Marketing Analysis for Hotel Chain Website

The Business Questions

Define martketing strategies to increase the revenues generated by the customers of the website through a better understanding of the customer segments.

The Process

We followed a 3 steps process:

Part 1: Data set inspection and dimensionality reduction

Part 2: Data analysis and marketing insights

Part 3: Final recommendation and strategy

Part 1 - Data Inspection

Key Customer Characteristics

First step: we load the data to use:

The data refers to the users and their interaction with the website until that time. Overall the dataset contains information on almost 1 million customers grouped in 667 types of customers described by 19 number of variables.

Variables description:

• Type of User: Returning or New Visitor
• Source: Organic vs Paid Promotions (cpc, cpm, referral)
• Users: Number of User Visits
• Sessions: Number of User Sessions
• No of Pages Visited: Number of total pages visited
• No of Transactions: Number of monetary transactions
• Revenue: Revenue generated
• Dummy Variable: Created dummy variables categorical data such as 'user type', 'source' and 'device type'

factor_attributes_used = c(1:19)
factor_selectionciterion = 
minimum_variance_explained = 65
manual_numb_factors_used = 5
rotation_used = "varimax"
max_data_report = 5
factor_attributes_used <- intersect(factor_attributes_used, 1:ncol(myData))
ProjectDataFactor <- myData[,factor_attributes_used]
ProjectDataFactor <- as.matrix(ProjectDataFactor)

Check the Data

We start by doing a basic visual exploration of the first customer types:

**Data Visualization**

	Customer01	Customer02	Customer03	Customer04	Customer05
Type.of.User	Returning Visitor	Returning Visitor	New Visitor	Returning Visitor	Returning Visitor
Source	google / organic	google / organic	(direct) / (none)	google / organic	google / cpc
Device	desktop	desktop	desktop	desktop	desktop
Returning.Visitor	1	1	0	1	1
New.Visitor	0	0	1	0	0
Google.CPC	0	0	0	0	1
TripAdvisor	0	0	0	0	0
Direct	0	0	1	0	0
DFA	0	0	0	0	0
Email	0	0	0	0	0
Referral	0	0	0	0	0
Desktop	1	1	1	1	1
Mobile	0	0	0	0	0
Tablet	0	0	0	0	0
Users	7240	21442	2989	2637	3538
Sessions	10776	35015	2996	4112	5179
No.of.Pages.Visited	45328	173192	7989	16936	21534
No.of.Transactions	64	130	13	15	35
Revenue	456710.54	362368.88	341553.90	278226.12	216213.00

Check Correlations

We can then analyze the data in terms of correlation between different variables. The objetctive is to get a first idea of possible cross-relationships between variables that could lead to a dimensionality reduction as a first step for the analysis.

**Correlation Table**

	Returning.Visitor	New.Visitor	Google.CPC	TripAdvisor	Direct	DFA	Email	Referral	Desktop	Mobile	Tablet	Users	Sessions	No.of.Pages.Visited	No.of.Transactions	Revenue
Returning.Visitor	1.00	-1.00	-0.03	-0.01	-0.19	0.11	0.08	0.09	0.10	-0.06	-0.07	-0.25	-0.18	-0.16	0.05	0.03
New.Visitor	-1.00	1.00	0.03	0.01	0.19	-0.11	-0.08	-0.09	-0.10	0.06	0.07	0.25	0.18	0.16	-0.05	-0.03
Google.CPC	-0.03	0.03	1.00	-0.07	-0.13	-0.09	-0.07	-0.23	0.13	-0.09	-0.09	0.04	0.05	0.05	0.14	0.10
TripAdvisor	-0.01	0.01	-0.07	1.00	-0.10	-0.07	-0.05	0.10	-0.09	0.01	0.10	-0.06	-0.07	-0.06	-0.06	-0.06
Direct	-0.19	0.19	-0.13	-0.10	1.00	-0.13	-0.10	-0.31	-0.13	0.12	0.06	0.15	0.14	0.10	0.11	0.16
DFA	0.11	-0.11	-0.09	-0.07	-0.13	1.00	-0.07	-0.22	0.01	-0.02	0.01	-0.05	-0.03	-0.04	0.01	-0.01
Email	0.08	-0.08	-0.07	-0.05	-0.10	-0.07	1.00	-0.15	0.12	-0.07	-0.09	-0.07	-0.07	-0.07	-0.06	-0.06
Referral	0.09	-0.09	-0.23	0.10	-0.31	-0.22	-0.15	1.00	-0.05	0.04	0.03	-0.22	-0.24	-0.23	-0.19	-0.20
Desktop	0.10	-0.10	0.13	-0.09	-0.13	0.01	0.12	-0.05	1.00	-0.60	-0.74	-0.07	-0.10	-0.13	0.13	0.11
Mobile	-0.06	0.06	-0.09	0.01	0.12	-0.02	-0.07	0.04	-0.60	1.00	-0.10	0.12	0.13	0.18	-0.07	-0.06
Tablet	-0.07	0.07	-0.09	0.10	0.06	0.01	-0.09	0.03	-0.74	-0.10	1.00	-0.01	0.01	0.00	-0.10	-0.09
Users	-0.25	0.25	0.04	-0.06	0.15	-0.05	-0.07	-0.22	-0.07	0.12	-0.01	1.00	0.98	0.92	0.46	0.39
Sessions	-0.18	0.18	0.05	-0.07	0.14	-0.03	-0.07	-0.24	-0.10	0.13	0.01	0.98	1.00	0.95	0.53	0.45
No.of.Pages.Visited	-0.16	0.16	0.05	-0.06	0.10	-0.04	-0.07	-0.23	-0.13	0.18	0.00	0.92	0.95	1.00	0.44	0.40
No.of.Transactions	0.05	-0.05	0.14	-0.06	0.11	0.01	-0.06	-0.19	0.13	-0.07	-0.10	0.46	0.53	0.44	1.00	0.74
Revenue	0.03	-0.03	0.10	-0.06	0.16	-0.01	-0.06	-0.20	0.11	-0.06	-0.09	0.39	0.45	0.40	0.74	1.00

From correlation matrix we can see that there is a good positive correlation between number of Sessions, number of pages visited, number of transactions and revenues. We can also see that Desktop device is the one that generates most of the traffic and revenues in absolute value.

Choose number of factors

To use Factor Analysis, we first need to adjust data to have only numeric data. We can then remove first columns and keep only binary values.

num_data <- myData[,4:ncol(myData)]
scaled_data <- apply(num_data,2, function(r) {if (sd(r)!=0) res=(r-mean(r))/sd(r) else res=0*r; res})

Now that we have only numeric data, we can proceed with Factor Analysis.

Variance_Explained_Table_results<-PCA(scaled_data, graph=FALSE)
Variance_Explained_Table<-Variance_Explained_Table_results$eig
Variance_Explained_Table<-as.data.frame(Variance_Explained_Table)
colnames(Variance_Explained_Table)<-c("Eigenvalue", "Percentage_of_explained_variance", "Cumulative_percentage_of_explained_variance")

eigenvalues  <- Variance_Explained_Table[,2]

Let's look at the variance explained as well as the eigenvalues

**Variance Explained**

	Eigenvalue	Percentage_of_explained_variance	Cumulative_percentage_of_explained_variance
comp 1	3.84	24.01	24.01
comp 2	2.34	14.61	38.61
comp 3	1.81	11.29	49.91
comp 4	1.29	8.07	57.98
comp 5	1.17	7.33	65.31
comp 6	1.10	6.88	72.19
comp 7	1.05	6.55	78.74
comp 8	1.02	6.39	85.13
comp 9	0.92	5.74	90.87
comp 10	0.78	4.89	95.76
comp 11	0.34	2.15	97.91
comp 12	0.25	1.56	99.47
comp 13	0.07	0.45	99.93
comp 14	0.01	0.07	100.00
comp 15	0.00	0.00	100.00
comp 16	0.00	0.00	100.00

Interpret the Components

We can see from the chart above that we could use only 8 components. This can be easily explained looking at the variables. Some variables are binary values conveying the same meaning as the text variables. We can identify the following groups:

• Device
• Returning/New Visitor
• Source
• Revenues
• Number of Sessions
• Number of pages visited
• Number of Users
• Number of Transactions

In this case we suggest to keep all the original variables since they are just a way to provide the same information in a binary form.

Part 2: Marketing Strategy

To analyze different scenarios and identify possible strategies, we can focus on different behaviors across devices.

averageTransaction <- aggregate(myData$No.of.Transactions,list(myData$Device), FUN=sum)
colnames(averageTransaction) <- c("Device","No of Transactions")
knitr::kable(averageTransaction)

Device	No of Transactions
desktop	3553
mobile	119
tablet	120

We can clearly see that desktop is the main channel used by customers to access the website, generating about 95% of total transactions. We can now focus on revenues to check if we find the same trend or a different behavios depending on the device.

averageRevenue <- aggregate(myData$Revenue,list(myData$Device), FUN=sum)
colnames(averageRevenue) <- c("Device","Revenues")
knitr::kable(averageRevenue)

Device	Revenues
desktop	8459779.1
mobile	291844.2
tablet	310228.0
Even an analysis on revenues shows that desktop is the most used device, as expected from previous result.
We can then analyze revenues per transaction to check profitability for each device.

RevTransaction <- averageRevenue
RevTransaction[,2] <- averageRevenue[,2]/averageTransaction[,2] 
colnames(RevTransaction) <- c("Device","Revenue per Transaction")
knitr::kable(RevTransaction)

Device	Revenue per Transaction
desktop	2381.024
mobile	2452.472
tablet	2585.233

We can see that revenues per transaction are quite stable cross-device, even though tablet is more profitable if compared to desktop and mobile devices.

Moving from devices to sources, we can then compare organic sources to payed sources (e.g. "cpc") and see if there is a strong relationship between transaction and revenues and different sources.

averageRevenueSource <- aggregate(myData$Revenue,list(myData$Source), FUN=sum)
colnames(averageRevenueSource) <- c("Source","Revenues")
averageRevenueSource <- averageRevenueSource[order(averageRevenueSource[,2],averageRevenueSource[,1],decreasing=TRUE),]
rownames(averageRevenueSource) <- c(1:nrow(averageRevenueSource))
knitr::kable(averageRevenueSource[1:10,])

Source	Revenues
(direct) / (none)	2951215.28
google / organic	2793075.46
google / cpc	1466490.42
dfa / cpm	430017.88
dfa / cpc	226526.63
bing / organic	186316.63
email / email	109285.60
yahoo / organic	92137.69
olehotels.com / referral	69812.64
adquiramexico.com.mx / referral	65988.00

Focusing on top 10 sources, we can see that direct access and organic searches on google or bing provide more than 4 times the revenues of payed sources like "cpc" and "cpm".

Part 3: Recommendation

From previous analysis, we can suggest the following strategy:

• reduce spending in payed sources;
• provide app/mobile portal to facilitate the access from tablet;