In this repo I demonstrate techniques using tableau, general data analytics, and story telling skills to perform a mock business data analysis to provide insights and suggestions for investors to invest in a new bike sharing business in Des Moines, IA.
The modern bike sharing business is a new emergent business model that is made possible by augmenting bike rental business with modern technology. Customers can access wireless connected bicycles anywhere easily and conveniently. Bicycle technology itself can also be augmented with modern enhancements. Enhancements may include: theft prevention, electric motors, rent and return anywhere, and big data and sensor tracking, the possibilities are endless. The demand for modern bike rental service had been growing tremendously across the globe. Many cities government and private firms have all taken interest in this, and countless studies produced show favorable results and projection of this business over the next decade.1 2 Major business ventures include Citibank, Uber and Lyft, while market concentration over the globe today is still mixed between smaller and fragmented companies, as well as large dominate business firms. Because this is a new business model, there are many societal factors that will influence the success of this business. However, it is beyond the scope of this analysis to go into all aspects and risks. Factors in environmental, health and fitness, economical, and political, and more should be also be considered and evaluated. Here is an example opinion editorial on the difficulties one may expect.3
What is the population of Des Moines? How does its population compare to the population of New York City? Does the population affect the number of people who will use the bike-sharing program?
By studying the existing firm CitiBikes' data, we are able to find several learnings of their operation in New York City. From the first 4 slides, we can learn what are some factors that may help CitiBikes' success. Such as Population and Tourism, Gender of riders or customers, hours of customer demand and finally usage details in frequency and duration. (Slide 1~4)
After we've learn about our criteria for success, we study answer the question on Population as well as explore details within a city's population.
Story slide 7, we can confirm that Des Moines' population number is a good fit. It is a good fit because comparatively, it has more population per existing bike rental business. compared to both New York and Santa Cruz, where both cities have more bike rental business today.
In slide 9, we show our analysis with factors related to tourism. We used yelp search result for "Tours" and "Hotels" as a metric to determine how popular is Des Moines compared to other cities. We then add up the 2 scores divided by the city's area in square miles to derive the Tourism Total Score as a metric. We find Des Moines scored better than Santa Cruz, but less than New York City.
On slide 11, we examine Des Moines population profile in terms of Age and Gender. We can safely assume our business will require payment via credit card or online system by someone over the age of 18, we want to ensure our population has good porportion that are between age 18-64. We also learned from CitiBikes' data that male tends to make up a large portaion of the customer base, we find that Des Moines population profile is similar in to the other cities in these 2 dimensions as well.
Per above consideration, Des Moines as a city is a good candidate to start a bike sharing business as shown by my data points and analysis. However, as mentioned in the introduction, there are still several external factors that my analysis did not intend to cover, and may pose other business risks against the venture, it is my recommendation that further analysis to be done to better understand other risk factors.