Segmenting travelers – Here’s a method to do it

There’s always a lot of thinking & data-driven insights needed on how to approach segmentation of customers. At Cequity, we have always believed that we have to connect transactional data with behavioral observations that can help us identify customer types and segments more precisely. Here’s a method adopted for the travel & hospitality business. Read on:

This questionnaire, developed by travel researcher Stanley Plog, divides travelers into six personality types. At one end of the spectrum are “venturers” who like to strike out on their own to remote places. At the other are “authentics” who prefer Disney World as an adventure.

Two people can take the exact same trip and come away with completely different impressions. Many travel experts offer a short quiz to help define your travel personality. If you love going places, you may be an adventurous traveler. This means generally you love going places you’ve never been, keep your passport current–just in case–or laugh at the very idea of a travel guide book. You are spontaneous and curious and like learning about the world by experiencing it. You look for last minute deals that provide you a chance to explore new places.

Structured travelers like to have a plan in place and look for low stress. You even have an alternative plan if something should go wrong. You like to look at your hotel room by online video so you know exactly what to expect. Laid back travelers handle stress without much anxiety. You choose a relaxing vacation one time and an active one another. You often wait until you arrive at your destination to decide what you will do while you are there.

To find out your travel personality try taking a quiz at a new Web site, www.Besttripchoices.com

Gift cards on-demand

Amazon.com, has announced the launch of Amazon Gift Codes On Demand™ (AGC On Demand), a real-time electronic gift-card distribution option available from the Amazon Corporate Gift Card program. According to the company, “AGC On Demand is a simple Web service API that integrates Amazon’s proprietary gift-card technology directly into customer loyalty, employee incentive and payment disbursement platforms. With AGC On Demand, companies are able to reduce physical gift-card fulfillment overhead while providing gift card recipients with a customized experience and instant gratification.

Previously, gift card values were fixed and management of inventory for active gift cards and gift codes purchased in bulk required secure facilities. With AGC On Demand, gift codes are created individually in virtually any denomination and can be immediately issued in almost any format — based on the client’s preference — including e-mail, HTML, customized/co-branded cards and paper receipts.

“This is a great solution for developers and incentive companies who are looking for a more cost-effective way to manage a gift card program,” said Marcell King, senior manager of corporate gift cards with ACI Gift Cards, Inc. “The AGC On Demand service offers a quick and secure way to deliver gift cards and stored value to program participants.”

The art of scorecarding

The term “Scorecards” originated with the Kaplan and Norton’s definition of the balanced scorecard and was meant to create a strategic method of management. Scorecard software, for its part, is intended to encapsulate a company’s strategic plan and allow operations to be measured against it.

In this way, the scorecard considers information not from the bottom up, with an “in all this data there must be a pony some where” perspective, but from the top down. In other words, What is strategic to our business and can we measure it from the highest levels through the lowest levels of detail to support decisions and action plans?

Scorecards help put these myths to bed by pulling back the wizard’s curtain to reveal critical business data that is specific to authorized executives, managers and departments, in a format which is graphical and makes clear the relationship between content. In effect, scorecards makes visible the results of all the “accounting” being performed in the organization and even step beyond what is typically thought of as accounting to include operational metrics.

Thanks to beyeblogs.com

Engagement – What does it take to engage customers and employees?

Allegiance and Peppers & Rogers write:

..the traditional axes of competition – product,price,place, promotion will no longer propel growth but will simply allow parity with competition perpetuated. Winning today requires a new competitive advantage: people – both employees and customers – who are not only satisfied, not only loyal, but also engaged.

.. the new view of engagement involves five levels. At the most basic level, an engaged customer or employee must be satisfied…. If this is achieved, then there exists and opportunity to build loyalty…Loyal individuals have the option of recommending the company to friends…. The last tier in the continuum involves an emotional connection…reflected in an employee employee proud to work for the company or customer being excited about the direction of the company.