vs. Polygamous Loyalty We live in a world of polygamous, not monogamous loyalty. For example, a person might shop at Safeway, Thrifty Foods and Save-on-Foods and unfailingly shop at all three. The person is then loyal to them, but not to others, and yet 100% loyal to none. In their book Loyalty Myths, Keiningham et al. (2005) suggest that “loyalty can in part be thought of as the probability a customer will purchase a brand on any particular purchase occasion. For example, a customer...
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...Individual Research - Uber | Arika GraberMGT410_VAOctober 15, 2015 | Introduction Transportation is a matter that is always changing, from different and newer car model designs to faster subway and railway systems. Taxi services have been around for many years, and they have always seen a demand for that service. As times change, businesses have to be able to adapt to new technologies, geographic areas, culture and behaviors or new business plans will be introduced to the industry. One company that has been recently introduced to the taxi service industry is Uber. Uber is a transportation company that is internationally known but based out of California. Uber is a trending company that provides almost anyone a job, and anyone a ride at a new convenience. This new convenience is in the hands of its users, literally. Uber has based its success off of a mobile application that gives individuals easy access to drivers in their area that can assist them to their desired location. Uber was developed and launched in San Francisco, California, in March of 2009, and today the application is used all over the globe. Developers of Uber, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, were in the streets of Paris and couldn’t get a cab, this is when the idea of Uber was born, to solve a problem. From then on they based their actions off of a simple phrase, push a button, and get a car. There are many things about this company that sound appealing. Living in smaller towns growing up, there...
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...FUTURE OF CARS Team 3 Project 2 Members: Ankit Agrawal Mownika Chalichama Phanindra Musunuri Long Phan 1. INTRODUCTION AND DATA Future of Cars visualization project shows the story to predict the future generation of cars. Ten years from now, in 2025, cars will be different, the drivers will be different, the market will be different, and the producers will certainly be different. The team believe that these changes will affect billions of people – from soccer moms to automotive executives, from taxi drivers to investment bankers. The data tells us that consumers are demanding greener, safer, more convenient and affordable cars. Most of these new consumers will come from emerging markets like China and India. Consequently, new trends will force car producers to modernize their supply chain, become more competitive and make lighter cars. Moreover, technology will play a huge part in changing the overall automotive landscape. Self-driving cars, car-cab services (Uber, Lyft, etc.), car pooling and the Internet of Cars all seemed like science-fiction will not remain not so long ago. Now many of them have become reality. There were a lot of data available online since countless research is being carried on cars. Major data source was data.gov for example, the website had an entire section on transportation data. Unsurprisingly, cleaning the data took a lot of time. Most of the data came from many different sources and each dataset required a few hours to clean. Rest all...
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...The future is here. In the 80s it was predicted that the future would have hovercrafts and time travel. While neither of those things have been released to the public yet, driverless cars are right around the corner. For about a decade, engineers and mechanics have been working together to build a car that is completely driveless, and therefore, safe. These could help elimate reckless driving and keep inebriated people from attempting to driving themselves home. Texting while driving would not be a problem and long commutes could be used to get work done. Driverless cars are possible in the near future. Driverless cars use Lidar, which is a light detection and ranging laser that helps the car drive. When connected to a computer, Lidar can sense the...
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...Autonomous vehicles could transform the way we move. The work that is done now has the opportunity to drive a transformation in the relationship between humans and machines. However, before we jump into using the technology, we need to evaluate whether we are willing to give up control to our cars and whether it is ethical to release technology that could cause harm to innocent people. Autonomous cars offer many benefits, including removing human error from driving, increasing the mobility of people, and decreasing congestion in roadways. While autonomous cars may eventually be safer than self-driving ones, they will never be able to completely avoid accidents-- and when they fail, it could be catastrophic. In cars that have no fallback option...
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...In the last 4 years, surge pricing has become a common news topic due to the controversy caused by its use by Uber. The argument has been whether surge pricing is a disadvantage or advantage to consumers. When demand rises for a good (from Fig1 below, demand (D1) increases (D2)), the price must rise to bring the system back to equilibrium (P1 to P2) with a higher quantity supplied (Q1 to Q2). The higher cost is to encourage suppliers to meet the demand required by allocating more resources to the areas that are willing to pay the higher price P2. Hence, the higher price charged to consumers result in higher profits for firms. In this essay, I will be focusing on the effects of surge pricing and whether a ban would correct the disadvantages associated with it....
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...technology has arrived not too long ago and is already going through a transition period. With technology comes innovation. To me innovation is not about inventing the wheel, it's about taking something that already exists and improving it. An example of that its Uber – who would have thought that technology could reinvent the traditional taxi and limo business? Or WhatsApp by taking the best features from SMS and BBM and combining together. We are in the era of consolidation – performing the same task with less. With this idea of consolidation in mind comes my theory that in five years from now there will be an eBook format or device with a majority market share for the following reasons: First, society is looking for efficiency. Where before people needed to wear a fanny pack to carry their keys, wallet, checks, camera, contact list, phone, credit cards, books, audio music device, nowadays all we need is our keys and an IPhone which already comes with all of the above. Secondly, when the word technology is mentioned comes 2 names to mind – Apple and Google. These both companies already dominates the majority of the market due to their innovation abilities. Google went from a search engine website to building self-driving car technology and looking to provide worldwide internet access via hot air balloons placed in the atmosphere. These companies...
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...Sharing corps: Should company build competitive advantage by embracing the sharing economy? SHARING CORPS SHOULD COMPANIES build a new competitive advantage BY embracing the SHARING ECONOMY? ECOVALA - December 2013 1 Sharing corps: Should company build competitive advantage by embracing the sharing economy? Ecovala © 2013 This report was produced by the Ecovala in December 2013. If no other source is specified, the contents of this report are under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non-Commercial - Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. You can find the full text of the license in this website. Ecovala Ecovala provides innovative solutions to private and public organisations to accelerate their transition towards sustainability. The organisation offers a wide range of services around sustainability and system innovation: from companies’ environmental assessment to sustainable strategic design, from new green services definition to effective implementation of CSR management. Based in Finland, the organisation is active throughout Europe, relying on an extensive network of like-minded organisations and sustainability experts. www.ecovala.eu Author Erwan Mouazan is director and founder of Ecovala. He develops and implements innovative sustainability solutions both at private and public level. Erwan owns a Master's degree in economics, with a specialization in international management. In the last 9 years, he has worked at international level in environmental...
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...West Coast Forum Research Work Group Sustainable Consumption & the Sharing Economy Summary of Research Findings and Gap Analysis Topic: How state and local governments are promoting sustainable consumption and engagement in the sharing economy RESEARCH QUESTION(S) • What is the state of knowledge about sustainable consumption? How is this defined or framed? What are the emerging trends? What potential roles can municipal and state governments play? • What barriers have been identified and how might these be overcome? • What strategies, techniques and policies are effective at promoting sustainable consumption through reusing, renting, repairing, and sharing products and materials? • What GHG reduction benefits can be achieved through these activities? • What strategies, techniques, policies and innovative approaches have not yet been tried but have been proposed that are considered to have greatest potential? Note: This research summary builds on the findings of a previous literature review “Changing Consumer Behavior” presented at the 2012 annual Forum meeting. Many of the issues and key findings related to sustainable consumption are addressed there. Sustainable consumption is a rich and nuanced topic for which extensive literature exists. While not the primary focus of this review, the concepts around sustainable consumption provide a context for exploring specific activities of individual consumers such as renting...
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