Advantages Of Using a Taxi
Discuss about the Incubator Innovation and New Technologies for Taxi Cab Industry.
With the ramified economic changes, many incubator and entrepreneurs are tapping the market with their business ideas and research plans. These incubators have object to create value on the investment and create strong brand image in long run. As evident from surveys and recent researches, taxi and uber are two most important transportation services used by people nowadays. Basically, a taxi service works on a contractual basis by getting a contract from the local government body to work in a particular area, town or city. In this facility, the customer needs to make a call to the company that have got the contract to put a request for a taxi. The pickup location and drop destination are the details that are required to be mentioned. The company after getting the request call put forward the same to a driver who is active at that moment to pick and drop the passenger. Usually, the payment is collected by the driver at the end of ride on behalf of the company. Out of the whole payment received, the driver is bound to receive certain fixed percentage (Cramer, & Krueger, (2016).
Uber on the other hand gets no contract from government. A company on its own end work area wise and an application is used by the company as a portal from where the passengers can book an uber service for themselves or someone else. The people who want to work for the company offer voluntarily to work. When the company accepts them to work for it, they present their availability or non-availability as and when required. The customer who wants an uber uses the app to book a ride for him and enters the pickup and drop location therein. As and when the ride is confirmed, the details of the driver are shared with the passenger and vice versa. Later the cab arrives and the ride is undertaken. The payment can be made by the passenger either electronically through online portal on app or can be deducted from online wallets or could even be paid in cash to the driver. A certain percentage of the payment is then transferred to the driver (Christensen, Raynor, & McDonald, 2015).
The main advantage that a taxi has is that as the taxi is hired through a company contracted by government it has to follow the rules and regulations that are more strict and rigorous. This turns out to be a benefit to the customer as his trip is assured and chances of cancellation or delay are less. The taxi is insured well and the customer is offered higher level of flexibility in a manner that he or she is able to change the route or the destination or add destinations for the duration the taxi is booked by him or her. Along with it, the passenger is able to add more passengers along the route. Further if the passenger like the driving skills of a particular driver, he can request to get the services from the same driver in future. The Taxi business has been gaining momentum throughout the time which reflects that if new rivals come up in the taxi business industry with their advance technologies then they might beat up the market (Cannon, & Summers, 2014).
Advantages Of Using An Uber
As the people hired by company are mostly local, they have more knowledge about the local routes and short cuts. Further, the tests taken by the companies before hiring drivers are more tough and vetting for the drivers. As a result the quality of drivers is far better than other services. The cost of taxi is usually same at all times and no surge costs are there. Uber and Ola are consistently giving the tough completion to each other in market and infusing the advance technologies to strengthen the market share on international level (Wallsten, 2015).
As an app portal is used for booking rides, the customer is able to get full details of the driver as soon as a ride is booked. Ratings are also visible. The ride status can be shared by the passenger to be used as a safety tool if any emergency situation arises. Further, there is a facility available with the passengers to review the drivers and if several complaints are made regarding a particular driver, the company even block that particular person to be an Uber driver (Cohen, & Kietzmann, 2014). An important advantage is getting a hassle free payment option, as the facility to pay by debit or credit cards or online net banking is also available apart from cash payment. This makes the passenger travel without any cash handling. Sharing the cab facility is also available when an uber is booked, which makes it cheaper for the passenger. Online tracking facility of uber is offered through the app from where the passenger can witness whether the driver is using correct route or not (Scholz, 2016).
Being an offline passenger conveyance service, there is no system of online tracking of the ride status. At the same time, there is mostly cash payment facility and the online payment methods are usually not available. The profile of driver is not known before the same arrives to pick (Morgan, 2014). The time taken by taxis in arrival is sometimes high and cannot be tracked. The passengers can review about the driver to the company only; new passengers shall get no ratings or reviews regarding the driver they are provided with. Less variety of cars is available to ride. There are high chances of passengers being robbed as the ride is not tracked even on the company side. The main impact of Taxi business on society would be high pollution and increased exploitation of the natural resources (Sarasini, & Langeland, (2017). This has shown that if the proper eco system and systematic work process is not taken then the taxi cab business not only impact the environment in negative manner but also makes hard for the people to breath in environment.
Option to add additional passengers in way is possible only when a non-sharing uber is booked and passengers are in the same route or multiple destinations are added. Uber charge surge pricing at the time of high demands during peak hours and at the time of high demands. Sometimes the expected fare that is shown is far lower than what is charged and the end payment made by the customer is way too high due to the surge. Many a times, it happens that the uber drivers are not local ones and have no clue regarding the local areas and its surroundings (Boesenkopf, 2017).They completely rely on GPS service for the routing and for reaching their pickup location. Due to this, the passenger needs to wait more than estimated time shown in the application. There is less proficiency when it comes to uber drivers as they are not rigorously tested. In addition to this, in context with the society, many entrepreneurs are tapping the cab business with their advance technologies. However, the main negative impact of taxi industry business is related to the destruction of environment due to high pollution (Timeus, Vinaixa, Pardo-Bosch, & Ysa, 2017).
Disadvantages Of Using a Taxi
Using a taxi service like owning a car for the time you have booked it or for the number of kilometres it is booked for. The passenger is not bound for a single drop or for being a single traveller. The passenger can add as much as locations as he wishes for and bring other passengers too along or within his route if he desires so. Taxis being more conventional than uber cabs offer more flexibility and ease. The maintenance of cars offered by taxi companies is more frequent and regular. As earlier discussed, taxis are somewhere cheaper than uber rides in case of high demands when the uber starts charging surges. Comparatively, even in normal days taxis tend to be cheaper in case when the passenger needs to book rides for shorter distance (Cassetta, Marra, Pozzi, & Antonelli, 2017).
When uber share is used, sometimes the passengers are taken longer times to be dropped off due to non-opting of best and shorter routes by the uber drivers. They hassle up different drop locations and end up messing the best route. As taxi services are in work from a generation earlier than uber, their drivers are much more experienced than the uber drivers. The whole uber service work on internet functionality, any breakdown in internet service can ruin the whole system of bookings. Taxi booking being an offline affair is out of the internet trauma and hence available always at a simple call (Dalaman, & Marsap, 2017).
Driver ratings and reviews are recorded on uber application; likewise the customer streaks are also maintained. It means that a customer profile is also maintained that inculcates the ratings given to the customer by the driver, the number of cancellations done by the customer after booking, the number of times the customer has delayed the ride and etc. There is no log maintained in the offline taxi booking mode. The customer is always treated as a new one and is tried to serve as best as possible (Ganguly, Das, & Farr, 2017).
However, if we see from a driver’s perspective, taxi companies seems to provide regular and full day employment to the drivers hired by them. They are employed not as a part time worker but as permanent employees of the company. Whereas when an uber is considered, the drivers flag their availability as per their convenience. It’s flexible on their part whether to ride for a certain day, hour, and ride or not (Kushida, 2015).
Conclusion
The whole write up of report is mostly from the view point of a passenger and the public. Different ideas can seem appropriate if the companies or the driver’s views are taken into consideration. Although the report places more emphasis on taxi services, certain parameters regarding uber services are also discussed. Now in the end, it could be inferred that various incubators are tapping the economic with their business ideas and start-ups. However, these all business ideas have positive and negative impact on the society. In case of taxi business, many entrepreneurs are tapping the cab business with their advance technologies. The main negative impact of taxi industry business is related to the destruction of environment due to high pollution.
References
Boesenkopf, F. A. (2017). Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: How to Improve Your Local Ecosystem with Political Initiatives. Handbook of Cyber-Development, Cyber-Democracy, and Cyber-Defense, 1-24.
Cannon, S., & Summers, L. H. (2014). How Uber and the sharing economy can win over regulators. Harvard business review, 13(10), 24-28.
Cassetta, E., Marra, A., Pozzi, C., & Antonelli, P. (2017). Emerging technological trajectories and new mobility solutions. A large-scale investigation on transport-related innovative start-ups and implications for policy. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 106, 1-11.
Christensen, C. M., Raynor, M. E., & McDonald, R. (2015). What is disruptive innovation. Harvard Business Review, 93(12), 44-53.
Cohen, B., & Kietzmann, J. (2014). Ride on! Mobility business models for the sharing economy. Organization & Environment, 27(3), 279-296.
Cramer, J., & Krueger, A. B. (2016). Disruptive change in the taxi business: The case of Uber. American Economic Review, 106(5), 177-82.
Dalaman, I., & Marsap, A. (2017). Overview of growth hacking: The evaluation of implementations on Uber. International Journal of Economics, Commerce and Management, 6, 60-77.
Ganguly, A., Das, N., & Farr, J. V. (2017). The Role of Marketing Strategies in Successful Disruptive Technologies. International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management, 14(03), 1750016.
Kushida, K. E. (2015). A Strategic Overview of the Silicon Valley Ecosystem: Towards Effectively “Harnessing” Silicon Valley. Report submitted to the Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan (SV-NJ) Project
Morgan, H. (2014). Venture capital firms and incubators. Research-Technology Management, 57(6), 40-45.
Sarasini, S., & Langeland, O. (2017). Business model innovation for car sharing and sustainable urban mobility. Gothenburg, Sweden., The 8th International Sustainability Transitions Conference.
Scholz, T. (2016). Platform cooperativism. Challenging the corporate sharing economy. New York, NY: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
Timeus, K., Vinaixa, J., Pardo-Bosch, F., & Ysa, T. (2017). Smart and sustainable? New business models for smart city services1.
Wallsten, S. (2015). The competitive effects of the sharing economy: how is Uber changing taxis. Technology Policy Institute, 22.
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