astrodestroyergithub / Divvy-Bike-Share

This research work will mainly revolve around understanding how annual members and casual riders use cyclistic bikes differently. The comparison along with other tasks will later be used to design marketing strategies aimed at converting casual riders to annual members.

Cyclistic Bike-share Analysis for Targeted Casual-users marketing

Brief Intro:

Data analytics plays an important role in analyzing and boosting the sales of any company. It has an upper hand when it comes to implementing market plans to target the set of customers who are the most vulnerable by suggesting them various specialized schemes and membership benefits.

Outline of the Research:

This research work will mainly revolve around understanding how annual members and casual riders use cyclistic bikes differently. The comparison along with other tasks will later be used to design marketing strategies aimed at converting casual riders to annual members.

Statement of the Problem:

Understanding how subscribers of Divvy bike-sharing trips and the bike-sharing service availing only-customers use the bikes differently for commute purposes, recreational purposes, schooling, marketing, etc. and analyzing the multifarious shadow factors which influence both the user categories in opting for the type of service which they show their inclination towards. This comparison along with other tasks will later be used to design marketing strategies aimed at converting the customers of Divvy bike-sharing trips to the long-term subscribers of the bike-sharing service.

Where will Data Analytics be applied here:

Although the age calls for motor-vehicles as the major shareholders of the commute industries, cyclists still continue to have impressive shares in some of the developing heavyweights and developed nations around the world. Some of the countries like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, UK, Japan and even China have a wonderful landscape for cycling. Although some of them are casual riders, quite a many are annual members for the major cycle manufacturing companies all over the world.

The Basic Design:

Hence, it is no joke that the directors of marketing in these companies believe that the company's future success heavily depends on maximizing the number of annual memberships. Therefore, it is imperative for the teams to understand how casual riders and annual members use Cyclist bikes differently. From these insights, the teams can design a new marketing strategy to convert casual riders into annual members. But first, Cyclist executives must approve the recommendations, so they must be backed up with compelling data insights and professional data visualizations.

Questions to Ask:

Three questions will guide the future marketing program:

1. How do annual members and casual riders use Cyclistic bikes differently?

2. Why would casual riders buy Cyclistic annual memberships?

3. How can Cyclistic use digital media to influence casual riders to become members?

The goal of this case study is to identify how annual members and casual riders use Cyclistic bikes differently.This comparison along with other tasks will later be used by the marketing department for developing strategies aimed at converting casual riders into members.

Stakeholders:

Primary stakeholders: The director of marketing and Cyclistic executive team.

Secondary stakeholders: Cyclistic marketing analytics team.

Following a step-based approach, the entire project will follow the six-step data analysis process: ask, prepare, process, analyze, share, and act.

Significance of the Study:

Although many researches on bike-share systems have been conducted earlier, on different aspects of the commute methodology utilized in it, even on few broad scenarios as well, case studies focusing upon a particular region or area in which many different factors have been researched upon and analyzed still are not sufficient. Since, it is a broad topic, generalized results/conclusions presented in some of the researches ain't never sufficient for applying to all the regions of the globe.

The BSS Industry no-doubt has huge potential in the future. The below mentioned points prove and illustrate the same:

1. It is expected to grow at a robust 5.02 percent CAGR.
   
2. People all over the world are becoming more and more health-conscious.
   
3. Awareness on cardiovascular fitness, muscle power and flexibility, better-joined mobility, reduced stress levels, increased posture and coordination, bones strengthened and reduced levels of body fat.
   
4. Increased demand for bicycles across India, driven mostly by congestion, urbanization, and sustainability.
   
5. The world cycling market, with the demand for traditional and electric cycles as never before, is predicted to be Rs. 4.4 lakh this year's crore.
   
6. Infrastructure rollout by various governments to support bicycle commuting, shortage of parking space, increasing traffic congestion, and preference for cycles as a relaxing mode of exercise.
   
7. Impact of COVID-19: Bikes cover short to medium distances due to health safety issues, people in metropolitan areas cycle because owing to the physical differences in standard, they are not able to frequent the gym.
   
8. Indian bicycles represent a value of 1% from the world market and 15% by volume of the market.

Pictures Depicting Significances:

The Health Benefits of Regular Cycling:

North America Bicycle Market:

Fit Idea to Travel:

E-Bikes in Numbers:

Gaps in Current Scenario:

1. Although some primitive region-specific approaches have been proposed, there are considerable gaps in bikeway and bicycle-station network design approaches and methodologies. Since, the Earth has many metropolitan cities (each of them having diverse socio-economic, infrastructural and political variations) there is much need of a generalized approach towards such types of design-planning approaches.
   
2. The fleet-size design challenges which include determining the total initial number of bikes to be deployed in the whole BSS (whether docked or dockless systems) and also the number of such bikes at each station (in case of docked services) remains a major gap in the current study.
   
3. Planning decisions to effectively utilize and direct the existing resources in cycling and voluntarily get involved in system regulation also remains a major gap to be addressed in the current scenario.
   
4. Dynamic bike relocation problems.
   
5. Dynamic demand management problems.

Challenges Faced in the Research:

1. As this study involves a broad topic, any universal ideas applicable to all types of cyclistic schemes can not be formulated independently. Hence, only a region specific analysis can be made, that too considering some limited techniques and approaches which are suitable.
   
2. Open datasets for study is not easily available. As this idea of bikeshare is still not widely in prevalence around all the parts of the world and is not ubiquitous, only certain companies agreeing to make the collected data public can become the only basis. Hence, appropriate, descriptive, and valid data is unusually rare.
   
3. Studying the rider characteristics poses great challenges as a multitude of factors come into play (many of which can’t be tracked or even made proper sense of) for a wholesome case study.
   
4. The literature on BSS is scattered in different fields which makes it hard for new researchers to bring ideas that can push further research on any comprehensive and overall area of BSS research in that regards as a competing strategy to achieve more sustainable cities.

Motivation for the Research:

The main motivation for choosing this topic comes from the fact that it addresses multiple problems from user point of view, provides a sustainable approach towards the future and have a diverse perspective from research challenges. As we advance towards the future, problems which I’ve mentioned before like overpopulation, fossil fuel shortage, increasing pollution, global warming, health deterioration of average human beings will be abundant. Hence, according to me, addressing the bike-share problem even partially in any region of the planet will add to the remedy and help alleviate some pain as mentioned before.

Research Objective:

The objective of this research is to extensively analyze and rigorously study every minute behavior of subscribers and customers of the Divvy bike share service in Chicago. Since, in order to understand the two types of users, we should accurately assess and analyze the other composite factors affecting them, it becomes imperative to first of all, dive deep into those shadow-level aspects. Attributes such as trip duration, gender, age, distance between to and from station, locations of the two, etc. are major factors which have a major say in influencing the next-move of the respective types of users of the bike-share system. Having understood precisely these factors, various marketing strategies carved especially towards the user-types can be formed to increase the profits of the company.

Flow-Chart (What has been done till now):

Visualizations Obtained (via Descriptive Analysis):

Number of Rides per User Type:

Average Trip Duration by User Type:

References:

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