Uber Valet: Implementation Plan, Marketing Strategy, And Potential Risks Essay.

1. Critical risk analysis identifying key sites of risk:

PR, social, ethical and regulatory, etc.
A short PR response plan including proactive and reactive contingency is required.
 

The idea of Uber Valet is to offer its service to the people who are in need to drive to desired places. The driver is offered by company and reaches to the customer’s location that would then drive the customer in their own personal vehicle in order to reach the customer to various social events, medical reasons, and other events. The idea of Uber valet is mainly focused of people are cannot drive in their personal vehicle due to certain reasons. To assists the aged customers to reach their desired places and to avoid the drunk drivers on the streets.

The report majorly emphasizes on the introduction of Uber Valet in the markets of Australia and then gradually expands its business to beyond the boundaries of Australia. This report  elaborates on the implementation plan of the strategies of the company. It identifies the 4p that is price, place, promotion and product. It critically analyzes  the marketing strategy. The various factors which pose threat to Uber Valet and issues of the concept. The report provides the methods of budget and forcast and lastly it concludes on the three take aways of the management. 

 Uber valet is a concept where the drivers reach to the mentioned location of the customers, then the customer is drove in his/her personal cars to their said destination. People need this service for attaining several events, medical appointments, to the market places or any other social events. Uber Valet is a service which could be used in cases where the customers are unable to drive due to various situations, such as exhaustion and inebriation. There are elderly people who no longer have to ability to drive or in other cases where the customers are in situation when they are unable to drive.

According to Goldsmith (2014) Uber implements the strategy of creating awareness via social media plaforms. The others ways of promoting its brand and creating awareness are customers enticing incentives prompt service of delivery, free wi-fi, discounts and other facilities. Some other policies of uber includes rising the customer share, attraction of new customers and obtain new customers as well as retaining their loyal customers. In order to retain its customers and acquire loyal customers Uber uses these branding techniques. Uber uses social media platforms to implement their branding strategies and to attain  prompt customer feedback.

Uber implements the policy of dynamic pricing so that it can adjust with the decrease and increase in demand. When the price increases the company can get more drivers in the particular location. The company emphasizes on the scheme of revenue sharing rather than just profit increasing. Their mainly emphasizes on maximising the actual number of rides. Rather than profit maximization they focus on sales maximising. It offers linear pricing policy scheme which depends on the quality of ride given.

Potential Risks

Uber rides are currently available in 40 countries and over 600 cities all across the globe. Uber valet has been planned to be introduced in the Australian market. It plans to expand the business from outside of Australia to several other countries. Uber valet can be easily operated with the use of an app through a Smartphone. The location, is shared by the customer through smartphone and the facilities such as time and minute left are also shared with the customers, so that it becomes  convienent. It offers facility such as booking stations and help desk are to be provided in most populated places like malls and airports throughout the country. 

One of the biggest risks that can be faced by the Uber valet is reliability. There is PR related risk that the drivers might not be capable enough or could be trusted when it comes to dealing with the private car of the customers. They must be accused of thief and other related issues. Hence there are safety issues. Such accusations hamper the reputation of the company. There is immense possibility of self inflicted crisis and poorly managed public relations. To enable effective handling of public, Uber must imply professionalism, and must incorporate social responsibility. In the opinion of Baker (2014) ethical business practices are to be encouraged to eliminate conflicts.  This would help in influencing good relation with public.  

An adequate number of drivers must be employed by Uber, because too many drivers can cause risk of low customers who might cause a problem, the drivers get low payment and dissatisfaction among the drivers take place. Even too less drivers, increases the demand and the price rate increases. This might be inconvenient for most of the customers. Although, dynamic pricing strategy Of Uber increases the revenue for the company and the drivers as well but this might be a cause of inconvenience for the customer. It must be careful so that the rates do not splurge in too high as a matter of fact; it might lose its customers to other public transport and it competitors. These facts must be considered so as to avoid social risk.

The lack of core ethical principles and laws of Uber might cause the drivers out of their transition. Uber needs to focus on strong ethical considerations, there must be clarity of integrity and which will ensure the protection of customers and eliminate discrimination and harassment.. To ensure success of Uber valet these norms are important I to be maintained by the company (Resnick et al. 2016).

Budgeting and Forecasting

According to Grant (2016) there are many regulatory issues that can be faced by Uber valet, there are challenges for transport authorities in and around Australia. There are risk pertaining to Australia’s transport authorities to overhaul the regulations. Uber might face risk of threats from other cab facilities of the country and the taxi sector as technology driven transport are taking away all the customers, the government could plan to introduce tougher rules and regulations. This can cause a regulatory issue for uber. Therefore plans and policies by uber must be implemented in order to ensure a future regulatory position especially on data sharing, training of the drivers and the safety of the passengers.

There are other legal issues that could be faced by Uber, acquiring license in the city is the biggest issue that can be faced by valet. The government might not find the company to be fit and proper operator due to many other safety concerns as there already has be many complains and reports of alleged sexual assaults and harassments by the drivers to the police. Uber needs to regain the confidence of the regulatory authorities and the public in order to successfully operate the uber valet. 

According to Ehling, White and Grunig (2013) there are three goals for relation planning that is to increasing the awareness among its prospective customers, diversified service and creating new segments in the market to ensure customer satisfaction. Research and gathering data about the competitors is important to understand the present scenario  and relation with the public.. Gthering information from time to time both inernal and external analysis is needed to be obtained to analysis its effects on the business.

 It is requires to implements the pricing policy in such a way so the company can gain more customers. Ethical way of  conducting business and policy, training of the drivers needs to be done. It may eliminate the risk of conflicts with the customers and professionalism must be executed (Grunig 2013). Customer safety should be given main priority; this will reduce the loss of employees. there must be healthy public relation. Its strategies in a structured manner to attain the attention of the public and target the audience as preplanned Effective tactics need to be implemented to determine measurements the engagements with the customers. Customer grievance needs to be addressed and effective solution must be done. (Austin and Pinkleton 2015).

In the opinion of Daymon and Holloway (2010), the dynamic pricing policy pertains to  risk, during its peak season the price increase to some extent. It must be ensured that price is needed to be increased up to a certain limit. However, too much increase in price, might lead to lose of customers.  

Hence, pricing policy plays an important factor in increasing public relations with satisfactory service and safety of the customers.

According to Tarhini et al. (2015), developing the budgetary plans is very essential for the success in operations of the company.  Developing a budgetary policy and technique, revving and proving is highly time consuming. Hence choosing the correct method of budgeting is important for the company. Proper budgeting enables the organization in attaining the goals. This enables the company to play an effective role in effective utilization of the resources available to the company (Fleisher and Bensoussan 2015). It offers a possible way which enables the company to control its expenditure and income of the company.

According to Kramer and Hartmann (2014), the suggested budgetary method is top down budgeting method. This method is executed from the top level management through its way down. The budgetary policies and techniques are developed in the upper mangement and gives directions to the lower level management. One of the  advantage of utilizing this method is that it is properly addressed and reflects the organization’s culture (Ljungman 2019). However, this method gives less value to the lower level manegemnts  hence they might feel left out (Rogulenko et al. 2016).

Some of the forcasting metrics include sales forecasting, the accuracy of sales forecasting. The company depends  on relevancy of the information which is required for forecasting. According to Afuah (2014), stages of sales forecasting methods determins the time and period of forecasting.

According to Davies (2017), the marketing strategies itself assists in implementing the marketing plan. The marketing goals and strategies assists in developing a advantage over its competitors. The research, forecasting metrics, are relevant marketing strategies which helps in achieving satisfied customer base, profit maximization and business expansions. To retain old customers and to attract new customers, discounts strategy must be adopted, providing discounts will ensure more customers. Identifying  the target audience will be useful in theplan implementation and execution. New ideas and concepts needs to be evaluated. Explaining the objectives and the ways of execution needs to be conveyed with all the members of the organization. Executing and evaluating  the pre planned marketing strategy with ensures increase in sales, encourage the customers to utilize the service of Uber Valet.

Market share of about 50% must be the main need of transport services, to increase more tip numbers, Uber Valet must provide cheaper and better services. Additional discounts can be provided to the aged sectors. The major purpose of this business plan that is reduce or eliminate potential drunk drivers on the roads and enabling safety, reducing accidents. 

Conclusion

Therefore it can be concluded, that Uber Valet is an option which is truly viable and this marketing plan and strategy would  find successprovided the plan is implemented and executed in a proper way and rightful manner. It is indeed an opportunity in relation to social element it does not yet exists. Hence, it at an opportunity to increase the potential income and increasing the potential customers. It can be conclude that the service has indeed many social benefits such as; it can reduce the burden of the elderly people and the disabled persons in a really innovated way. The Uber valet ensures safety on the roads by avoiding any drunk drivers thereby reducing accidents. It ensures independence of the prospective customers and dependence on their personal drivers. This also ensures cheap and premium service to their customers. It relives the customers from additional taxes and charges from the taxi drivers or keeping a personal chauffeur. However, there are many issues pertaining to this marketing plan and strategy.

There are various risks that need to be encountered like customer safety issues, licence obtaining issues. Sometimes there are conflicts that take place with the customers and the drivers. This issues needs to be overcome. There are threats from the external environment and from the competitors as well. However, there are various strategies and ways in which customers can be retained back with the implementation of certain policies and tactics such as discounts and price cut which will help in retaining back customers and attracting new customer. The company could use social media platforms and word of month in order to spread awareness of the public. In this way, success of this marketing plan can be ensured. 

Reference list

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