Millennials won’t bail on Uber, survey says
Cultural, legal issues are trumped by convenience
Uber is in crisis, scrambling to grapple with accusations of a sexist work culture, an intellectual property lawsuit from Alphabet-owned Waymo and a critical search for a chief operating officer.
But none of that seems to matter to Millennials, an overwhelming majority of whom plan to stick with the ride-sharing giant.
Of 1,537 Uber users born in the 1980s and 1990s surveyed between March 3-25 — weeks after a blog post by a female ex-engineer sent the company into damage-control mode — 93% said they have no plans to dump the app. The survey was conducted by student loan refinancing site LendEDU.
The results show a gap in attitudes between male and female riders. Some 62% of the survey’s respondents were men and 38% were women. In those separate groups, 10.5% of women surveyed said they would stop using Uber, while only 5% of men said they would dump the service.
A culture of entrenched sexism was brought to light in a midFebruary blog post by Susan Fowler, who described a male boss’ unwanted advances and a human resources department that stood behind the offending supervisor because he was considered a valued employee while warning the engineer her performance review could be penalized.
The survey also asked about political leanings, and of the 60% who provided that information, half labeled themselves liberal and half conservative. Liberals were three times more likely to drop Uber, but that still only amounted to a total of 11% saying they would stop using the service.
LendEDU did not ask Millennials why they largely preferred to stick with Uber despite the availability of a similar service in rival Lyft.