Millennials stay loyal to Uber despite its rocky year
Although the ride hailing company Uber has had a difficult year, including accusations of a hostile work culture, a pending lawsuit from Alphabet-owned Waymo and an ongoing search for a chief operating officer, millennials have indicated that they plan to stay loyal to the ride-sharing giant despite its issues, according to eMarketer.
Of 1,537 Uber users born in the 1980s and 1990s, a recent surveyed conducted between March 3 and 25 notes that 93% of those surveyed have no plans to drop the app.
Further, the March 2017 data from LendEDU, a provider of student loan debt consolidation and refinancing, found that Uber is now the default urban transportation for millions of users.
“Millennials who use Uber likely think of it as a quickly famous brand they put on the map, so maybe this makes them inclined to cut it some slack when there are bad news reports — until, that is, they have a bad experience with it themselves,” said eMarketer senior analyst Mark Dolliver.
“And since lots of millennials rely on the ‘gig economy’ to support themselves, maybe they’re more indulgent about the travails of a company that’s part of this economy,” he added.
There’s also a layer of convenience that most millennials are accustomed to.
“Most of those people aren’t going to give up Uber right away since it works for them,” said Yory Wurmser, senior analyst at eMarketer. “They have the app, and they’re comfortable using it — and it has the scale to provide more coverage in more markets.
“Uber also has more tiered options of services that its competitors don’t,” he said. “So it has some real advantages to keep its customer base sticky.”
Despite a spate of bad publicity, which has hurt the brand, and could curtail growth and open opportunities for competitors, for now millennials are loyal to Uber.
“If competitors can match or beat Uber in service, more people will start to switch,” Wurmser said. “So although the immediate drop-off is minimal, the company has to get its act together to stave off a fleet of innovative competitors.”