Didi’s “Carpooling” product analysis report!

Didi created National Carpooling Day and launched a new carpooling function. This article conducts an experience analysis of this function in an attempt to speculate on Didi's intentions. It includes the following aspects: product positioning, user analysis, business model, market performance, functional experience and SWOT analysis.

01 Experience Environment

02 Experience Direction

Didi’s new carpooling service is launched, creating a new carpooling festival for all the people.

On the fourth anniversary of Didi's carpooling launch, Didi released a new carpooling product. Based on maximizing the value of "ride sharing", the new carpooling product is committed to making prices more affordable for passengers and giving drivers a greater sense of profit. At the same time, Didi announced that it would launch an event in 26 cities offering 10% off for carpooling, with a maximum discount of 100 yuan, to create the first "National Carpooling Day".

The new carpooling function has two major functions, which can respectively meet the user needs of timeliness and high cost-effectiveness. They are: check "Accept carpooling" on the express page before placing an order, and "Group together and depart" on the separate carpooling page. The system will match carpoolers before calling a car.

We will take Didi's full-scale promotion of the carpooling business and heavy subsidies for creating carpooling days as the entry point, and conduct a scenario analysis of Didi's products based on the carpooling business, analyze the impact of the carpooling business on Didi's overall structure, and the deep meaning and purpose of Didi's move.

03 Product positioning and user analysis

3.1 Who is Didi?

Didi Chuxing "App" is a comprehensive mobile travel platform that leads the modern travel mode for users in the era of mobile Internet. It provides diversified travel and transportation services such as taxis, express cars, private cars, luxury cars, buses, chauffeurs, enterprise-level, shared bicycles, shared electric motorcycles, car services, and food delivery to 550 million users in Asia, Latin America and Australia.

On the Didi platform, tens of millions of car owners and drivers have access to flexible work and income opportunities, and transport 10 billion passengers annually.

3.2 What problems does Didi want to solve?

(1) Online ride-hailing services solve the problem of “difficulty in hailing a taxi”

Looking at the entire taxi-hailing process, there are two main roles involved: the driver and the passenger.

Before the popularization of online travel platforms, there was an information asymmetry problem between passengers and drivers in the taxi field: the vehicles that passengers could take were limited to empty taxis passing by their location, and drivers could only pick up passengers within their field of vision. Offline taxi-hailing has the problem of idle taxi resources and mismatch between passengers during off-peak hours and locations, and insufficient taxi resources during peak hours, commonly known as "difficulty in hailing a taxi".

In addition, the entire taxi market is still in a situation of supply exceeding demand.

To sum up, the user pain points are as follows:

(Data source: iiMedia Research)

(2) Online ride-hailing services transform into the “black car industry”

In addition, due to the high fare of traditional taxis, there are a large number of illegal taxis operating in society. According to statistics, among the daily taxi orders in the country, there are more than 40 million illegal taxis and only 31.8 million ordinary taxis.

In the entire taxi market, there is still an overall shortage of taxis. Therefore, some users who are in a hurry or dislike the high taxi prices will take "illegal taxis", causing the illegal taxi industry to develop rapidly and run rampant. The illegal taxi industry not only seriously affects the fairness and normal order of the transportation market, but also the personal safety of users is not guaranteed, making accidents prone to occur.

Based on this industry pain point, the emergence of online ride-hailing has helped illegal taxis complete their identity transformation. The market prospects are huge. Most of the vehicles on the Didi platform are illegal taxis, and the potential scale is huge. Although current policy does not allow private cars to enter, Didi has organized and managed illegal taxis, circumventing safety and other issues, and effectively alleviating the difficulty for the public to get a taxi.

3.3 User Profile

Here we mainly analyze the user portrait of the Didi APP passenger side. In the author's survey of Didi passengers and third-party data analysis, it was found that Didi platform users have the following characteristics: most of them are born in the 1980s and 1990s, live in first- and second-tier cities, have high requirements for quality of life, and like to pursue new things.

(Data source: Aurora Big Data)

According to the analysis of Aurora Big Data, it was found that users of online ride-hailing platform apps mostly prefer travel services and life service apps. Among them, Didi Chuxing users' preference index for railway 12306 reached 63.3, and their preference indexes for shared bicycles Mobike and ofo, food delivery platform Ele.me, and second-hand e-commerce Xianyu were also high.

(Data source: Baidu Index)

(Data source: Baidu Index)

Based on the data from Baidu Index from December 2018 to December 2019, we can analyze that Didi Chuxing users are mostly concentrated in more developed provinces such as the eastern coastal areas, and their ages are mostly between 20 and 40 years old. There is not much difference in the ratio of men to women, but the proportion of men is slightly higher.

Specific user description:

• User 1: Xiao Wang, male, 26 years old, from Beijing, an employee of an Internet company, with a monthly income of 24K. A stay-at-home guy, he is busy with his daily work, often works overtime, orders takeout all year round, and often takes a taxi home late at night.
• User 2: Xiaofang, female, 22 years old, from Chengdu, an intern at a company, with a monthly income of 2.5k. I like to go shopping on Taobao and group buy food on a daily basis. I occasionally use Didi to hail a taxi, and I will use the taxi app when there is a discount.
• User 3: Lao Zhang, male, from Shanghai, 32 years old, works as a junior supervisor in a company, earns 35K a month, often meets clients or goes to the airport, and often needs to use Didi’s private car service.

3.4 Product Development History

04 Business Model

Didi’s main business model is the B2C2C model, which collects commissions as a driver-passenger integration platform. In essence, it is still the drivers who provide services to the passengers, but Didi has built a platform that provides communication channels between drivers and passengers, regulates user travel, and realizes intelligent ride dispatch. It integrates all driver and passenger information, conducts unified intelligent allocation and dispatch management, and provides additional services at the same time, so as to maximize driver profits and passenger convenience.

As a provider of travel services, drivers can register on the platform, which will manage and dispatch them in a unified manner. At the same time, drivers will enjoy a series of convenient conditions such as automatic assignment of customers by the platform, as well as intelligent route planning and navigation. In addition, according to offline surveys, when a Didi driver clicks "I want to go home" on the driver-side APP at night, the Didi platform will send a travel order suitable for the driver to go home, allowing the driver to enjoy the humane service of going home while carrying passengers. After passenger-side users register on the Didi platform, all travel processes can be operated on this APP, which solves the problem of difficulty in hailing a taxi and truly enjoys humane service that is available on call at any time.

Didi’s profit model

In addition to taking a commission from orders, Didi's profit model also includes self-operated Xiaoju cars, car rentals, chauffeurs, etc. Didi's traffic monetization includes Didi Games, Didi Finance's business, and other businesses that are under development.

05 Stakeholder Analysis

As a mobile travel platform, Didi's main stakeholders include: passengers (excluding corporate customers), drivers, platform, and government. We now plan to analyze the impact of the new carpooling on various stakeholders

5.1 Passengers

The needs of ordinary passengers, except for high-end business travelers, can be roughly divided into: wanting to get a taxi quickly (no shortage of money), wanting to get a taxi with a high cost-effectiveness (no shortage of time)

1. To get a taxi quickly:

This type of user is not sensitive to price and only cares about the timeliness of taking a taxi. Didi has always had a simultaneous calling function, which allows users to get a taxi faster during peak hours. The express entrance accepts carpooling, so both drivers of empty vehicles and drivers with passengers can pick up the car and set off within three minutes. If they cannot, the express car will set off. This can increase the success rate of hailing a taxi and reduce the time it takes to hail a taxi to a certain extent.

2. Want to get a taxi at a high cost-effective price

This type of user generally has plenty of time and is more sensitive to prices. Didi has added a new carpooling entrance, where users can place orders directly on this page. Although the waiting time is longer, users can complete the trip at nearly half the price.

5.2 Driver

Drivers have always been reluctant to accept carpooling orders, mainly because carpooling orders involve long distances, waste time and have low returns.

Now that the new type of carpooling is online, many measures have been taken to encourage drivers to accept carpooling and benefit drivers:

1. Reduce the idle rate.

The drivers and vehicles of the new carpooling business all come from Express, so drivers can accept Express orders and carpooling orders at the same time. According to statistics, drivers accepting carpooling orders can reduce the empty driving rate by 16%.

2. Increase rewards for placing orders.

According to Didi's official statistics, the reward for accepting both carpooling orders and express orders at the same time is about 14% higher than accepting only express orders.

3. Multiple pricing increases drivers’ income.

The Didi platform is exploring charging drivers multiple times the price for their shared rides in many cities, allowing drivers to earn more by working harder.

5.3 Platform

Didi's expansion of its new carpooling business and creation of a massive National Carpooling Day will bring many explicit/implicit benefits to the platform itself, but there are also some risk factors.

benefit:

1. Increase the company's transportation capacity.

According to data from Talk Aata, Didi's passenger and driver app usage fell by 5% and 23% respectively in the first twelve months of this year. The new carpooling system maximizes the utilization of each seat and can alleviate the problem of insufficient platform capacity. Moreover, as the Spring Festival travel peak is approaching, the festival-creating activities have increased people’s confidence in Didi to a certain extent.

2. Reduce operating costs and increase platform profitability.

In the express car sector, where Didi's business accounts for a relatively high proportion, it has made less profit and even incurred pricing losses in the competition with traditional taxis that receive government subsidies. The ride-sharing business only requires one driver to complete two or three orders, so the platform can receive double or even triple the share, with a higher profit margin. Therefore, we will expand special profitable businesses such as carpooling, SF Express cars, and luxury cars to enhance the platform's profit and returns.

3. Adapt to the trend of sharing economy and avoid policy risks.

The country has been vigorously advocating the sharing economy, and the carpooling business has deeply implemented the concept of the sharing economy. It can be supported by national policies to a certain extent and avoid some policy risks under the strict supervision of online car-hailing.

4. The ride-sharing business has technological barriers that can widen the gap with competitors.

Carpooling requires sufficient demand density, and places very high demands on demand forecasting capabilities and the system's underlying map path planning capabilities. Didi's self-developed supply and demand forecasting system, combined with map planning capabilities, can reduce the time spent on carpooling detours to a certain extent. Therefore, if the carpooling business with technological barriers can succeed, Didi will be far ahead of other competitors in the travel market.

Risk points:

1. Safety issues need to be taken seriously

Carpooling and ride-sharing face the same problem: different people do not know each other, which can easily lead to safety accidents. Therefore, the safety issues of carpooling business still need special attention.

2. Lack of stamina requires subsidies.

There are too many factors that need to be matched when carpooling, the success rate is low, and it takes a long time, which can easily discourage users. The biggest attraction of carpooling business for passengers is the price discount. It is expected that the platform will still need to increase precise subsidies to guide it.

3. Technology upgrade is the right way

The carpooling business has relatively high technical requirements, and the success rate and completion time both require strong technical support. Therefore, in order to enhance user experience, in addition to working hard in operations and other aspects, the most fundamental thing is to achieve technological upgrades.

5.4 Government

In 2017, Didi Chuxing President Jean Liu said that Didi passengers have shared a total of 6 million trips through ride-sharing and carpooling services, saving 1.4 million tons of carbon emissions each year. The carpooling business not only deeply implements the concept of the sharing economy, but also can greatly reduce the number of cars used for travel and reduce carbon emissions, thereby achieving green travel.

06 Market Performance

According to Analysys data, the overall online ride-hailing market maintained rapid growth from 2015 to 2018, with an average compound annual growth rate of 50.01%. It is expected to shrink slightly in 2019 due to policy reasons and resume growth in 2020.

In addition, the overall market transaction volume of mobile travel reached 311.277 billion yuan in 2018, among which the special express car sector accounted for the highest proportion, reaching 71.48%. Therefore, although the entire online car-hailing market is no longer in a period of rapid development, the entire market still has a lot of room for growth.

(Data source: Analysys Qianfan)

In the comparison of active user scale as of the third quarter of 2019, Didi Chuxing has approximately 118.378 million monthly active users, accounting for 17.9%, thanks to its large business scale (express, private cars, shared bicycles, etc.), far higher than the second-ranked Didi Chuxing, while Shouqi Car Hailing ranks first in the private car field with 235,000 monthly active users.

In terms of user stickiness, Didi Chuxing ranked first with 39.9 quarterly startup times per person, Didi Chuxing and Shouqi Car Hailing ranked second and third with 31.8 times and 23.5 times respectively.

07 Functional Experience

7.1 Product Structure Diagram

7.2 Carpooling Usage Flowchart

7.3 Analysis of Carpooling Core Function Page

7.3.1 Home Page

(1) When you open the Didi Chuxing app, the first thing that pops up is an ad for the National Carpooling Day event. The design of the ad is in line with Didi’s yellow-green color scheme. The upper 1/3 is a picture banner that highlights the words “National Carpooling Day is back for a limited time”, which makes it easy to understand the content of the event. The bold and black words in the middle that read “Carpooling Day is back, invite friends to help” can attract users’ attention and increase user attention.

(2) On December 3, Didi launched a 10% discount campaign for carpooling in 26 cities, creating the “first National Carpooling Day”. Subsequently, Didi Carpooling Day return events were launched every Tuesday, namely December 10th and December 17th. During the period of 18:00-19:00, Didi Carpooling offers a 10% discount, which continuously increases the influence of the event. From this we can also see that Didi is promoting its new carpooling business and intends to make a new attempt and exploration in the carpooling field.

7.3.2 Carpooling

The first page: Slide the top tab to select carpooling and enter the carpooling interface. The carpooling interface is mainly blue-green in tone, with a Lego-style carpooling image as the background. This advertising background occupies 2/5 of the entire page, highlighting the return of carpooling on December 17. In addition, the words "10% off" are emphasized to highlight the discount. Numbers are used to let users feel the magnitude of the discount, which is in line with users' pursuit of high cost performance and the psychology of getting a bargain, stimulate users' desire to carpool, and induce carpooling behavior.

The top of the page still displays entrances such as city settings, messages, scan, personal center, and the pinned tab bar. Directly below the event advertisement is the address input bar, which automatically obtains the address at the departure point. Users can use the automatically generated departure address or manually enter the corresponding address. The destination must be entered manually.

Below the address input is an advertisement for the carpooling activity details, which once again emphasizes the National Return Day event. However, the design of the details page is relatively low-key, and it does not compete too much with the background ads. The entire back 1/5 of the page is blank, which focuses people's attention only on the upper half. It appears to be well-layered and will not cause visual fatigue.

On the address input interface, intelligent recommendations will be made based on the characters entered by the user, and previously used addresses or important landmark buildings will be given priority.

The second page: After entering the starting and ending addresses, an information box will pop up directly including the price, address, departure time, number of passengers, and a confirmation trigger button. At the top of the information box, the price advantage of the new carpooling service is emphasized, and the taxi price is highlighted in bright orange and large fonts, and the original price is indicated on the right, so that passengers can understand the discount and stimulate them to place orders.

The third page: Below the address information is the selection column for boarding time and number of passengers. Only by confirming the necessary information such as departure time and number of passengers can you realize carpooling with similar time, reasonable distance and limited number of passengers. After the information is confirmed, click the Confirm Call button to jump to the itinerary publishing and rideshare search interface.

The first page: At this point, the platform will evaluate the characteristic information of the published itinerary, turn on safety monitoring, match ride-sharing partners, and recommend ride-sharing partners. Select the ride-share partner recommended by the platform and make minor adjustments to your departure time to match that of your ride-share partner.

The second page: On the page for finding ride-share partners, the first 3/5 of the page are displayed as a map, with the departure and arrival locations highlighted, allowing users to have a macro understanding of the order itinerary, ensuring the user's right to know, while also preventing technical problems or incorrect locations caused by the user's own negligence.

The user's departure time is marked at the starting point of the map to remind the user to set off on time and avoid the problem of the user forgetting the time or missing it.

The third page: The grouping page mainly displays the map location of the starting point and the departure and destination information of the group members.

suggestion:

(1) The last 2/5 of the page displays ride-along companions. The information of the ride-along companions is mainly the time, without much other information. The departure and destination addresses of the companions are displayed only after the order is successfully placed. This makes it very easy for users to cancel the order after selecting a companion. Relatively speaking, when users choose to carpool, they have more time. At this time, the location and destination information of carpoolers along the way can be displayed to facilitate users to make better choices. At the same time, regarding the safety issue that is of greatest concern to carpooling, it is recommended that the credit rating of carpoolers be displayed in the carpooler information bar as a basis for selecting carpoolers.

(2) After the driver and the customer place an order, they can communicate through the platform. It is recommended that the ride-sharing partners can also communicate through the platform. This not only provides convenience for information communication between ride-sharing partners, but also can be an attempt at social travel, and perhaps new breakthroughs can be found in this area.

7.3.3 Express Carpooling

The first page: First enter the express main interface. The top of the page still displays the city settings, messages, scan, personal center and other entrances as well as the top tab bar. 2/5 of the area in the middle is the map display area, which can display nearby vehicles and boarding locations located on the map in real time.

If there are frequent routes, the platform will directly recommend the destination and display the trip price. Below are three small switchable interfaces: "Now", "Reservation", and "Airport Pick-up". Only the local area for entering the starting and destination addresses is switched, and the overall page is not affected. After selecting the departure time and address, you can directly jump to the car model selection interface without pressing any buttons.

The second page: Only the necessary top tabs and message entrances are displayed above the car model selection interface. Information about the location city, personal center, and scan, which are unnecessary at the current stage, are no longer displayed. The middle of the interface is a map display, including the map display of the starting point and end point, and the approximate arrival time.

The bottom of the interface is for selecting and filling in important information. This interface selects Express and Carpooling by default. You can also manually select Premium Car Models and call at the same time. The price of carpooling is also displayed to show the price advantage and promote carpooling.

Click the Confirm Carpooling button and a small pop-up window will appear to confirm the carpooling information. You can choose the number of carpoolers and whether to wait for three more minutes to increase the success rate of carpooling.

Suggestion: On the car model selection page, make sure there is information for selecting the number of people to carpool with above the carpool button. After clicking the confirm carpooling button, a small pop-up window will still appear to confirm the carpooling information, where you can select the number of passengers and the information will be repeated.

My personal suggestion is to directly remove the number of passengers in the car model selection page, and do it directly in the pop-up window after confirming the carpooling, so that the information will not be selected repeatedly. But I guess the reason why Didi designed it this way is: after selecting the number of passengers on the car model selection page, the number of passengers has been selected in the pop-up confirmation information, which serves the function of confirming the information. The specific modifications should be based on data. This is just my personal suggestion.

After confirming the carpooling information, you will be redirected to the page for finding carpool partners. The top 3/5 of the page are maps showing where to find your partners radiating outward from the starting point. The lower 2/5 of the page mainly displays information and buttons such as 3-minute countdown, immediate departure, and cancel order. If there is no train connection within three minutes, you will be given priority in the express train. If you choose to depart immediately, you will also be given priority in the express train. The order will be considered successful only if it is completed within three minutes.

08 Summary of recommendations (SWOT)

8.1 Strength

1. Compared with express trains, functions such as carpooling, finding carpooling partners, and planning suitable routes require higher technical requirements and require tremendous computing power and speed. As the leader in the online car-hailing market, Didi has accumulated a large amount of data that can be used for training. In addition, Didi established the AI ​​Lab department in 2018 and has been committed to technological research, so Didi has a great advantage in technology.
2. Didi launched its carpooling business in 2014. Data shows that since the launch of Didi's carpooling service, a total of 2.9 billion people have used carpooling, with a total mileage of 4.5 billion kilometers in the past year. Therefore, Didi has accumulated a lot of experience in the carpooling business, including the experience accumulated in Didi's Hitch business, which can also greatly promote the development of the new carpooling business.
3. As the leader of comprehensive online car-hailing platforms, Didi has a large user base with about 80,000 monthly active users. It has launched a new carpooling business, and its target users can easily access this information and start carpooling.
4. Didi has vigorously launched a new type of carpooling business, created a National Carpooling Day, and issued discounts in a systematic and focused manner (only from 18:00 to 19:00 every Tuesday), which has created a relatively strong lasting impact.
5. The two major functions of the new carpooling can respectively meet the user needs of timeliness and high cost-effectiveness.
6. For drivers, carpooling orders are an important source of income for reducing idle driving rates and earning more rewards. According to data calculations, in the past month, drivers who accepted carpooling orders were able to reduce their idle driving rate by 16%. The bonus a driver receives for accepting both express and carpooling orders is about 14% higher than for accepting only express orders. Without affecting the passenger billing, Didi is also exploring providing drivers with multiple pricing for shared ride mileage in 52 cities, allowing drivers to earn more by working harder.

8.2 Weak

1. Some incidents that have occurred in the Didi platform's ride-sharing business in recent years have made users skeptical about the safety of the ride-sharing business, which may reduce the target users' enthusiasm for trying it.
2. There are many restrictions on carpooling. Passengers have to ensure they are at the same time and going the same way, while drivers have to balance the desire to travel more distance and pay less. The platform also has to plan reasonable routes. As a result, carpooling takes a longer time and has a lower success rate.

8.3 Opportunity

1. As a typical representative of the sharing economy, carpooling is more in line with the country's general policy requirements than express cars and has lower policy risks.
2. The development of the carpooling business can greatly improve the dilemma of insufficient capacity on the Didi driver side and make rational use of every seat.
3. As Didi's new business, like ride-sharing, it can bring huge profits to the company and may become Didi's next profitable business.
4. The company can achieve profitability by increasing the proportion of carpooling business in travel and gradually reducing low-profit businesses such as express and private cars.
5. Currently, there is no giant company participating in the competition for the ride-sharing market, and Didi is likely to become the king of this market.

8.4 Thread (Threat)

1. Traditional carpooling software such as AA Carpooling and Dida Carpooling have accumulated a group of loyal users and a mature carpooling system. Relatively speaking, with Didi's participation, the competition is still relatively fierce.
2. Some other online ride-hailing companies and online ride-hailing platforms with backgrounds in automobile companies, such as Cao Cao Travel and Dongfeng Travel, are also expanding their multi-scenario travel businesses, and competition in the sector is significant.

Author: nancy

Source: Nancy