Discounts Can Motivate Low-Income Consumers to Use Aggregators

Unsurprisingly, restaurant aggregator adoption is smaller among lower-income consumers, but special offers can help shift this.

By the Numbers

Research from PYMNTS’ new exclusive report “Connected Dining: Third-Party Restaurant Aggregators Keep the Young and Affluent Engaged,” which draws from a March survey of nearly 2,300 United States consumers, finds a plurality of low-income consumers state that they are motivated to use restaurant aggregators because their offers and discounts have gotten better. Forty-one percent of consumers who make less than $50,000 annually cited this as a reason for ordering from aggregators, a greater share than said the same of any other motivator.

The Data in Context

Certainly, affordability has been a key concern for leading aggregators, especially in this period of elevated inflation.

For instance, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu told analysts on the company’s most recent earnings call that the company has been looking at ways to drive down costs.

“On the affordability side, … we’ve taken down transaction costs for consumers by about 8% in the past year, and we’re always trying to drive this down,” Xu said. “When it comes to affordability, certainly, DashPass [the aggregator’s delivery subscription] has been a big driver, … but at the same time, we’re working on quite a lot of other initiatives as well to make sure that we can keep making the service more and more affordable.”

Similarly, Uber spoke on its latest call to its Uber One subscription’s ability to drive long-term value from customers by frontloading the discounts.

“In the initial months in which we acquire a member, that member is actually loss-making because the discounts that we offer are greater than the in-period value of that 4.1 times,” CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on the call. “But over the lifetime of the member, the membership creates a significant moat and a significant growth opportunity for our business.”