AQA A-level Business | Unit 3.3.2 Technological Change and Digital Business
Can you save a local taxi firm from the app economy?
In digital business, opportunity and threat are everywhere: a business must adapt, or be disrupted.
Fare Play Taxis is a much loved local firm, built up over thirty years by its founders, Carrie Meehome and Rick Shaw. It is known for friendly drivers who know every street, a loyal (and ageing) base of regulars, and a name people in the city trust.
But fewer people are calling for a ride, and bookings are down. Ride-hailing app Glyde is winning over more and more of Fare Play's drivers and customers. How should Fare Play respond to the increasingly digital nature of their once analogue market?
It is Friday night. Fare Play has 38 drivers out, the office phone is jammed, and riders are waiting 22 minutes for a car. Across town, Glyde is offering £5 off a first ride and live tracking in its app. Carrie and Rick have six months to prove Fare Play can fight back.
Carrie and Rick built Fare Play together, but they no longer agree on what comes next. So they have handed you the keys and made you the boss, with one job, in their words:
"Keep Fare Play on the road."
Over the next six months you will make a run of decisions, each one balancing your cash, your loyal riders and drivers, and the rising pressure from Glyde. There is no safe option. Standing still is a decision too.
Each will argue their corner on every decision. None of them is simply right. Your job is to weigh them up and decide which way the balance falls.
Fare Play Taxis, Glyde and all the people in this simulation are invented for teaching. The cash figures, meter values and other figures are illustrative and chosen to make the decisions interesting, not to model a real company. Any real stories you may have heard about taxi firms and ride-hailing apps are used here only as neutral background. The framing is balanced: there is no single right answer.