Evaluating the impact of Uber on London's taxi service: A critical review of the literature

Uber is a very well‐funded operation that has made innovative use of smartphone technology in the highly regulated and bureaucratic market of international taxi cab operations. The company has often adopted an aggressive approach when entering the marketplace in a given city, so the question arises as to how should the incumbent taxi trade react to such fierce competition that is popular with the public. This paper describes a literature review related to the taxi and private hire industry in London that provides a foundation to answer this question. A second paper will present recommendations to help organisations prepare a response to the new competition. From the collated journals, various themes emerged, and their reference lists were analysed to review recurring authors. The literature was organised into a thematic analysis grid to critique the content and analyse the implications for a project to evaluate the possible way forward for the taxi trade in response to Uber's aggressive approach. Six key themes were identified: disruptive innovation, sharing economy, business model, historical context, regulations, and labour. The literature review was extended to include studies of the same area in the United States. Caution was exercised, as the U.S. market operates different ground transportation services and regulations. Nonetheless, comparisons were drawn regarding factors that were similar. The identification of the six key themes will aid the taxi trade as well as researchers who wish to investigate the impact of Uber as and when it moves into new international markets.