Uber’s been having a horrible, no-good, very bad year—and the latest blow came last night when news broke on Travis Kalanick’s resignation as CEO of the company. After tons of bad PR over the years that seemed to escalate in recent months—from reports of rampant sexual harassment within the company to stealing self-driving car information from Google—the potential for a new Uber finally seems possible now that the unpopular leader is gone.
While it’s impossible to point out exactly one thing that lead to Kalanick’s ouster, it’s clear that the #DeleteUber campaign was an impetus. Successful boycotts seem harder to come by these days (especially for a company as big and mean as Uber), so this offers a unique opportunity for us to see how they can be done in the modern age. First of all, the call to boycott and other negative press hit their wallets, USA Today reports:
Among several surveys tracking the company's decline: one based on credit card spending, which found over the past two years, Uber's share of rides has dropped to 75% from 90%, according to TXN Solutions. The last 3 point slip — to 75.3% from 78.8% —happened between Susan Fowler's mid-February blog post and the first week in June, according to the data compiled for USA TODAY by TXN, which creates sales estimates based on credit card receipts.
Ride-hailing rival Lyft saw its market share rise to 24.7% from 21.2% during this period, as Uber was hit by an unrelenting stream of revelations about the company's business practices and workplace culture, from its use of a fake version of its app to dupe municipal regulators to more recently, a senior executive's sharing of medical records of an Uber driver's rape victim.
In this case, the Uber boycott had a wide-reaching effect: people (like me) responded to the negative headlines by deleting their accounts, those who kept using Uber used competitors like Lyft more, and a good chunk of prospective customers weren’t interested in signing up at all.
"26% of Uber’s customers claim they are actively exploring alternatives and will use Uber less frequently, but only 4% have actually made the decision to switch services as a result of the negative news," the cg42 report says. "This is a low switch rate, specially when considering barriers to doing so are low."
But the impact is real in terms of the company's ability to attract new customers. Prior to the scandal, the reports says, 13% of prospective Uber users "were very or extremely unlikely to consider doing business with the ride-haling service (but) post-news, 32% say they would not do business with Uber."
What’s next for the company? Only time will tell. But here’s one unsolicited piece of advice for the next Uber leader: don’t do what Kalanick did.