Analyzing And Evaluating Corporate Communication: A Case Study Of Uber

Background of the organization

In modern economic environment, the corporate communication officers are continuously facing the challenges of communicating, building reputation, meeting the rise of anti-globalism and anti-Americanism and keeping a pace with the rapid changes through the role of business in the public diplomacy (Doorley and Garcia 2011).

The aim of this report is to enhance the performance of the corporate communication as a strategic purpose and to become the number one choice of scholars and professionals of information and knowledge on the field of corporate communication. It is further elaborated on primary research in the corporate communication of UBER, a for-profit organization, contributing to the enhancement of its organizational performance. It is intended to analyze and evaluate the communication of UBER and its marketing theory. It will also shed light on the company structure, business performance and its various HR policies and practices to keep up with the fast flowing world and to improve its business, there are few recommendations made in order to fix the problems that UBER is facing in the current days in developing itself.

Discussion

1. The background of the organization (history. structure, performance and policies)

Uber was formerly known as the UberCab and was founded eight years ago, that is in the year 2009 in California. It is a non-government company. The founders of the company are Mr. Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp (Uber.com, 2017). The company has spread its roots all over 633 cities worldwide. However, it is banned in Northern territories. Dara Khosrowshahi and Thuan Pham are the CEO and CTO of the company respectively. The company has employed a near about 12000 employees and his serving internationally.

The main motive behind starting this business was to blend a mobile phone application into its purposes and practices to connect the passengers with different vehicle drivers for hire (Rayle et al. 2014). In addition, the passengers can track the vehicle since it makes its way to their exact location. The company has set for the riders in order to take access Uber few terms and policies.

They are, damaging other passenger’s property, any kind of physical or unwanted contact with the driver, using abusive words or languages, violating local laws at the time of using Uber are strictly prohibited (Uber.com, 2017). It also forbids drivers as well as riders from carrying firearms in the vehicle. Apart from these, it also has no tolerance policy for discrimination. Every Uber drivers are official independent owners (Scheiber 2017). Any kind of sharp practice or duplicity or illegitimate behavior erode the trust on which the company is built.

2. Uber Mission

It is interesting to pay proper attention to how Uber has so successfully emerged over the years. If someone goes through its official website, it is clearly mentioned in a section under the “Our Story” page, that “Transportation as reliable as running water, everywhere for everyone.” It is the mission statement of Uber. The Uber application is connecting the passengers with the drivers around the world. Whether it is for hire or for ride-sharing service, the Uber app is efficiently helping people getting better transport service than ever.

Uber Mission

The core mission of the company was simple. Providing the people a crowd-sourced solution to the problem of overpriced and revolutionize the monopolized taxi industry was their main mission and it is proven that they have been true to their mission. The Uber app has destroyed the taxi industry by plugging the cosmic demand for more and better transport options in the countries. However, possibly the biggest message of Uber is- the idea of choice.

Uber has provided its customers a wide range of options to choose from. Further, the freedom that Uber provides its customer, whether from choosing the type of Uber they want to take (like UberX, UberTaxi, UberExec etc.), to the choice of music to play in their cab is highly motivated by the desire that it want to give the autonomy of choice to all its customers.

3. SWOT ANALYSIS –

Identifying Strengths and Weaknesses: The Strengths and weaknesses of the organization is listed below:

Strength	Weakness
· high standard of services and verified cars and drivers.	· It can be easily copied or emulated.
· Its operational cost is low as compared to other brands.	· The correlation between the drivers and the riders is morally questionable.
· It has a dual rating system.	· There is no bonding between the drivers and the company.
· The prices are comparatively lower.	· The cost of functioning and operating the vehicles are very high.
· It uses cashless payment system.	· Very doubtful business model
· The valuation of Uber is high.	· There is a lack of privacy for the passengers.
· It has a boundless fleet of vehicles.

Table 1

Opportunities and Threats: The opportunities and threats of the organization is listed below:

Opportunities	Threats
· It can lead the developing markets in the sub-urban parts where taxi services are unavailable.	· The increase of frauds and scandals in the market.
· Passengers often are dissatisfied with the traditional taxis as there are of high prices.	· Driverless cars could abolish the need of Uber.
· Due to log waiting time for traditional taxis, customers are dissatisfied with them.	· Any issues with the local authorities would earn a bad Public Relation (PR).
· It can expand the valuation, which would implore  more investors.	· New regulations may ban the company from operating.
· Low-priced electric cars can be used to decrease the cost.	· The drivers are not satisfied with low-profit margins.
· It can utilize new markets where taxi services are expensive and disruptive.	· High valuation may lead to high investment in the locations with absence of such business.
· Services like transporting pets, transporting students to the school and patients to the hospital can also be added.	· Increasing competition. Lyft is the major competitor of Uber in current days.

Table 2

SWOT Summary

 Strength: Uber is a well-recognized company that gives its users, high standard of services with verified cars and drivers (Matherne and O’Toole 2017). The company relies on the interaction between the customer and driver an therefore there is low operational cost. One of the key strength of Uber is the dual rating system improves the trust and safety. Along with that, the benefit of cashless payment system has enabled Uber can choose and track highly rated drivers. In addition, it has other important features such as easily getting a car and having a record of the total spending. The Uber taxi fare is comparatively lower than that of other traditional taxi operators (Wallsten 2015). Due to high valuation of Uber, people are pleased to invest on it.

Weakness: However, there are few weakness associated with the operations of Uber. It has a doubtful business model. Other new entrants can easily emulate the idea of such business, which will lead to huge competition in the market (Cohen and Kietzmann 2014). The drivers too cannot earn much profit as the cost of functioning and operating Uber vehicles are very high.  In addition, the relationship between the drivers and the company is questionable. The lack of privacy for the customers is another negative factor associated with Uber (Pick and Dreher 2015).

Opportunities: The internet and mobile penetration, along with road infrastructural development is providing direct opportunities for a new market entry for the company. It should identify this and place itself in the markets with increasing infrastructural and technological development for rapid global scaling. With the same, a competitive offering in the global markets has put the company into media speculation. This has played a significant role to Uber’s advantage with a rapid rise in the number of people downloading Uber application and using its cab services. Uber can also exploit new markets in the countries with expensive, inconvenient or no taxi services (Gomer and Hille 2013). The additional services such as transporting patients to the hospitals, transporting children to the schools and colleges can impress many people and help the company to grow its services further.

SWOT Analysis

Threats: There are few particular threats being faced by the Uber. The reputation of the company can get damaged with the increase of frauds and scandals in the market. This will discourage new users from using the service. Within a few years, Uber has succeeded in detaining the loyalty of its riders or customers by serving to the on-demand rides of each individuals of the society. Still, the company induces some contrasts too. The traditional taxi drivers, the local government and few Uber drivers are against the system that the startup is engaged into. The low-profit may also discourage new cab drivers from joining the company. With the same, Driverless cars and new regulations may abolish the need of Uber and ban the company from operating further (Chan et al. 2016).

. Analysis of communications of Uber

External Communication- it is important for a company to have a successful external communications strategy in the work place in order to create the best perceptions possible. A company is largely dependent on its stakeholders. Stakeholders have the potential to affect the business and its performance. With the same, the vice-versa is also true.  Uber operates as a public transport service company and it is the passengers and the stakeholders, upon which the company’s future existence is depending.

The key stakeholder of Uber is its rides or passengers (Boshuijzen-van Burken and Haftor 2017).  Therefore, Uber makes sure that the interaction and communication in between itself and the external organization is done on a daily basis. Uber promotes its business through social media and advertisements. It chooses not to promote its business through the mode of local newspaper advertisement. They also communicate with some of their clients through visual medium like PowerPoint presentations by conducting various seminars.

Another important tool that the company uses for communicating externally is through their company website. They employed a web designer and developer in order to create and design their website. The website is highly professional and eye-catching in design and appearance. With the same, it describes every minute detail about the company.

Internal communication- internal communication is often referred to as employee communication. It is very disappointing that Uber chose to inaugurate a print publication quarterly in order to keep the Uber partners updated. They communicate with their partners on the service application (Izz et al. 2016). It is something that is hampering the trust in a way. Uber must use an app for its internal communication. However, placate in momentum is quite good. There are info graphic, health tips, employee recognitions, product development, events, short-run publication, though not pivotal.

5. Strategic Objectives

Identifying and Evaluating Business Level Strategies and marketing theory of Uber:

1. Hardball strategy-

Uber uses this strategy to expand its business into global cities (Vermeulen 2015). The main of this strategy is to kill the competition being determine on leading the market shares, enjoying exponential growth and great margins. Uber picks its own shots defying judicial rules and hurting the customer sentiments in search of bigger market with greater profits.

1. Dynamic surge pricing strategy-

Opportunities and Threats

Uber uses this strategy to rise its fares at the time when demand overreach supply (Chen, Wilson and Mislove 2015). It makes the use of heat maps, mobile apps, along with efficient algorithm to meet the demand at real-time. This strategy is focused on ensuring profits rather than gaining more customers. With a regular usage of it, the company many experience harmful results because the customer shall then look forward for the other competitors and substitutes (Peppard and Ward 2016).

1. Cost Leadership Strategy-

This strategy is used to compete for larger number of customers through fare. It works better when the services are standardized. The organization can minimize the costs to the company for minimizing costs to the customers and that too without decreasing the profits (Stankeviciute, Grunda and Bartkus 2012).

1. Differentiation Strategy-

The company uses this strategy in order to provide the service with distinguishing qualities valued by the customers. To succeed in this strategy, a company needs to have access to highly skilled product development team and leading scientific research (Banker, Mashruwala and Tripathy 2014).

5. Analysis of Crisis communication-

1. Uber has to face trust and safety issues several times. It is being probed for criminal negligence after one of the Uber drivers raped a rider in India. Henceforth, the company has introduced SOS feature in the cab that enable the passengers to contact the police directly (Priyadarshani, Rani and Kanungo 2015).
2. Few agents from the Transport Inspectorate of Netherland have raided the company’s headquarters in Europe twice in the last few years of its existence. The raid was done to investigate whether Uber was running ant kind of illegal taxi service.
3. Uber has come under fire for the surge-pricing algorithm during few events such as- Hurricane Sandy and Sydney Hostage Siege (Hall, Kendrick and Nosko 2015).

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1. It has been found that there are still few places, where the existence of Uber is unknown to all. In country like Finland, no communications actions have been executed so far on the behalf of the company. In a recent survey, it has been found that the majority of the people in Finland have never used the Uber service. Uber is not yet well known in Finland, a marketing campaign is needed.
2. Uber has faced criticism for not meeting the demands, sudden cancellation of service and bad experiences with the drivers.
3. 6. Barriers to successful communication

Issues	Solutions
1. Trust and Safety issues	· Driver/Passenger information, GPS following rides.
	· Alleged (sexual) assaults	· Panic  Button
· Alleged Kidnappings	· Background checks, identification of new technologies
2. Legal issues	· Metro mile’s Uber Car insurance
	· Insurance coverage for accidents	· Insurance coverage for UberX
· Regulatory laws- illegal taxi operation.	· App’s terms and conditions
· Conforming to the laws
3. Surge Pricing	· Cap on fares for certain events

Table 3

1. Consistency of the brand

Innovative transportation services like Uber, Lyft are changing the mobility for millions of people round the world but still, the regulation of such services often varies largely by industry and geography. The regulators should therefore craft few consistent policies that could encourage the competition among the modern and traditional transportation services like taxis or limousines to improve the safety, mobility and sustainability (Rogers 2015). The availability of the on-demand transportation services through the mode of smart phone applications is rapidly increasing the shared mobility (Mazzei, Flynn and Haynie 2016). The growth in these services amplifies and follows a rebound in the public transport use.

1. HR is the head architect of a company (Ulrich 2014). To meet the market demand, the HR must focus on its product offering potential. It also needs to identify different socio-cultural needs prevailing in different markets. Better service quality will lead to publicity. Hence, it must target the local needs while ensuring international service quality.
2. Hire a communications manager to actively lead media’s attention to issues that are more beneficial to Uber.
3. Uber can emphasis on city events and strike strategic partnerships with organizers to celebrate city occasions. This will lead to maintain market communications. In addition, it can celebrate driver associations and ride anniversaries by rewarding efficient drivers.
4. It can offer a fixed price for the regular travelers. The people with frequent transport needs could be brought to a system with a weekly or monthly fixed fare. This will increase loyal customers as well as word-of-mouth promotion of the company.
5. Technology is the heart of Uber. It should find solutions to diminish its customer problem through the app itself and it should offer multiple new options such as payment and safety to make the traveling experience much better (Cannon and Summers 2014).
6. Launch a marketing campaign to raise awareness of Uber’s presence and highlight the flexibility and many possibilities of its service.

Conclusion:

From the above analysis it could be stated that The communication strategy of Uber both internally and externally is helping it towards success and better future. They both are equally commendable. Internal communication is the catalyst to organizational effectiveness and excellence and it is natural for the employees to need more information about the company within which they are working. Uber is efficient it providing its employees with detailed information on how it has achieved is goal so far and how it will improve the same in the near future.

Though Uber do not have the facility of direct contact in between the company and the drivers or passengers but it is successful in building a better relationship within the organization. The managing directors of Uber allow all the employees to give their feedback and opinions on how the business can improve, which makes the employee feel that they are also an important part of the company. As a result, they work hard in order to help the organization achieve its goals. The company also ensures that they maintain a good relation with the stakeholders as well and they convey the message of professionalism and consistency to them.

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