Uber and Lyft are in a battle to build user loyalty and runners can win

Carpool customers are becoming less and less loyal.

Americans using both Uber and Lyft in the last quarter of 2018 accounted for about one-third of carpool revenues, according to new data from Earnest Research, which badyzes purchases from millions of US credit and debit cards anonymised. This increased by 13 percentage points compared to the beginning of 2016.

Uber users alone still controlled the majority of this share-sharing in the last quarter – 51% – but this share declines as more customers use Lyft, both with Uber and alone. Some 15% of the revenue came from Lyft users alone, up from 5% two years ago.

In total, Uber captured 70% of the carpool business figure in Q4 2018, compared to 30% for Lyft *, which means that Uber accounts for a larger share of the group's revenue. who uses both.

The gap between the overall market share and among the users of both services probably means that when users have both apps, they buy from each other and take the car at the best price. This could put even more pressure on the carpool giants to lower their prices and offer promotions.

It is also pushing companies – both of which expect to reach public procurement at gigantic valuations this year – to differentiate themselves. As Recode Pivot Scott Galloway, co-facilitator, said that companies do not currently have a lot of "ditches" because they offer essentially the same services. This means that it could be quite simple for a competitor to enter and take market share by proposing the same thing at a lower price.

Uber wants to expand its offering to become "the Amazon of Transportation" by selling goods and services of third parties, as it does with Uber Eats. Uber and Lyft have expanded into other transportation markets, including scooters. And Uber and Lyft are trying to build customer loyalty by introducing loyalty and reward programs.

Uber's misbehavior, including the badual harbadment scandals and Trump's ban on travel ban, has led some to boycott the company as part of a #deleteUber campaign. The efforts detracted from Uber's and Lyft's market share, believing that Lyft was the most socially responsible option.

Under his new direction, however, Uber recovered. And Lyft is now in trouble for trying to avoid paying his New York drivers a new, higher minimum wage, causing people to wonder if Lyft is better than Uber.

As competition for dominance intensifies, the battle to capture loyal users will be on the price and perception front. And more and more, this war will take place in the eyes of the public. According to Pew Research, only 3% of Americans had ever heard of mobile services like Uber or Lyft in 2018. 33% of them had not heard of carpooling three years earlier.

About a third of Americans used telephone services, according to the study you are reading, and this number has grown rapidly.

When Uber and Lyft become public, they will have even more name recognition.

* Note that market share data does not include much smaller Uber and Lyft competitors such as Gett, Juno and Via.