Uber’s Public Relations Fiasco
Uber is one of the success stories of the sharing economy and has completely changed our opinion of how to get from point A to point B. This handy ride-sharing app earned the company 50 billion in market value. However, this controversial company has been hit with endless scandals and P.R. disasters over the years. The problems are mainly divided into two types: * Uber vs. its customers: Many sexual assault and abuse claims against the uber drivers. * Uber vs. its drivers: Drivers around the world have protested the company’s unfair profit cuts policy.
Those issues raised a lot of discussion on social media. People were sharing their personal negative experiences with Uber, which would get many likes by others who are also interest in this matter. As writer suggests in Huffington Post - Anger Online, people are hitting the like button for everything, which just drives more attention to the matter. If someone can relate themselves to the issues they simply click the like button. They start feeding off the negative energy, and the incidences soon turned into huge scandals
In both reading “A Guide to Consumerism” and “The Consumer Movement”, the power of the voice of the consumers is showcased. When people shout out their negative comments, concerns and complaints, it can act as a weapon of correcting business behavior. If we think of it that way, it can be a good thing that people were made aware of the Uber problems. This way the management of Uber would be forced to do further investigation and make more effort into solving the problems.
In order to regain customer’s trust, Uber should show the public that they cares, and they are doing everything in their power to prevent those things from occurring. They can do that by compensating the injured party, and develop stricter driver qualifying procedures. Moreover, Uber also should