RIDE-HAILING REALITIES: EXPLORING DRIVERS OF CONSUMER BRAND SWITCHING IN RIDE-HAILING PLATFORMS

Abstract

Brand switching refers to migration of users from one brand to another. Switching is associated with negative consequences such as declining market share and poor profitability. A structured questionnaire was adopted to collect the data. A Regression Analysis using SPSS was employed to derive the practical results. Through the online questionnaire it was found that although the cab riding is subjective, there are some general factors that seem to influence the switching behaviour of consumers among ride hailing apps. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of factors affecting consumers' preference on Brand Switching Behaviour (with special reference to ride hailing apps like Ola and Uber).  Uber and Ola both are one of the most fastest growing firms in the taxi aggregator industry. However, both run through very different operations and working logistics in terms of driver and rides, route optimization, area connectivity, and availability. The results demonstrated that Ola (53.6%) is the highly preferred app followed by Uber (39.1%) and other ride hailing apps(7.3%). Key importance of this study derived from the analysis will help the marketers and advertisers.