Uber’s Taxi Subscription Service: Hit or Miss?

[Haamsaaveni (Hamsi) Kumar]

Today’s daily features a story about Uber planning to launch a taxi membership club in the UK called Uber One to lock in customers to its taxi and food delivery services. This would include discounts on journeys, free delivery on takeaways as well as drivers with high ratings.

Is this new venture by Uber likely to succeed or is this simply a copy-and-paste exercise of the latest subscription trend? Let us know what you think!

[Moeen]

A very interesting news story. I think it would be pertinent to see how this model does in big cities such as London, Birmingham and Manchester more than any other part of the UK. There is a similar service in place by Deliveroo that was launched last year. I am not sure how well that service has done yet but from my own personal experience it isn’t very popular. While there will be many people who’d want to try on this new membership service, as pointed out by Peter in today’s daily, the economic woes during this inflationary period would curb people from trying it out on an individual level. The only reason why people would be intrigued to join it is if Uber can somehow demonstrate in their marketing campaigns that this is going to save people money in the long run. Otherwise, in a world where people are giving up Netflix’s subscription, I think it would feel more or less that this was a copy-and-paste exercise/experiment to harbour more revenue options.

[Andrew Spencer]

Hi all

Great question and some really interesting points raised so far.

I agree that the cost of living crisis has driven customers to review their existing subscriptions. Yet on the other hand, I saw that customers with an Uber One subscription spend on average almost three times as much as typical user. It seems to me that the new service could form an attractive package, however it will be a big change for Ubers services to become a regular part of customers lives in the same manner as Amazon Prime.

One point I found interesting was Uber’s claims around reducing congestion – which could potentially tempt environmentally conscious consumers.

Overall, after Uber’s share price fell 45% this year a pivot in strategy could be welcome.

[Author]

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