Bike Trips Analysis

In 2016, Cyclistic launched a successful bike-share offering. Since then, the program has grown to a fleet of 5,824 bicycles that are geo tracked 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, they believe that maximizing the number of annual members will be key to future growth. Rather than creating a marketing campaign that targets all-new customers, they believe there is a very good chance to convert casual riders into members. Casual riders are already aware of the Cyclistic program and have chosen Cyclistic for their mobility needs.

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. They are interested in analyzing the Cyclistic historical bike trip data to identify trends.

The company’s future success depends on maximizing the number of annual memberships. Cyclistic wants to understand how casual riders and annual members use their bikes differently. From these insights, the client will design a new marketing strategy to convert casual riders into annual members. Question to answer:

• Annual memberships exhibit a higher uptake than casual rides. Annual memberships account for 59.4% of the total.

• Ride volume experiences a seasonal upswing during summer months. The period between June and August accounted for 41.2% of all rides.

• Casual ridership peaks from June to August 2022.

• Annual membership rides peak from May to October 2022.

• The majority of all rides occurred between June and August.

• During the summer months between June and August, 48% of the rides were made by casual riders, compared to 36% by annual members.

• During the winter months between December and February, only 5.4% of rides were made by casual riders, while annual members accounted for 12.5% of rides.

• Casual ridership generally takes longer rides than annual membership.

• Rides lasting 15 minutes or less are the most common among both casual riders and annual members.

• However, casual riders are more likely to take rides longer than 30 minutes, accounting for 18.6% of total rides, compared to only 6.5% for annual members.

The insights derived from the data can help Cyclistic promote annual memberships to casual users. Given that casual riders are most active during the summer months (June - August) and on weekends (Saturday in particular), Cyclistic could consider launching marketing campaigns during these peak periods. Additionally, the company could leverage the popularity of certain stations among casual riders to advertise their annual membership options at those locations. 

Further analysis is necessary to investigate the following areas:

• The reason for a significant amount of missing start and end stations needs to be explored.

• The existence of rides that are only a few seconds long or longer than 24 hours requires further investigation. Bikes that are not returned within 24 hours are considered missing or stolen.

• Determining the city of origin for casual riders is important to understand how many of them are tourists. Tourists may not be interested in annual memberships.

• Examining returning customers and their frequency of renting bikes would provide valuable insights into customer loyalty.

• Differentiating between customers who purchase day passes and those who buy single rides would help to identify any usage differences.

The raw data and the cleaning process are available in the appendix for those interested in viewing the details of my analysis.