UberEATS enters the highly competitive food delivery market last.
Nevertheless, the newcomer is confident that it will snatch Foodpanda’s market leader position. Here is how the company will use social media to reach the top.

MEET THE COMPANY

UberEATS is a business within the food delivery industry. Just recently, in May 2016, it was launched in Singapore. Currently, UberEATS is restricted to the central part of Singapore, but they are rapidly expanding to new parts of the city. Here are some interesting facts about the company:

• Born in Santa Monica (California) in August 2014
• Parent company is the famous UBER
• In Singapore you can choose from over 100 restaurants
• Singapore is the FIRST country in Asia where UberEATS is launched in

MAIN COMPETITORS

UberEATS’ main competitors in Singapore are Foodpanda and Deliveroo. Overall, the three companies offer similar services. The main difference is that Deliveroo focuses more on creating partnerships with restaurants with higher standards of quality, while Foodpanda focuses more on the quantity of partnerships. UberEATS is situated between the two companies with the focus on many partnerships with high quality restaurants. Furthermore, UberEATS has a major advantage over their competitors: it is the cheapest alternative. Do you want to know more about what differentiates the companies? Check out the table below for more details.

CURRENT SOCIAL MEDIA PERFORMANCE

In short: UberEATS is behind on all platforms since they were last to enter the Singapore market. However, the company is on its way to catch up with the rest of the market. Their post-frequency and content are similar to that of their competitors. Furthermore, in just two weeks time, UberEATS managed to increase their number of followers with more than 20.000. Explanations of this enormous increase are that:

• UberEATS use a lot of promotions in their posts
• UberEATS boosts their posts, which leads to an increase in exposure

See the image below for more details about the current followers of each of the three food delivery companies:

Moreover, the Synthesio analysis shows that UberEATS currently have a larger amount of mentions than Deliveroo and Foodpanda. However both of the competitors have a significantly better ratio of positive to negative mentions.

Mentions between 1 September-30 October

RESEARCH QUESTION

Singapore is an attractive market for UberEATS, however, they are behind their main competitors. Therefore, the research question is: “How can UberEATS use social media to become the market leader in the food delivery industry in Singapore?”

TARGET AUDIENCE AND VALUED INSIGHTS

UberEATS’ target audience has the following characteristics:

• Demographic: 17-60 years old
• Geographic: narrowed down to people living in the CBD, Orchard, and in areas around Novena and Bukit Timah
• Socioeconomic status: middle- and upper-class
• Values: convenience, comfort & quality food
• Busy lifestyle
• Comfortable enough to order food instead of going to the actual restaurant
• Owns a mobile phone
• Active on social media

After conducting the primary and secondary  research, we were able to collect some interesting insights. Firstly, many people are aware of UberEATS, but just a small part of them actually uses their service. Secondly, the majority of the people are not aware that UberEATS is the cheapest alternative. Finally, restaurant partnerships, costs and convenience are some of the most important factors for people who consider ordering food.

OBJECTIVES AND STRATEGIES

The main goal is to convince current and future customers that UberEATS is the cheapest and most convenient service, which offers the best variety and quality of restaurants.

Objective 1: Inform about what differentiates UberEATS from its competitors.
– Spread awareness of UberEATS as the cheapest food delivery service in Singapore.

What is the main advantage of UberEATS? The costs. By leveraging on the fact that the company does not have any delivery fee or minimum spending amount, UberEATS should be able to attract more customers to try the service.

The goals are to increase awareness of UberEATS’ cheap (or actually lack of) service expenses, and to increase the number of followers/likes on Instagram (over 3000 followers) and Facebook (over 100 000 likes) and, ultimately, to increase sales.

Tactic I: The lowest price

How do you get people to know that you are the cheapest? We believe that social media would be an effective and cheap solution. That is why UberEATS should promote their competitive advantage of having low costs more on their social media platforms to incentivize new customers. The company should advertise it heavily on Facebook and Instagram. The frequency of posts on Facebook and on Instagram should be at least four per day.

Limitations & Advice: It may be slightly too simple. People might not be enough “surprised” by the content or text, that they remember the information or decide to look more into UberEATS. An advice is to post repetitively and clearly.

Tactic II: Photo Contest

A contest to promote UberEATS and their competitive advantage and at the same time to engage the customers. How does it work?

1. Post an original/ funny/ crazy photo of yourself enjoying an UberEATS meal on your Instagram account.
2. Follow the UberEATS account
3. Tag the UberEATS account and put the hashtag #FreeDelivery in your post

The best 10 pictures will be posted on the UberEATS Instagram account. The number of likes of each photo ultimately determines the winner of the contest and the prize of a free food delivery worth $100.

Limitation: contest might not attract enough people. People lack motivation to keep following the Instagram account after the competition is over. The contest needs to be promoted through the social media platforms in time.

OBJECTIVE 2: To build more partnerships with restaurants in Singapore.

What do you consider when choosing a food delivery company? According to several studies, the type and number of restaurants offered by the companies appear to be the number one reason for your choice. It is, therefore, very important for UberEATS to partner with a large variety of quality restaurants and to maintain a good relationship with them.

Tactic: Leveraging on Uber

Due to their longer existence and far-reaching brand exposure, UberEATS’ parent company UBER is a well-established, known and increasingly popular brand. The plan is to pinpoint all of UberEATS’ partner restaurants on the UBER map. By clicking on a restaurant, customers are able to view the restaurant’s menu and they can immediately be directed to the UberEATS app to make an order.

Limitation: It might be confusing for consumers and the UBER app can become messy. An advice is to keep it clear in which app you are at the moment and to enlarge the pins when you are scrolling over them. In this way the apps will stay clear for the customers.

OBJECTIVE 3: To retain current customers and to attract new customers.
– Optimizing UberEATS’ mobile application and creating a loyal-customer program.

First impression is vital and convenience facilitates customers in their decision making process. To retain customers it is, therefore, vital to give them incentives to return. The application should be clear, easy, attractive and supplied with all the information you need as a customer. Additionally, a loyalty program should be implemented to retain customers.

Tactic I: First impression

In order to give the layout of the mobile application a professional, clear and attractive impression, the cover pictures of all the restaurants have to be professional and they should highlight the main theme of the restaurant. In this way, the customer can navigate easily through the wide range of restaurants to find a tasty meal.

Tactic II: Meet the restaurant

To provide the customer with more information about the cuisine, background and quality of the different restaurants, a short description of each restaurant will be given in the mobile application. This will support the customers in their decision to choose a restaurant and a meal.

Tactic III: Know what you eat

All meals will be provided with a short description and a list of their main ingredients. In this way, customers are supported in their decision to pick the meal they like best. Furthermore, customers with allergies or diets have an indication of which meals to choose and which ones not to pick.

Limitation:  Ingredient list might meet resistance, since restaurants might have secret recipes or are lazy. It is also a question of who should be held liable for the list. The restaurants could get the possibility to only mention the  ingredients that can cause certain allergies, and it should be stated under each list that UberEATS cannot be held liable for the content of the list.

Tactic IV: Loyalty program

Each purchase on the app will be rewarded with points. How many points the customer receives, depends on how big the purchase is. There will be six price levels, and the more you buy for, the more points you will receive. As soon as you reach 100 points, you will receive a $10 voucher.

Limitation: Rewarding with points is not good enough to keep the customers loyal. The points might be redundant if the consumer wants food from a restaurant which UberEATS is not partnering with. Therefore, it is important to reach objective 2 in the best possible manner.

CONCLUSION

The central question in this report was how UberEATS can use social media to become the market leader in the food delivery industry in Singapore. UberEATS’ brand awareness among the Singaporeans appeared not to be the big problem. Instead, the issue seems to be the lack of conversion from awareness to purchase. To address this problem, UberEATS needs to differentiate themselves. This will be done by promoting the company’s competitive advantage of price, optimizing its application, creating more partnerships and creating a loyal customer-program.

So what are you waiting for? CRAVE, TAP, ENJOY!

Written by:
Drottheden, S.L.M., Andersson, J.E., Lepoutre, L.
Group 7 (G1)