Uber har höjt priserna och tar dessutom en större andel, i gengäld får chauffören dricks, som långt ifrån alla ger i synnerhet med amerikanska mått.
Blir nästa steg att priserna anpassas baserat på kundens betalningsvillighet och hur lite ersättning chauffören kan tänka sig att acceptera för att köra?
Uber is in an ideal position to practice what economists call first-order price discrimination — that is, charging each customer prices based
on their known willingness to pay and setting each driver’s pay based on their known willingness to serve.
The resulting upside potential of such price discrimination is enormous, and the opportunity (massive data + AI algorithms + upfront pricing policies)
and need (growing investor pressure for near-term profitability) to exploit it is urgent.
Uber has historically denied (without evidence, of course) that they in any way set prices or pay based on individual passenger or driver characteristics.
However, their recent tactics de facto promote a race-to-the-bottom in driver pay by operating a bidding process on their driving app where competing drivers have literally seconds to accept low pay offers (usually after Uber’s initial low pay offer to a specific driver was rejected).
Anecdotal evidence also suggests that Uber may be using similar tactics to set and revise passenger fares,
lowering them only if a passenger rejects its initial higher price offer.
If Uber is to be given credit for fulfilling their grand promise of becoming the transformative future of urban mobility, investors, consumers, and drivers deserve to know a lot more about the real costs of being taken for a ride.
www.forbes.com