Cyclistic Marketing Case Study (2023) - Google Capstone Project

 

A marketing analysis of Cyclistic, a Bike-Share Company. A Google Capstone Project which is a part of the Google Data Analytics Program.

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About the Company:

In 2016, Cyclistic launched a successful bike-share offering. Since then, the program has grown to a fleet of 5,824 bicycles that are geotracked and locked into a network of 692 stations across Chicago. The bikes can be unlocked from one station and returned to any other station in the system at any time. 

Until now, Cyclistic’s marketing strategy relied on building general awareness and appealing to broad consumer segments. One approach that helped make these things possible was the flexibility of its pricing plans: single-ride passes, full-day passes, and annual memberships. Customers who purchase single-ride or full-day passes are referred to as casual riders. Customers who purchase annual memberships are Cyclistic members.

Cyclistic’s finance analysts have concluded that annual members are much more profitable than casual riders. Although the pricing flexibility helps Cyclistic attract more customers, Moreno believes that maximizing the number of annual members will be key to future growth. Rather than creating a marketing campaign that targets all-new customers, Moreno believes there is a very good chance to convert casual riders into members. She notes that casual riders are already aware of the Cyclistic program and have chosen Cyclistic for their mobility needs.

Moreno has set a clear goal: Design marketing strategies aimed at converting casual riders into annual members. In order to do that, however, the marketing analyst team needs to better understand how annual members and casual riders differ, why casual riders would buy a membership, and how digital media could affect their marketing tactics. Moreno and her team are interested in analyzing the Cyclistic historical bike trip data to identify trends.

Asks

Business Tasks

Since our team will design a new marketing strategy to convert casual riders into annual members, Maam Lily Moreno, a marketing director, and a stakeholder in this project, wants to know the difference in the use of the Cyclistic Program between the annual members and casual riders.

Stakeholders

The people who are part of this project are the following:

Cyclistic Executive Team - an executive team of the company that is responsible for the decision-making regarding the proposed program.

M’ Lily Moreno - a marketing director and manager who is responsible for the development of campaigns and initiatives to promote the bike-share program, including email, social media, and other channels. Cyclistic Marketing Analytics Team - a team of data analysts responsible for data-gathering, analyzing, and giving insights about Cyclistic’s marketing strategy.

Prepare

Data Source Description

A twelve-month Cyclistic historical trip data from May 2022 to April 2023 is available to the public. Public large datasets are provided in a CSV format that is organized in a zip folder on a monthly basis. The datasets include the following data columns: 

• ride_id
• rideable_type
• started_at
• ended_at
• start_station_name
• start_station_id
• end_station_name
• end_Station_id
• start_lat
• start_lng
• end_lat
• end_lng
• member_casual

Process

All CSV Excel files are converted into Excel Workbook format keeping the original separated in the subfolder. Using the Excel Workbook files, I computed how much time the riders used their bikes and what day they used them. Also, I cleaned the data in an appropriate format.

Analyze

Since the data provided are large, I cannot use Big Query because the free trial is limited to 16,000 rows, so I used MS Excel to analyze data while Tableau and Excel/Google Sheets for the presentation of data. I generate the average ride length of each type of member per day per month and the number of riders per rider type per day per month. See Google Sheets here:

Share

After analyzing the data, I used Tableau and Excel for the data visualization.

As you can see in the line graph, 13 minutes to 20 minutes is the average usage in minutes per month of the riders both members and casual.

June, July, and August is the peak season of the business where July has the highest number of riders, while December, January, and February is the dry season of the business where December has the lowest number of riders. Based on the graph, most rider_types have subscriptions or members of the said business.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are the peak week of the business where Wednesday has the highest number of riders, while Saturday, Sunday, and Monday is the dry week of the business where Sunday has the lowest number of riders. Based on the graph, most rider_types have subscriptions or members of the said business.

Act

Based on my findings, these are my top recommendations:

• By giving a discount deducted from the regular price or loyalty incentives to the members, stakeholders can possibly convince the casual rider_type to become their member.
• During the ad campaign, the marketing department shall advertise to the casual members in the month of June, July, and August which is the peak season of the business.
• During the peak season of the business, the marketing department shall also focus ad campaign on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of the week.