Cyclistic Marketing Strategy: Converting Casual Riders to Annual Members

Executive Summary

This report presents an analysis of Cyclistic's 2022 bike-share data to identify key differences between casual riders and annual members. The analysis reveals that casual riders take longer trips, especially on weekends, while members use the service for shorter, more frequent trips. Based on these insights, a marketing strategy is recommended to convert casual riders into annual members by targeting their distinct usage patterns.

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Business Task

The goal is to analyze Cyclistic's bike-share data to identify key differences between casual riders and annual members and use these insights to develop a marketing strategy to convert casual riders into annual members.

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Data & Tools

The analysis was performed using R with the tidyverse and ggplot2 packages on publicly available Cyclistic trip data from 2022. This process involved combining 12 months of data, cleaning it for inconsistencies and impossible values, and transforming it to support our analysis.

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Analysis & Key Findings

Our analysis revealed clear behavioral differences between the two rider types.

• Ride Frequency: Members took over 3.3 million rides in 2022, while casual riders took just over 2.3 million. This shows that members are far more frequent users.
• Ride Length: Casual riders rode for an average of 1,749 seconds (29 minutes), which is more than double the average ride length of members at 763 seconds (12 minutes).
• Daily Patterns: The data shows that casual riders have a much longer average ride length than members, a difference that is most pronounced on weekends.

These findings suggest that casual riders use the service primarily for longer, recreational trips, while members use it for short, utilitarian trips like daily commuting.

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Recommendations

Based on these key findings, the following marketing strategy is recommended to convert casual riders to annual members:

1. Target Weekend Users: Focus marketing efforts on weekends, as this is when casual riders are most active.
2. Offer a Weekend-to-Annual Promotion: Implement a tiered pass system. Offer a weekend pass that can be credited toward the purchase of an annual membership. This offer directly appeals to the casual rider's longer, recreational trips.
3. Emphasize Value for Frequent Trips: Launch a campaign that highlights the cost-per-ride savings of an annual membership for shorter, frequent trips. This will show casual riders that the per-ride cost of their daily commutes is significantly higher than a member's.