Zomato™ Gold: Platform Overreach
摘要
Rashmi had just returned to her restaurant after meeting a corporate client in the city of Bangalore. Rashmi and her friends had started a niche fine dining restaurant serving exclusive Franconian food, targeted at the growing expat German population a few years ago. Her manager alerted her to a series of calls from the local Zomato account manager offering the Zomato Gold programme for delivery services. Rashmi had been following up on the NRAI (National Restaurants Association of India) campaign against the Zomato Gold programme (that she had signed up last year) for dine-in services and wondering if she should also log out of the programme. She had a decision to make on the dine-in Zomato Gold programme, and now there was this offer to join the delivery programme. She was left wondering if she could afford the sign-up costs as well as finance the discounts. She asked herself: Had Zomato bitten off more than they can chew by being over ambitious to monetize the vast user base with a premium subscription service? Did they misjudge user acceptability by changing the terms of operations quite frequently? What are the implications of the media and social media coverage on restaurants signing out of Zomato Gold on her customers? When she signed up for the Zomato Gold programme, it was about attracting premium (frequent/non-price-sensitive) customers to the restaurant. However, with the widespread adoption of the programme, is there a risk of increasing price sensitive consumers? More still, will this expansion affect the loyalty and willingness-to-pay of the premium consumers?