Uber has figured out something quite interesting with the way commuters use the taxi app. The company monitors its users’ smartphone batteries to see when they are running low and according to their findings, they learnt some interesting things about its users psychology claiming that customers are willing to pay more when their phones are about to run low on battery.
“We absolutely don’t use that to kind of like push you a higher surge price, but it’s an interesting kind of psychological fact of human behaviour,” Keith Chen, Uber’s head of economic research, said in an interview on National Public Radio in the US.
Uber’s “surge pricing” model, which increases prices when demand increases, is designed to encourage more Uber drivers on to the roads so that the extra demand can be met.
Charging higher prices during peak times is common in the airline and hotel industries, but Uber has been criticised for raising prices during times of high demand, such as Friday and Saturday nights or in times of crisis but the company claims it does not use the information to raise fares on desperate customers.
“As you can imagine, I hear over and over again both at my dinner table and at family gatherings that surge pricing can feel very unfair to customers, but it’s been a really integral part of Uber’s success precisely because the whole goal of the company was to replace a really frustrating experience with taxis with service that’s just ultimately reliable,” said Mr Chen.
And for those who just find this somehow intrusive, Chen made it clear that Uber only monitors users’ battery levels so that it could switch the app into low power mode and keep the phone charged for longer, nothing more.
