But other questions are difficult to answer, such as burning money to promote, serious bubble and uncertain profit prospects. An entrepreneur of taxi software is optimistic that as long as it can exist for a long time and bring benefits, it will definitely find a way to make a profit. However, can taxi software really exist independently and for a long time? A series of progressive answers and logical deduction to this question will reveal the deep-seated defects hidden in taxi software.
the policy risks are obvious. Even if Xiao He loses, Xiao He will lose. The core competitiveness of taxi software lies in that drivers can select passengers according to fare increase and route. However, at the same time, because of violating the management regulations, bargaining and refusing to take a taxi have changed from light to dark, disrupting the price system and attracting administrative bans.
From the function point of view, taxi software enables drivers to decide whether to take an order according to the location, route and fare increase, and reduces transaction costs by promoting the circulation of information, which promotes the maximization of transportation capacity and increases the interests of drivers and passengers. In essence, this is equivalent to improving the internal information management system of taxi companies and taking it as the profit basis of taxi software. That is to say, taxi software is looking for a business opportunity located in the internal management of the enterprise. From the perspective of enterprise boundaries, it is equivalent to taxi software unilaterally making taxi companies outsource this part of enterprise functions to software companies.
according to the transaction cost theory, when the transaction cost of a link is less than that of the enterprise, the enterprise will outsource this part, the essence of which is that the transaction cost will be transformed into the profit of the enterprise itself and the enterprise that accepts the transfer.
part of the profit of taxi software comes from the original taxi company's electric adjustment market, and the other part is the profit point newly discovered through technology. In this profit distribution, taxi companies only get the capacity increase, but the electric dispatching market has been eroded. However, taxi software has no technical threshold such as patent, but only some advantages in technical efficiency and cost. As a monopoly enterprise, taxi companies do not act according to market efficiency and are not sensitive to cost, and tend to obtain all profits in the business chain through simple imitation. Therefore, the potential profit of taxi software will be regarded as deserved by taxi companies.
taxi software only gives drivers the ability to obtain premium through new technology, which essentially transforms the loss of market efficiency under monopoly into consumer welfare and driver welfare, which of course brings about the improvement of market efficiency and also brings about their own survival. However, it is undeniable that the premise is that there is monopoly, and the ability of drivers to obtain premium does not come from taxi software in essence, but from quantity control and price control. Then, of course, regulators and monopolists can get everything-even if it is wrong. Therefore, as long as the monopoly exists, taxi software is trying to get skin from the tiger.
For most cities, drivers are only employees of taxi companies. Companies can take various measures to stop taxi software, such as unannounced visits, fines if found, or installing cameras in cars. These measures can be immediate. From the perspective of law and rights, enterprises can of course strictly abide by their own enterprise boundaries, which is doomed to the fact that the life and death of taxi software are in the hands of others. A typical example is that after the registration network cooperated with Taobao, it was immediately stopped by the Beijing Municipal Health Bureau. Obviously, as an internal part of the enterprise, doctors, waiters and drivers must abide by the enterprise rules. Is there any prospect for a group buying website that is not signed with a hotel but with a waiter?
however, the pioneers have already taken action. Some taxi companies have indicated that they will establish their own software platform, and the taxi software platform of Beijing Traffic Management Department has been put into operation, which is a typical behavior of bringing the profits brought by new technologies into the enterprise. It should be said that this attempt has a positive side. First of all, the essence of taxi software is to collect information for scheduling, and the scale and cross-company are very critical. It is inefficient to schedule only one company. Therefore, whether it is a natural trend from competition to one or two platforms or a number of integrations by government forces, they are all the same and can improve efficiency.
Secondly, in terms of scheduling, it is better for the company and the public to obey the scheduling, even if it is not conducive to improving the extra income of drivers. This is because, compared with taxi software, company scheduling is mandatory. At present, the most severe measure for taxi software to break a promise to drivers is to cancel the registration of their mobile phone numbers. Of course, timid deterrence cannot establish strict management. It is reported that the default rate of a taxi software in Beijing exceeds 3%. On the contrary, the taxi call unified platform was launched for three days, and the Beijing Municipal Transportation Commission said that the taxi call was a refusal.
Moreover, drivers need to watch, select and respond to the taxi software, which will inevitably lead to inattention and safety problems. On the platform established at the level of taxi companies or traffic control departments, drivers don't have to choose, just listen to instructions, which reduces security risks. Therefore, in terms of efficiency, service quality and safety, the unified dispatching mode is obviously better, and taxi software is difficult to surpass the licensed and unified taxi software platform in the market-oriented competition.
From this point of view, the cross-company platform that is compiled and franchised by relevant government management departments may be a more likely way out for taxi software at present. However, on the one hand, as a government franchise, the functions of fare increase and route selection cannot be formalized, and the function of taxi software to convert market efficiency losses into actual profits is weakened; On the other hand, the integration of many companies implies the rent-seeking of monopolists to some extent. Without competition under franchising, there will inevitably be higher single transaction extraction fees, but these high returns will eventually be transferred to rent-seekers through hidden means such as special equipment fees. In this mode, the profitability of taxi software will also be weakened. After all, its survival requires administrative permission and it has no bargaining power.
even if we make the boldest assumption about the taxi market in the medium and long term, assuming that the monopoly does not exist and the market is open, it is not all good for taxi software. In a well-governed taxi market, taxi drivers have very small decision-making scope, and they have neither the bargaining power nor the right to choose. When they see a wave, they stop, watch when they get on the bus, and drive to their destination honestly. At this time, the benign competition between taxi companies has been transformed into the driving force of internal governance. Therefore, in the open taxi market, drivers have little ability to obtain premium. Taxi software lives by helping drivers get a premium, so when the premium becomes smaller, taxi software will not have much profit space even if it has room for survival. Simply put, do people need to buy egg software to buy eggs?
Taxi software is born out of social problems. Its essence is to allow consumers to "bribe" drivers, and its essence is still to solve the ills of the taxi market by price.