Ideas for Student Projects

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From: "Venero, Carolina (OAG)" <>

To: "'Sachin Gupta'" <>

Cc: "Driver, Vickie (OAG)" <>,

"McCormick, Katherine (OAG)"

<>,

"King, Russell (OAG)" <>,

"Bekkers, Ivan (OAG)" <>,

"Courtney, Carole (OAG)"

<>,

"Sherman, Jim (OAG)" <>,

"Lane, Max (OAG)" <>,

"Glick, Aline (OAG)"

<>,

"Lohmeier, Julie (OAG)" <>,

"Seoane, Charlene (OAG)" <>

Subject: RE: market research projects

Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 10:18:48 -0600

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Dear Professor Gupta,

I have prepared a document (attached below) that describes the multiple

projects available at OAG. I will be on vacation from March 27th through

April 5th; Vickie Driver will be your main contact in my absence. She can

be reached via email at or by phone at 630-574-6342.

I hope to have the opportunity to work with your students,

Carolina.

Potential Market Research Projects at OAG

With over 1.1 million users in over 120 countries, OAG is the world’s leading independent provider of travel information products and services, offering business travelers, corporations and the global travel industry the information they need to make effective travel planning decisions.

Best known for its flight guides, OAG offers essential travel information for easy use both in the office and on the road. Customers can access vital travel information through a variety of media, both print and electronic.

OAG continues to face the same issues as many established publishers during the Internet revolution – maintenance of current revenue streams in the face of new entrants distributing information at lower cost in new, “higher value” formats. However, few businesses hold the potential of OAG – the re-invention of a trusted brand into a new business model capitalizing on the Internet’s global market and opportunities. We are cognizant that migrating OAG print schedules to an online medium and integrating booking functionality requires an indepth understanding of the needs of frequent business travelers, how they currently use travel information, and the differences between the print and electronic medium. The following studies are designed to help OAG obtain information useful to answering these and other questions of strategic importance.

Attrition/Lapsed User Study. The pocket flight guide has a historically had a very loyal following. Many of our subscribers have been with the company for 10 or more years. However, subscription rates are dropping every year, with no new subscribers coming in to take their place. It seems that we need a process to help us better understand who these ‘lapsed’ users are and why they don’t renew their subscription, in order to help us devise ways to prevent them from leaving, get them to come back, or more effectively market to potential new users. This project would entail reviewing the questions that we are already asking subscribers at the time they fail to renew to optimize the information that we already gather, supplemented by a qualitative study of recent lapsed users and/or a quantitative study of recent lapsed users or current subscribers.

Electronic Usage and Forecast Study. OAG seeks to better understand how its current and potential customers are interfacing with new technology to meet their business travel needs. We would like to identify, evaluate, and categorize business travel needs and tools used to address these needs. Which wireless devices are they using now, what have these devices replaced, and what do they anticipate to be using in the future? How has their use of the Internet been changing? Would they consider using the wireless Internet to replace or supplement their current Internet usage? Ideally, OAG would also like to evaluate the existing pricing structure for information services (per-transaction vs. monthly or annual subscription) and determine users’ and non-users’ price sensitivity.

Frequent Flyer Magazine Positioning Study. Frequent Flyer is a magazine that comes bundled with each subscription to the Pocket Flight Guide. There has been no research done to assess the value of this magazine to our subscribers. Because of this lack of information, the future of the magazine is uncertain. OAG is unsure whether to discontinue the magazine, scale it down and integrate its content into our website, keep it as it is, or expand it. We’d like to know what is the magazine’s contribution to subscriber loyalty. Who reads the magazine, how regularly, where and why do they read it? How is it positioned compared to other publications read by frequent business travelers? Would frequent business travelers read it online? Who else might it reach? How could we best leverage the value of the magazine?

Trade-off Analysis of Travel Decision Process. OAG seeks to better understand the thought process and trade-offs subscribers and/or non-subscribers make when viewing schedules data and making trip plans. What is most important to the frequent business traveler, and what is the relative importance of price, airline, time of flight, and whether the flight is a direct or connecting flight? What are the distinctions between travelers who are airline focused (the airline decision comes first) vs. those who are schedules focused (the time of the flight comes first, regardless of what the airline is)? Findings from the research would provide insight into the different needs of current and potential subscribers and how we can best meet these needs through our print and electronic products.

Website ‘Sticky Content’ Evaluation Study. OAG is planning the development of a comprehensive online travel portal to seamlessly serve all business travelers’ needs. As part of this new ‘product’, OAG is planning to introduce ‘sticky content’ to encourage users to spend more time on the site. This study would survey frequent business travelers who are web users to assess potential website users’ interest and preference for our sticky content ideas, some of which include:

1) Virtual postcards - depicting various landmarks as well as generic conference rooms for humor

2) Newsgroups and specific newsgroup topics

3) Contests and contest topics that appeal to the competitive segment of frequent travelers