Big data reveals Mac users book pricier hotels
It appears as if Apple users’ willingness to shell out a little more cash for a premium experience doesn’t stop at computers. According to Orbitz CEO Barney Harford, his company’s data-crunching shows Mac users also spend about $20 more a night on hotels than do Windows users. For anyone any still wondering why Hadoop is so hot right now, it’s because it helps uncover insights like this.
The Mac versus Windows revelation is one of many in a Hadoop-focused interview with Harford by travel-business news site Tnooz. In the interview, Harford discusses how Orbitz Worldwide analyzes every aspect of visitors’ sessions on its sites in order to determine to a tee the preferences of any given visitor. Just like with every e-commerce site on the web — from Amazon (a amzn) to eBay to Etsy — more personalization means more sales, and that’s exactly where many companies in the business of selling stuff are focusing their analytics attention.
The insight into Mac users’ booking preferences is just a very illustrative case in point. It’s the kind of seemingly mundane question web sites might not have thought to ask until big data processing and analytics technologies made it possible. Knowing what it knows, though, Harford said Orbitz eventually plans to provide Mac users with a different hotel-sorting experience than it provides their Windows counterparts.
It’s easy to see how a single data point like this could spread. Maybe that predilection toward more-expensive hotels carries over into car rentals and flights, too. Maybe Mac users buy more (or less) tickets to local activities in their destination cities, or buy different types of tickets.
If other sites haven’t been tracking customer behavior based on operating system, perhaps they’ll start, because it’s one more opportunity to personalize the online experience before ever knowing anything about a visitor’s activity on your site. I’d be willing to bet there’s a general trend of Mac users buying more-expensive products overall, and of buying different types of products and services than Windows users buy. New eBay property Hunch certainly found meaningful differences between the two camps.
But deploying Hadoop alone won’t make insights magically appear. It would be great to see more companies highlighting some of the interesting data points they’ve uncovered, so that newcomers to big data have an idea where to start and what’s possible. Big data technologies can help users find the answers, but (with some exceptions for pattern-detecting algorithms) they can’t tell users what questions to ask.
Image courtesy of Flickr user ricardoalvarez.
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Duh. Mac users have more disposable income. They are able to spend 100% more on computers for an experience 10% better. It only makes sense that they would spend their other excess disposable income on useless crap. C’mon – you spend the vast majority of your time in a hotel asleep with your eyes closed. Once you reach a certain level ( clean, comfortable bed and shower ) any amount you spend is just a tribute to your ego.
Can someone please explain why this would require “Big Data”? Basic statistical sampling and analysis should show the same or similar results. There should be no need for “big data” when analyzing descriptive data of a structured simple transaction.
dead on. google analytics, or any other web analytics would make this correlation available if one looks.
Correlation does not imply causation. Apple products are generally more expensive. What about the following :
‘Rich’ people buy Macs,
‘Rich’ people book pricier hotels
?
To me, saying that Mac users book pricier hotel looks the same as saying rich people are rich. Thanks big data!
I’m going to address these in one fell swoop.
1. Rich people buy Macs. Perhaps, but I think that’s a big stretch to assume. I don’t consider myself rich, and I buy Macs. Perhap there’s just something in people’s decisionmaking processes that makes them willing to pay more for perceived value. Also, Orbitz can’t know my income when I hit its site, but it can know my OS. To the degree it’s right that I’m more likely to pay more for a hotel — whatever the reason — it might as well cater my experience around that knowledge.
2. It’s just basic statistical analysis. Maybe, but we’re not talking about just structured data here, nor are we talking about a sample. We’re talking about *all* the data, which wasn’t possible (at least to the degree it is now) before Hadoop. Also, I don’t think companies were always thinking about all the possibilities before the term “big data” hit. I’d argue that correlating OS and purchase price is a pretty novel concept, perhaps spurred by the knowledge that Orbitz quite literally can figure out anything it wants about user behavior so long as its applications and algorithms are accurate.
Or perhaps it’s just rich people buy macs and book pricier hotel rooms.
Wow you’re an idiot. I’m not rich ($42k/yr thanks) but I have a MacBook Pro, iPad2, iPhone 4..various iPods through the generations….but HARDLY rich….take off the blinders bro…you don’t have to be rich to buy a Mac. You just have to be smart about saving. Sucks to be anybody that can’t understand the most basics of having money….
Sheesh — batch processing is now sexy, as long as you call it “Hadoop”
As others have stated, it doesn’t seem that surprising that Mac users would spend more on services – Mac desktops and laptops cost a lot more than its Windows counterpart. I would be interested to see how companies differentiated their marketing strategies based on what type of computer a consumer owned.