> An example close to me is that Uber essentially already lost the Swedish taxi market.
One thing that happened in Sweden though is that every single large taxi company made their own app with a big nice button for "I want a car, here, now", connected payment methods, and real-time tracking of the car you ordered.
So for me as a consumer, I can either press the button in a taxi app, and typically get a nice Mercedes or similar, with taxi plates, with a licensed taxi driver, properly insured, connected to a real taxi company with customer service representatives that I can call if anything goes wrong.
Or, I can press the button in Uber, pay the same money, but get a dude in his Toyota. Oh, and if the dude doesn't like me as a customer, he can downvote me, which results in me getting worse service in the future.
Say what you want, but at least the Swedish taxi companies out-competed Uber fair and square, instead of either giving up, or resorting to shitty political games to get Uber banned.
> So for me as a consumer, I can either press the button in a taxi app, and typically get a nice Mercedes or similar, with taxi plates, with a licensed taxi driver, properly insured, connected to a real taxi company with customer service representatives that I can call
if anything goes wrong.
> Or, I can press the button in Uber, pay the same money, but get a dude in his Toyota. Oh, and if the dude doesn't like me as a customer, he can downvote me, which results in me getting worse service in the future.
Just to be precise, the dude in a Toyota will also be a licensed driver with taxi plates with their stuff in order, although exactly to the limit of the legal requirements.
They've just realized that in general very few customers care if the car is a new Mercedes or a new Kia hybrid. The only thing which matters is the cost at the time of pressing the button.
One thing that happened in Sweden though is that every single large taxi company made their own app with a big nice button for "I want a car, here, now", connected payment methods, and real-time tracking of the car you ordered.
So for me as a consumer, I can either press the button in a taxi app, and typically get a nice Mercedes or similar, with taxi plates, with a licensed taxi driver, properly insured, connected to a real taxi company with customer service representatives that I can call if anything goes wrong.
Or, I can press the button in Uber, pay the same money, but get a dude in his Toyota. Oh, and if the dude doesn't like me as a customer, he can downvote me, which results in me getting worse service in the future.
Say what you want, but at least the Swedish taxi companies out-competed Uber fair and square, instead of either giving up, or resorting to shitty political games to get Uber banned.