A brand analysis of mytaxi. What could a repositioning strategy include?


Dossier / Travail, 2019

17 Pages, Note: 1,4


Extrait


Table of Contents

Executive Summary

1. Introduction

2. Brand Overview

3. Brand analysis
3.1. Customer analysis
3.2. Self-analysis
3.3. Competitor analysis

4. Repositioning strategy

5. Conclusion

Bibliography

Executive Summary

This report provides an analysis and evaluation of the current brand strategy of mytaxi in Ireland. To fully understand and value the strategy, the current situation and future of the customers and competitors must be examined.

The customer analysis takes a closer look at the amount of travellers, the population in Ireland and the current number of taxi licenses and their development over the years. It also considers future trends and progresses. In addition, the self-analysis of mytaxi takes a further look on mytaxis’ start in Ireland, the development over time, the reputation and what is going to happen in the future. A SWOT analysis was used to give a compact overview of the current situation of the company. Finally, the two main competitors, Uber and Lynk, were analysed and compared to mytaxi. The Gartner Magic Quadrant was used to reflect the finding towards the three companies. Results show that the population of Ireland increases as well as the amount of travellers but the number of taxi driver licenses decreases. Furthermore, it shows that mytaxi is the only company performing well compared to its competitors. However, mytaxi has a bad reputation in Ireland. There is a lack of trust in the company from the customers, passengers and drivers.

The report finds that the current brand strategy does not reach the target groups effectively. Recommendations include providing a more emotional position of the brand to reduce the lack of trust. Furthermore, the brand loyalty can be increased by a better reputation of the brand. This can be achieved by a better relationship to the drivers. The announced rebranding should be reconsider again to not lose the brand equity. However, to benefit from the new brand, they need to build strong brand elements like slogan and brand mantra.

1. Introduction

The way we travel is always changing. It started from horses and coaches, but we now have autonomous cars. Technology gave as opportunities to create something different. With the internet and smartphones, we can get and send information faster than ever before. This led to business models such as mytaxi. Because of our constant changing environment, it is important for companies to know where they stand and if their strategy reaches and attracts their target groups. If not, another firm will do it better. That is why they need to act and react fast, which is possible with a clear brand strategy.

2. Brand Overview

In 2009, Sven Külper and Niclaus Mewes founded the first ride-hailing app for taxis, mytaxi in Hamburg, Germany. Starting and operating in Germany for the first years, the app was launched in 2011 in Vienna as the first international market. In 2014, mytaxi became a part of Daimler Mobility Services GmbH, one of the biggest car manufacturers worldwide (mytaxi, 2019).

In this assignment, the focus is on mytaxi operating in Ireland. Mytaxi and Hailo, a taxi ride-hailing app from UK, which operated in UK and Ireland, merged on June 2016. The migration of Hailo to mytaxi started on March 2017 (Pope, 2017). Today, mytaxi operates across Europe in more than 100 European cities and more than 100.000 drivers are registered on mytaxi (mytaxi, 2019).

3. Brand analysis

3.1. Customer analysis

Mytaxi lacks one typical customer type. They want to attract business people, private people, locals and tourists. Is it for whether people want to rank a taxi on the street, order one through the app or pre book one. Mytaxi is for everyone who needs a taxi to go from A to B, but they especially try to reach younger customers through social media such as Instagram or Facebook. As in Figure 1 (Statista, 2018), in 2017, 40.2 percent of users between 25 and 34 years used ride hailing in Ireland.

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Figure 1: Users by age in the Ride Hailing market in Ireland

Taxis are assigned into the Small Public Service Vehicle (SPSV) sector. In the 20th century, this industry was highly regulated and only a few taxis operated during this time. The driver’s licenses were rare. In 2000, the government omitted those regulations and the number of licenses of SPVS and taxis increased. This increase lasted until the financial crisis in 2008. Since then, the number of licenses dropped every year and went down from 47.222 driver’s licenses in 2009 to 26.012 in 2017 (National Transport Authority, 2018).

This was caused by new restrictions that were put in place. The National Transport Authority (NTA) only accepted new applications for wheelchair accessible taxis (WAS) and none for normal taxis (Dublin Chamber, 2018). In addition, the new regulations for the College Green zone and the removal of many taxi ranks are reasons for the drop in taxi drivers in Ireland (Hennessy, 2018). The NTA also regulates taxi prices like an extra charge for special times or a booking fee for taxis that are not rank (O’Donoghue, 2017).

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Figure 2: Overseas Trips to Ireland by Non-Residents

Figure 2, based on data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) (2018), shows the increase of people coming to Ireland over the last years. The number of business travellers raised by almost 25 percent from 2013 to 2016. In the same time, the population in Ireland increased from 4.614.700 in 2013 to 4.792.500 in 2017. Therefore, while the offer of taxis decreases, the potential demand increases.

Mytaxis’ line of business, ride- and e-hailing, is about to grow. In 2018, mytaxi carried over 16 million people in Ireland, more than ever before (Quann, 2019). By looking on the revenue, Ireland is ranked 29th place of the world with a revenue of $203 m. It is expected that the market will still growth. In 2023, the revenue is forecast to be $271 m (Statista, 2019).

3.2. Self-analysis

Mytaxi is the name of the company and of the brand under which they operate. As Farhana (2012, p. 225) mentioned, “the most common brand elements are names, logos, symbols, characters, packaging and slogans.” Sometimes mytaxi uses the brand name in their logo but the main logo is a yellow or black X with a location info sign over it as in Figure 3 (Schaffrinna, 2013; Greif, 2015).

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Figure 3: Logos of mytaxi

As they provide services, they do not have a packing. Neither have they had characters. Normally every company has a slogan, but the research could not find out one. It shows that it is not known and not successful when in could not be found by research.

To start to operate in Ireland, mytaxi decided to merge with Hailo, an already established taxi app in UK and Ireland. Recorded to Taylor (2016) Hailo had around 45.000 passengers and more than 10.000 registered drivers. Hailo was founded in 2009 and their services started in Ireland in 2012. The company already had their own app for their customers over which taxis could be booked. Mytaxi had to combine Hailos app and their own one. It was one of the biggest app migrations in Europe and the first time two taxi apps were merged (Newstalk, 2017). This was a huge problem for the company, which led to more problems later.

The plan was to migrate the functions and private customers as well as business clients, systematically to the mytaxi app. During this period, both apps should run concurrently and both could be used. The clients of Hailo and mytaxi should not have any disadvantages for the time of the migration. However, it turned out to be much more complicated as the managers of mytaxi thought it would be.

Even after two months, the switchover was not completed and customers began to be annoyed of the chaos that mytaxi has caused. They were used to having an easy handled app and for that time, they only had problems with the new provider, mytaxi. Taxi drivers were unable to see bookings or if they received one, it could disappear after a few seconds. Further, the passengers had problems in the migration too (Pope, 2017). This migration had a huge influence on the reputation of mytaxi and could lead customers to avoid travelling with mytaxi. People still complain about that situation and are not satisfied with the new app. They still want the old Hailo app back, even after two years after the migration had happened. Even mytaxi had spent more than 5 million euros on a marketing campaign in Ireland, they still could not improve their image, neither by Irish passengers nor by drivers (Kline, 2017).

On February 2019, mytaxi announced that they are going to rebrand again. Because of a new joint venture of Daimler and BMW, mytaxi will become Free Now. It will be a part of different offers, which are Reach Now, Charge Now, Park Now and Share Now. The new brand name will fit in the new range of brands. However, none of the other brands will operate in Ireland, only Free Now (Gorey, 2019). They already clarified that there will not be a new app or any new service, it is only a change of the name and probably of the design. However, it is not only a change for the Irish people. It will be the second rebrand in two years. One customer comment on social media: "Absolutely destroyed brand loyalty. Too much change. Hailo was great and felt right." (Fahey, 2019).

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Figure 4: SWOT analysis

Figure 4 shows a SWOT analysis for mytaxi. The analysis is built on the information gained from the research.

3.3. Competitor analysis

One of the most known ride-hailing apps is Uber. Uber was founded in 2009, so was mytaxi. The company started his service in the United States and operates now in more than 65 countries. Different to mytaxi, a ride-hailing taxi app, Uber drivers do not need a driver license, or a taxi cap. The drivers only need a private car to operate on Uber (Uber, 2019). As Uber operates in many countries for now, the idea and the concept are not legal and accepted in every country. Thus, the main business model of Uber like in the US is prohibited in Ireland. As McGreevy (2017) reported, the NTA forbids Uber to run the business because “it was not legal to operate an unlicensed ride sharing serving in Ireland." So far, Uber is only allowed to connect passengers and taxi drivers, so they provide the same service as mytaxi does.

[...]

Fin de l'extrait de 17 pages

Résumé des informations

Titre
A brand analysis of mytaxi. What could a repositioning strategy include?
Université
Griffith College Dublin
Note
1,4
Auteur
Année
2019
Pages
17
N° de catalogue
V493235
ISBN (ebook)
9783668995000
ISBN (Livre)
9783668995017
Langue
anglais
Mots clés
Brand managemant, Mytaxi, Brand, Brand awareness, Brand equity, Ireland, Repositioning
Citation du texte
Vanessa Busch (Auteur), 2019, A brand analysis of mytaxi. What could a repositioning strategy include?, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/493235

Commentaires

  • Pas encore de commentaires.
Lire l'ebook
Titre: A brand analysis of mytaxi. What could a repositioning strategy include?



Télécharger textes

Votre devoir / mémoire:

- Publication en tant qu'eBook et livre
- Honoraires élevés sur les ventes
- Pour vous complètement gratuit - avec ISBN
- Cela dure que 5 minutes
- Chaque œuvre trouve des lecteurs

Devenir un auteur