AN ANALYSIS ON UBER’S PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESS AND ITS APPLICATION IN VIETNAM

Contents LIST OF ABBREVIATION........................................................................................ iii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES............................................................................iv INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................1 Thesis Objectives..........................................................................................................2 Thesis Scope .................................................................................................................2 Thesis methodology......................................................................................................2 Thesis structure.............................................................................................................3 CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK.......................................................4 1. Introduction to product development :..............................................................4 1.1.Definition: ...........................................................................................................4 1.2.Product development service product:..............................................................4 1.2.1.Difference between service development and traditional product development: .............................................................................................................4 1.2.2.Types of service development:...............................................................5 2. Product development process: ............................................................................6 2.1.New product development process: ....................................................................6 2.1.1.Philip Kotler and group of Sak Onkvisit and John J. Shaw:..................6 2.1.2.Karl T. Ulrich and Steven D. Eppinger:.................................................8 2.1.3.Stage – Gate model: .............................................................................11 2.2.Product development process – service product: ..............................................22 2.2.1.Factors that make service development different from traditional development: ...........................................................................................................22 2.2.2.Emerging Trend in Service Development Process ..............................23 CHAPTER II: UBER’PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESS: CASE OF UBERPOP IN NETHERLANDS................................................................................26 1. Introduction about Uber : .................................................................................26 1.1.Business Idea:....................................................................................................26 1.2.Uber‘s development timeline: ...........................................................................27 1.3.Uber‘s product lines: .........................................................................................29 ii 2. Uber’s product development process – the case of UberPOP in Netherlands: ..............................................................................................................31 2.1.The application of Stage – Gate model on UberPOP case:...............................32 2.2.The applied product UberPOP ........................................................................33 2.3.UberPOP‘s development process ......................................................................34 2.3.1.Idea generation .....................................................................................34 2.3.2.Stage 1+ 2: Scoping and Building Business Case: ..............................35 2.3.3.Stage 3: Development ..........................................................................41 2.3.4.Stage 4 + 5: Pilot launching as Testing and validation:.......................46 2.3.5.Post launch review as pilot evaluation:................................................49 CHAPTER III: APPLICATION TO TRADITIONAL TAXI IN VIETNAM.......55 1. Overview about taxis in Vietnam: ....................................................................55 1.1.Overall current practices: ..................................................................................55 1.2.Practices of the product development in traditional taxi in Vietnam and some problems:........................................................................................................58 2. Lesson learnt from product development process of Uber and suggestion for application in traditional taxis in Vietnam: .....................................................61 2.1.Adapt to the competitive environment:.............................................................62 2.2.Be customer oriented: ......................................................................................63 2.3.Include drivers in product development process:..............................................65 2.4.How to make use of media channels effectively:..............................................66 2.5.How to cut down the cost:.................................................................................67 2.6.Be flexible with the change in the market:........................................................69 CONCLUSION.............................................................................................................70 REFERENCES.............................................................................................................72

FOREIGN TRADE UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ECONOMICS AND INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS -*** - GRADUATION THESIS Major: International Business Economics AN ANALYSIS ON UBER’S PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESS AND ITS APPLICATION IN VIETNAM Student’s name : Tran Phuong Anh Student ID : 1211150014 Class : A23 – High Quality Program Intake : 51 Instructor : Vu Thi Bich Hai, MIB Hanoi, May 2016 i Contents LIST OF ABBREVIATION iii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES iv INTRODUCTION Thesis Objectives Thesis Scope Thesis methodology Thesis structure CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Introduction to product development : 1.1.Definition: 1.2.Product development - service product: 1.2.1.Difference between service development and traditional product development: 1.2.2.Types of service development: Product development process: 2.1.New product development process: 2.1.1.Philip Kotler and group of Sak Onkvisit and John J Shaw: 2.1.2.Karl T Ulrich and Steven D Eppinger: 2.1.3.Stage – Gate model: 11 2.2.Product development process – service product: 22 2.2.1.Factors that make service development different from traditional development: 22 2.2.2.Emerging Trend in Service Development Process 23 CHAPTER II: UBER’PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESS: CASE OF UBERPOP IN NETHERLANDS 26 Introduction about Uber : 26 1.1.Business Idea: 26 1.2.Uber‘s development timeline: 27 1.3.Uber‘s product lines: 29 ii Uber’s product development process – the case of UberPOP in Netherlands: 31 2.1.The application of Stage – Gate model on UberPOP case: 32 2.2.The applied product - UberPOP 33 2.3.UberPOP‘s development process 34 2.3.1.Idea generation 34 2.3.2.Stage 1+ 2: Scoping and Building Business Case: 35 2.3.3.Stage 3: Development 41 2.3.4.Stage + 5: Pilot launching as Testing and validation: 46 2.3.5.Post launch review as pilot evaluation: 49 CHAPTER III: APPLICATION TO TRADITIONAL TAXI IN VIETNAM 55 Overview about taxis in Vietnam: 55 1.1.Overall current practices: 55 1.2.Practices of the product development in traditional taxi in Vietnam and some problems: 58 Lesson learnt from product development process of Uber and suggestion for application in traditional taxis in Vietnam: 61 2.1.Adapt to the competitive environment: 62 2.2.Be customer- oriented: 63 2.3.Include drivers in product development process: 65 2.4.How to make use of media channels effectively: 66 2.5.How to cut down the cost: 67 2.6.Be flexible with the change in the market: 69 CONCLUSION 70 REFERENCES 72 iii LIST OF ABBREVIATION ABBREVIATIONS MEANINGS B2B Business to Business NPD New Product Development VOC Voice of Customer iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES TABLES Table 1.1: Factors that make service development different (Kahn 2013) Table 1.2: The most popular sale tools used in B2B product launch (Adam 2012) 21 Table 2.1: Uber's successful timeline ('How Uber work' 2015) .28 Table 2.2: The ultimate Uber driver training course ('The ultimate' 2016) 43 Table 2.3: Uber's communication phases - stakeholders - activities (Leeuwen 2014) 48 FIGURES Figure 1.1: New Product Developement (Kotler 2006) Figure 1.2: Key activities and responsibilities of different functions within organization (Ulrich and Eppinger 2012) Figure 1.3: The typical Stage - Gate model (Cooper 2001) 12 Figure 1.4: Sources of product idea (Mahmutllari 2014) 13 Figure 1.5: Eighteen diferent media used in B2B product launch (Adam 2012) .20 Figure 2.1: The typical Stage - Gate model (Cooper 2001) 33 Figure 2.2: Dutch government cost per passenger (Davids et al 2014) 37 Figure 2.3: Uber's pricing strategy (Lawrence 2014) .41 Figure 2.4: Proportion of UberPOP's driver education (Davids et al 2014) 42 Figure 2.5: Uber's pricing overview (Leeuwen 2014) 44 Figure 2.6: Uber's price comparison (Leeuwen 2014) 45 Figure 2.7: Partner Economics Calculation (Leeuwen 2014) 45 Figure 2.8: UberPOP's users by gender (Davids et al 2014) 50 Figure 2.9: Customers' response to the importance of different aspects in their choice of transport alternatives (Davids et al 2014) 50 Figure 2.10: Customers' response to the importance of different aspects in their choice of transport alternatives (Davids et al 2014) 51 Figure 2.11: Customers' rating on uber POP drive(s) safety (Davids et al 2014) 52 Figure 2.12: Netherlands's average number of person in car (Davids et al 2014) 53 Figure 2.13: UberPOP's strong growth in usage (Davids et al 2014) 54 Figure 3.1: Vietnamese's public transportation preference (Q&Me 2015) .55 Figure 3.2: Vietnamese's choice of taxi brands (Q&Me 2015) 56 Figure 3.3 Taxi price comparison among South East Asia countries .60 Figure 3.4: Uber's pricing strategy (Lawrence 2014) .68 INTRODUCTION Taxi is a potential industry in Vietnam among different public transportation available in the market as it is preferred by the users in terms of speed, time convenience and privacy However, the way traditional taxi brands in Vietnam or the traditional taxi industry as the whole functions for decades seems to remain unchanged since its birth, which, therefore, create no difference among the brands The emergence of newcomers with distinct function such as Uber or Grabtaxi with their initial success in attracting the users in local market recently soon put the traditional ones under pressure The case put conventional taxi brands with the matter of innovation Innovation, in these modern eras, is considered a key factor in managing the business‘s growth, particularly the innovation in products In other words, how to develop and manage the process of creating the new product or even just to improve the former ones play a significant role in deciding whether the company is capable to expand its business and grow Uber – a technology - based taxi brands, which entered the market years ago, has evolved into one of the most valuable start – up ever Starting from the idea with the incentive of solving a practical problem of finding the cab, Uber was successful in developing their initial idea into a complete modeled product Uber keeps growing by successfully develop many new product lines and expand the business over hundreds of nations and attract billions of investment despite the fact that the company has also faced the disapproval from the local governments in many countries, claiming that Uber has competed unfairly with the local traditional taxis In the case of Uber, it would be worth studying the process of how a start - up develops its new product so successful that it has rapidly taken over a remarkable proportion of market share while at the same time dealing with the pressure from the authority The content for the thesis topic covers the studying of model, which Uber uses to develop their product line by looking at a specific case of UberPOP development in Netherlands In further extent, the thesis would also briefly generalize the current practices and problems faced by traditional taxi in Vietnam with the access of technology-based companies and draw out the lesson learnt from UberPOP case in order to help the traditional taxi brands in Vietnam to compete in local market Thesis Objectives The purposes of the thesis mainly focus on these following points, which would be presented in separated chapters:  Review the product development process studied by different authors and how this process is applied differently between service products and tangible products  Analyze a case of Uber – how Uber developed the new service of UberPOP in Amsterdam, Netherlands  Lesson learnt from UberPOP case and application suggested for Vietnamese traditional taxi brands Thesis Scope Content: The thesis specifies the research content on the product development process that Uber applied to UberPOP and those activities taken by the company in each phase of the process Moreover, the practices of traditional taxi brands in Vietnam together with some lessons and suggested application would also be covered to the extent of this thesis Time: Though in analyzing the case of UberPOP, the timeline would fall in the range between 2014 and 2015, the time scope would be tracked down from the time of Uber establishment up to present time since the thesis would give an overall view on Uber In chapter 3, the thesis would cover the content of the current practices of Vietnam taxi market; therefore, the timeline covered would be from 2014 up to this day Thesis methodology In the thesis, the main method used is synthesis and analysis Qualitative, description and comparison method will also be used Data and statistics from reliable and/or official sources will be compiled and processed in order to give firm grounds for the reasons and findings of the thesis Thesis structure Aside from the introduction and conclusion, the thesis consist three parts: Chapter 1: Theoretical framework Chapter 2: Uber‘s product development process: case of UberPOP in Netherlands Chapter 3: Application to traditional taxi in Vietnam CHAPTER CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Introduction to product development : 1.1 Definition: According to Karl T Ulrich and Steven D Eppinger (2012, p.2), product is ―something sold by an enterprise to its customers‖ and product development is ―the set of activities beginning with the perception of a market opportunity and ending in the production, sale, and delivery of a product‖ In other more specific definition, product development process is defined as ―the sequence of steps or activities that an enterprise employs to conceive, design and commercialize a product‖ (Ulrich and Eppinger 2012, p.12) The rule is to focus on improving systematic methods for guiding all the processes involved to bring a new product to the market 1.2 Product development - service product: 1.2.1 Difference between service development and traditional product development: Service is a particular type of product, which is not tangible as a commodity and can be described as ―a bundle of utilities or satisfaction‖ (Onlvisit and Shaw 2009, p 333) According to Philip Kotler (2006, p 224), ―service is an act or performance that one party can offer to another that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything‖ For this fundamentally difference from tangible product, service requires unique considerations in its creation and development The best approach for developing innovative new services is lying upon solving customers‘ problems and meeting their needs A company can develop innovations that separate it from rivals and establish real differentiation – which is a great development in service through delivering new improvement that address customer needs, which is not fulfilled Due to its different nature, service development has its own set of attributes, challenges, and processes that need to be distinguished from those of traditional product development For example, ―manufacturing‖ in service development often consists of support or ―delivery‖ processes components that ultimately create the customer‘s experience Customers play a direct role in the service delivery process, making their involvement in development much more essential In addition, because the success of service delivery is highly influenced by the person, people, or technology that interfaces with the customer, minimizing variation in delivery quality and consistency is critical for success (ed Kahn 2013, p 52) The table below would summarize four main factors – ―4I‖ that, according to Kahn (2013, p 52-56), make the service development different from traditional product development: Table 1.1: Factors that make service development different (Kahn 2013) Factors How they are different? Individualized experience Services are consumed differently from different consumers The core aspect of a service is not a physical hard good, but the intrinsic value customers receive and the memories they retain Customers‘ reaction to and assessment of the service is immediate Services should be thought of as the holistic sum of their individual parts Intangible value Instantaneous Evaluation Inseparable components 1.2.2 Types of service development: There are three ways in which an enterprise could develop its product that is in the service form Either way can lead to the result of a new face of the product offered due to the changes and development in width or in depth Service line extension is the augmentation of the existing service line such as in the case of a restaurant adds a new item to the menu or an airline offering a new route 61 According to Mr Khuc Huu Hai – director of Dat Cang transport company, one of the reason for the high price for taxi in Vietnam is the high cost of purchasing car Mr Hai emphasized that the cost a taxi companies have to spend on buying new cars is very high due high tax imposed on this kind of product This cost together with the maintenance cost, insurance, gasoline and so on would put the taxi firms under the pressure of raising the price Moreover, if we make the comparison between traditional taxi and the innovative ones such as Uber and Grab, which are operating by the application, we would see that the conventional ones would cost more money on operating the telephonebased dispatch together with the cost on hiring staff to maintain that system Uber and Grab, on the other hands, have every function integrated in its mobile app Hardly consider the driver as a part of product development: A survey conducted among the drivers for different traditional taxi brands revealed that most of the drivers engaged to a specific brand are because of the income Many of them have switched from different ones before making the final decision of which one they would choose to work for a long term The explanation for this matter is somehow simple Since we have pointed out that most of the taxi brands in Vietnam market have almost have no difference in their product and the way they function Hence, the taxi drivers, with the same level of skills would choose the companies that offer they most benefits Moreover, most firms sign the contract with the driver and start to have them as their employees without further connection rather than providing the service and receiving monthly payment Drivers – one of the most important individuals who provide the service and experience the service with the users; therefore, have no voice in giving the feedback to the company of what should be improved and how the product should be improved, though their opinions are precious source Lesson learnt from product development process of Uber and suggestion for application in traditional taxis in Vietnam: 62 In this section, we would go further into some personal suggestion that the author think some traditional taxi brands in Vietnam would learn from Uber – their rival in order to work on how to compete them in our local market It is undeniable that the competitive advantage that Uber has over our traditional taxi firms is thanks to its idea of applying the technology and the business model of which it operates However, by looking at how Uber developed its new products in the case of UberPOP in Netherlands, with the mentioned problems faced by the traditional taxi in term of improving product, it is ensured that these companies should learnt some lessons from their American rivals We would emphasize, one more time that in the extent of this thesis, we would only discuss about the context of product development, not the business model Therefore, we would exclude all the advantages that Uber has over our conventional ones and assume that most of the features are the same in order to look only into the service development process applied by these two subjects However, if there would be something interesting that belong to Uber‘s business model itself, it would also be suggested as the way to improve the product for conventional brands 2.1 Adapt to the competitive environment: An interview conducted with Mina Radhakrishnan, startup advisor at Cowboy Ventures and former Head of Product at Uber (PM Confessions 2015) shared of what are essential for the impressive growth and persistent product development that help Uber becoming a front runner and one of those is ―adaptation‖ She suggested that product managers should anticipate deviations from the initial product roadmap and believe that their works will benefit the company in the end She emphasized that the most important thing is really to just be opened to adapting Once the product manager come out with a roadmap, he got master plan like version 1, version 2, and and then halfway in through version something changes externally and it is not in his control An important part of the job is to have awareness about changes and to accept them as it is going to happen, and the thing the manager can is to adapt and ultimately end up doing the best he could in 63 company‘s interests She said: ―A lot of it just being aware that like, "Hey, things are always going to crazy, all the time That's okay." (PM Confessions 2015) We now know the internal key factor from the a product manager‘s perspective of Uber to know why they come to this far from 2009 to become one of the most valuable start-up by non- stop improving their current products and product lines The traditional taxi, not only in Vietnam would learn this lesson share by Uber It has been recorded that when Uber entered some markets, the local taxi brands in particular countries including Vietnam asked protested and asked the government for protection instead of asking for a fair advantages from the authorities in order to challenge themselves It is true that Uber is now struggling in solving the issues of legality with Vietnamese government; however, they are trying – as they have done in any previous markets, in order to make out the best for them in this market Vietnamese taxi brands, on the other hands, have kept hanging on the hope that Uber would be kicked out of the local market without thinking about how to adapt to the market with the emergence of a huge potential competitors This is also the proof for not believing in its own products Being in the local market is our advantages in comparison to Uber Accordingly, the conventional ones, can, definitely change to compete with the technology – based giants by learning from their approach to product development It is not necessary to change the whole business model to work as Uber or Grab, it is their approach of adding value to the products or cutting price or the way they promote the bright sides of their products are things that we need to learn from 2.2 Be customer- oriented: As mentioned in section 1, one of the problems with our traditional brands is that they have not taken the customer as the key factors to drive their product to Uber, but then has their way of approaching how the users would think and feel while experiencing their service Moreover, the continuously change in their product lines proved to be their response to customer‘s feedback and desires though 64 its market is many different cities across the globe UberPOP is an of Uber‘s effort to lower the taxi fare so that their customer would enjoy the added value of the product It would be a lesson to learn that Uber motivation to develop the product is from the user‘s needs and wants Mina (PM Confessions 2015) said that everybody at Uber uses Uber a lot and she said that their approach is ―you're definitely your own consumer‖ However, Uber still has its own user research team in specific markets since it has the second perspective in their approach to customer‘s insight, which is understand the cultural norm challenge when it comes to localize She added that it is always surprising to Uber the way people in a particular culture use the service and it reflects a different mindset This, as the result, urges Uber to think about the way international users use the product in a different feel She also emphasized the importance of having the research team as it is good to have people trained in user research that can actually go out and get those ideas (PM Confessions 2015) There were lot of times Mina thought that all product managers fall into this trap where they think they are the user Sometimes, they are, but not always Furthermore, while running their product in the market, Uber still maintain the rating system, of which both riders and drivers would rate the other in order that the company would keep track the problem that would have in their products and to record the users‘ feedback for data of improving products later Traditional taxi firms, would learn from these approaches as well While Uber has to spend a lot of money in doing the research about users in Vietnam, it would be an advantage for the local firms as long as they take customers into consideration Being Vietnamese, and have operated in this markets for years, it is obvious that local taxi firms would have more experience on Vietnamese passengers than the new comers as Uber in terms of how they feel and what they would expect The matter is whether these companies would learn the way Uber set users as the target for designing and improving their products in order to win the market 65 Putting the customers in every decision of enhancing quality and developing the products together with rapid response to their feedback is the lesson that a start – up such as Uber understand 2.3 Include drivers in product development process: Drivers, in the case of taxi industry, are important factors as they are the ones who deliver the service to the customers and somehow directly affect the user‘s experience with the brand Understand this and learn that training is the new trend in developing the service, Uber includes training drivers as a part of their product development process and it even design the training module for the its drivers Due to the fact that Uber works as the connection between the drivers and the riders such as the connecting board for demand and supply, some people may assume that the interaction between Uber and their drivers must be loose The practice turns out to be wrong as Uber prepare for their drivers thanks to the training modules and stay contact to their drivers through the rating system The drivers are listened and by Uber and this help the company to have more inputs in enhancing an improving the product Moreover, Uber‘s partners – as the way Uber address their drivers, would feel more appreciated and respect thanks to the two – way rating system, which would encourage them to fulfill their role better Comparing this to the practices in Vietnam, where the drivers of taxi companies would move among different brands It is true that one of the reasons would be that the benefits offered from one company would not be as good as in another one However, if the other human resource policy targeting in keeping the drivers is right, it would not lead to the fact that so many drivers move around If we look at Uber‘s training module in chapter 2, we would see that Uber‘ drivers are not only trained about the brand they are working for and how the application work, but they are also trained about the skills to solve particular situations Moreover, there is one separated module, in which the company explain to them how it is working on the maximize driver‘s earnings This makes the Uber drivers 66 be equipped and stay prepare to deliver the service as well as they are a part that the company is working for the sake of On the other side, the traditional taxi brands in Vietnam would only train for the drivers about the brand and the company, the rest is worked by the drivers themselves It is not concluded that the company totally ignore one of the key factors in their service; but then another problem is raised, that is how to make the strategy of the company transparent to all the stakeholders This would definitely the precious lesson that they would learn from American – based company like Uber 2.4 How to make use of media channels effectively: In product development process, the communication in launching phase is very important Once the product is developed properly and completely and is ready to be launched, it is essential that company would put effort in commuting their product to the potential customers This is true in the business context of any products, not only in taxi industry However, taxi firms in Vietnam hardly pay attention to this or have not done this effectively In the case of UberPOP, even though Uber decided to run UberPOP as a pilot in Netherlands, and the service is only available to the current users of Uber, the communication team of Uber still put a lot of effort into communicating the service widespread First of all, it could be seen that Uber used press conference many times in every phase as their goal is to acknowledge the passengers with the products as wide as possible Uber set their goals for communication and focus on how to achieve this goal The goal is to aim at spreading the news and to focus on solving the legality issues That is the reason why in Uber‘s communication strategy, there would be the content targeting at the regulators Secondly, the strategy is divided into phases and at each phase they used different means of media instead of using all the channels in every phase This helped Uber to save cost and also focus on the most effective tools in each time phase 67 In contrast, in Vietnam, we hardly see any ads or any leaflet about a taxi brands With the confidence of how the market works – the users just walk on the street then they would see their taxi brands, it is understandable why some taxi brands in Vietnam market have never been recognized by the riders It is true that investing on advertising or many media tools cost a lot of money; however, the lesson learnt from Uber is to set the communication goals and focus only on the means that support to achieve those goals Once the goals are achieved, it is, like someone said ―The returning worth the cost‖ 2.5 How to cut down the cost: Taxi fare is said to be the one that matter the most when the passengers in Vietnam consider to choose a taxi brand The traditional taxi brand, nevertheless, is offering the service at higher price due to higher cost in operating the system One of the costs that the conventional ones have over the technology – based ones is the cost of maintaining the telephone – based dispatch, yet this historic dispatch seems to be laughably inefficient As a customer‘s call reaches an operator who then informed drivers over radio, the followed oral communications are similar to a competitive game between drivers with many potential issues The best scenario is that a dispatcher is able to find the nearest available driver, but since dispatchers have little or none information about drivers‘ availability and exact locations, the driver that accepted the call might not be close, therefore the waiting time for customer might increase while the closer and more available drivers are not utilized As a result, there a chance that the customer will choose another taxi even if it is not the taxi the dispatcher sent, if he or she is in the rush and waited too long for the taxi to arrive Moreover, the system would be even more inefficient as it may raise the competition between drivers in the same company as they rush to the user‘s point anyway In contrast, technology – based such as Uber use the application as a way to reduce cost and strive for the efficiency in raising the driver and the rider‘s accountabilities Many taxi brands in Vietnam have tried to adapt to the expansion of these firms by designing and starting to apply the application in their operation 68 This is a good sign though It helps the company to cut down on the cost caused by maintaining the telephone dispatch and the cost spent on paying the staff to run it Yet, there are still some firms find the way of applying a mobile app is way too complicated for the users and costly to invest in These companies, therefore, would work on how to cut down the cost in order to compete since the market is too crowded now Another practice in Vietnam is that some taxi companies are doing business under the model as franchising It is an innovative approach to the effort of cutting down the price By doing this, the head company would save the enormous cost of purchasing new cars However, it also creates the problem of consistency in delivery the products Once the companies find the way in order to encourage the consistency and the way to track down on how the drivers perform, the matter is solved In another perspective, instead of aggressively working on how to cut down the price in order to survive in the market, the firms could think about how to add more value into their products in order to raise the level of price that the users are willing to pay Let‘s review the pricing strategy of Uber: Figure 3.4: Uber's pricing strategy (Lawrence 2014) 69 While Uber aiming to adding more value and cutting cost at the same time, it is possible for the traditional taxi, who is insist on keeping on the former model, to start by adding more value first There are numbers of ways to add more value to products It could be achieved by either the drivers be more professional and friendlier to the users, the firms would be more considerate or the free program or gift – giving out programs 2.6 Be flexible with the change in the market: Just as the way Uber decided to call UberPOP as a pilot instead of the fact that they would officially launch it in Netherlands At that time, Uber found the struggle in dealing with the legality issues in Netherlands; hence, in order to win the sympathy from the authorities, the company was humble, clever and discreet in managing their new product in the market With the same sense but different objectives, traditional brands in Vietnam could also run a pilot if they are not certain about the success of their product improvement Instead of going on the protest against new comers such as Uber or Grab taxi, which coincidently make them more well– known among the users as well as implying their impotence, conventional taxi firms should be more clever and flexible in looking and approaching the problems 70 CONCLUSION Public transportation has been becoming the trend in modern society in Vietnam as the result from user‘s demand for convenience and the encouragement policies from the government due to the issues of environment and poor infrastructure facilities It is, therefore, particularly true that the taxi industry has been received great concern from not only government regulators but also the investors The rapid invasion of the technology-based newcomer as Uber into Vietnamese market has challenged the way that traditional taxis function for decades With its advantages of huge investment capital as well as the application of technology, Uber has proved to be one of the most competitive rivals to traditional taxi in terms of price and quality By studying the process, of which Uber follow in order to develop their new product in the case of UberPOP in Netherlands with the ambition of achieving the initial core value to the upper level, the thesis provides the closer look into how Uber manage to a organize the activities in each phase of the process and how the company changed in order to adapt to Dutch market as well as the dispute from the local authorities To some extent, the thesis draws some lessons out of the case of Uber‘s product of UberPOP that traditional taxi brands in Vietnam should learn from so as to compete in the local market Given the overall practices of taxi market in Vietnam together with some problems that the industry is facing, learning from a fast-growing startup as Uber would; therefore, support the traditional taxi brands to tackle the case With the desire in Uber‘s development process as well as the expectation to help in improving the taxi industry in 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