Co-Opetition in the Ride-Hailing Market: The Role of the Integrated Channel in Balancing Supply and Demand

In the ride-hailing market, platforms such as Didi Chuxing are increasingly collaborating with taxi services through the integrated channel, like Simultaneous Ride-Hailing Request (SR). SR allows riders to submit a single request that includes both platform-based and taxi services, with the platform allocating each request to one of the two services and charging the corresponding price. To investigate the implications of SR, we develop an analytical model of a ride-hailing platform that integrates a platform-based service with self-scheduling drivers and a taxi service with a fixed supply. Riders differ in their service preferences and sensitivity to driver availability. We find that although integrating the taxi service into the platform intensifies competition for riders between the two services, SR can yield a win-win outcome by improving both platform profitability and taxi utilization. In particular, SR enables the platform to serve additional riders without lowering the price and helps the taxi service alleviate demand loss caused by offline search frictions, thereby mitigating price competition across services. Moreover, we identify the sensitivity of self-scheduling drivers to rider availability as a key performance determinant driving these results. When self-scheduling drivers are sufficiently sensitive, SR adoption is profitable by enhancing supply–demand coordination. Finally, we confirm the robustness of our results by relaxing two key assumptions: allowing the platform to charge the commission fee on the taxi service and permitting platform-based riders to also use SR. Overall, this study provides new insights into platform–taxi cooperation and contributes to the broader understanding of sustainable ride-hailing markets.