Cyclistic Bike-Sharing Company Data Analysis Report

Introduction

SQL code for this project:  https://github.com/osasanalyst01/Cyclistic_bikeshare_project

Reinventing strategies is a crucial element in maximizing a company's profit potential. Cyclistic, a bike-sharing company located in the heart of Chicago, has recorded over 4.5 million rides in the past 12 months. The company believes that a slight shift in their marketing strategy can enhance their profit margins. Cyclistic offers a variety of ride packages, including single-ride, full-day passes, and annual memberships, to cater to the diverse needs of its customers. In this analysis, single ride and full-day passes are categorized as casual riders while annual membership riders are categorized as  members.

Despite its growing customer base, Cyclistic has identified an opportunity to further optimize profitability. This analysis, conducted by the marketing team's data analyst, aims to explore the differences between annual members and casual riders. The insights gained from this analysis will inform the development of strategies to convert current casual riders into annual members.

Analysis of Rider Behavior

Monthly Trends

A line chart comparing the number of rides for both member types across different months (Fig 1) demonstrates a consistent trend. Both annual members and casual riders experience a gradual increase in ride counts from month to month, peaking during the summer months and declining during the winter months. However, a closer examination reveals a noteworthy disparity in ride volumes between winter and summer months. For instance, in February (winter), casual members accounted for only 23% of the total riders, whereas in August (summer), the percentage of casual rides surged to approximately 48%. This shows that the percentage of casual customers increases during the summer months. 

Fig 1: Line graph for the number of rides per month for both casuals and members

Weekly Trends

Another line chart comparing the number of rides for both annual members and casual riders (Fig 2) across weekdays reveals that Casual riders show a peak in ride activity from Friday to Sunday, with a noticeable drop on weekdays. In contrast, annual members exhibit reduced ride activity during the weekends, with a significant increase on weekdays. This pattern suggests that annual members primarily use Cyclistic services for commuting on workdays, while casual riders tend to utilize the service more frequently on weekends, probably for leisure.

Fig 2: Line graph for the number of rides per weekday for both casuals and members

Starting location comparison

A geographical analysis of the longitude and latitude coordinates of trip starting locations (Fig 3)reveals intriguing insights. Annual members are evenly distributed around the city of Chicago, indicating a wide range of starting points for their rides. In contrast, casual members are also located throughout the city, but a significant concentration of rides occurs on the right-hand side of the map. A closer look reveals that the latitude and longitude coordinates of these clustered locations correspond to popular parks like Millennium Park and Grant Park. This buttresses our earlier insight, that annual members use Cyclistic mostly for work, while casual riders use Cyclistic mostly for recreation.

Fig 3: starting location of rides

Trip Duration Comparison

To gain more insights into rider behavior, we conducted an analysis comparing the average duration of single trips between casual riders and annual membership riders. Surprisingly, despite the higher count of annual membership riders, casual riders, on average, spend more time on a single trip than their annual membership counterparts. This might mean that because casual users use the service for leisure, they spend more time on each ride.

Fig 4 : Trip duration for both members and casuals

Conclusion

In conclusion, our findings suggest that casual riders predominantly utilize Cyclistic's services for leisure, while annual members primarily use Cyclistic for their daily work commute. It is worth noting that some individuals work on weekends, which warrants further investigation into demographic data to validate this hypothesis. Additionally, gathering qualitative data on user motivations for choosing Cyclistic bike-sharing is essential before arriving at any definitive conclusions.

Considering the insights from this analysis, it may not be the most effective strategy to convert casual riders into annual members, as both customer categories have distinct motivations for using Cyclistic's services.