Using Mobile-Push Technology in Public Transit

Transcription

1 Using Mobile-Push Technology in Public Transit Vivian Y.H. Kuo a, Amy J.C. Trappey a a Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan Abstract. Most of the people have the experience of taking bus or the MRT. When we are waiting for the transportation, we would usually bend our head playing with our phones. In order to make good utilization of our time and also bring about an economic effect, the new idea comes up. There is a new business model that combines the latest mobile-push technology with public transit. In recent years, the mobile-push technology has been used in large shopping malls and department stores. When your phone is connected with the Wi-Fi of the department store, the system will automatically push some advertisements to your phone. As a platform owner or an app developer, we cooperate with shopping malls, movie theaters, restaurants, and even schools. Users can download our app in advance. Whether the users are waiting for the transportation or on a ride, they can connect their cellphones with our Wi-Fi, and the system will automatically send the discount coupons, latest movie information, or the information of school activities to the cellphones. Besides reading the advertisements, users also get a riding discount QR code. By scanning the QR code upon getting off the bus, users can get a riding discount. This app and the platform is not only an advertisement provider, but it can do two-way interaction. Through data mining, the back-end system collects the ad s click rate of each advertisement and provide them to the advertisers. Thus, the analysis of the target marketing rider and customized promotion can be achieved. Keywords. Mobile-push, public transit, app, data mining, Wi-Fi, back-end Number of Words: Introduction In the research from Institute of Information Industry in 2015[1], the penetration of smart phone has been 73.4% in Taiwan. In other words, there are nearly 17 million people have smart phones in Taiwan. Thus, when we are taking the public transportation, we can see that almost everyone is bending their head and using their phones. By noticing this situation, we might have the following questions: Is there anything that we can do to make good utilization of our time and also bring about an economic effect? What is the value proposition? As a consequence, the idea of a new business model comes up. There is a new business model that combines the latest mobile-push technology with public transit. In recent years, the Mobile-Push Technology has been used in shopping malls and department stores. When your cellphone is connected with the Wi-Fi of the department store, the system will automatically push some advertisements to your phone. The following parts of this article will show that how we can use the mobile-push technology in public transit.

2 Mobile-push [2] is a newly risen technology. Many telecommunication companies provide this kind of service to app developers. It comes with several pushing functions, for example, it might jump out a website, a map, a video, a picture and so on. Besides, it can give you a variety of information, like advertisement, preferential information, enterprise activities, meeting notification, news, and so forth. And the third feature is that it is compatible with different systems, like Android, ios, Windows. And the last one is that it is quite user-friendly. Because the information is storable, and it is stored in cloud, so it won t occupy your cellphone s memory. The advantages of mobile-push technology are listed in Table 1. Various pushing functions Website Map Video Picture Text Audio Calendar Social network Table 1. The advantages of mobile-push technology A variety of pushing information Advertisement Preferential information Enterprise activities Meeting notification News New Arrivals Compatible with different systems Android ios Windows In addition to mobile-push, it still needs a lot of technology so as to develop a fullfunctional app. For instance, the app and the platform is not only an advertisement provider, but it can do two-way interaction. Through data mining, the back-end system collects the ad s click rate of each advertisement and provide them to the advertisers. In the next part, there will be the literature review of the back-end system and the method of data mining. 2. Literature review This section introduces back-end system that an app will need, and also the method of data mining which will be used in this project Application programming interface (API) There are two divergent trends happening in mobile development now. The first one is the mobile-first approach strategy. Developers construct a landing page website and then build a product in ios, if targeting the U.S. market, or Android, if targeting the European market. Then, you push a single version and develop for other markets down the line. The other trend is the API-first approach, in which the underlying construct the application programming interface [3] (API) is built first. This strategy allows the website and apps on various platforms to be built on top of the same basic conditions. If your sole target audience is ios users, perhaps a mobile-first strategy works for you. However, the downside is this hinders quick development for future audiences, including Windows, BlackBerry, Android, and a web-app for your non-mobile users.

3 The API-first solution allows app developers to quickly reach subscribers on many different devices. With this strategy, you can build, deploy and manage the whole mobile lifecycle from one source using an API Backend as a Service (BaaS). Perhaps most importantly, BaaS allows you to save time and money while scaling your business rapidly. And, according to Markets and Markets market research firm, BaaS will be a $7.7 billion market by 2017, so we see BaaS as a safe bet Backend as a Service (BaaS) Introduction and Analysis Backend as a Service is Also known as Mobile Backend as a Service [3], BaaS or MBaaS. In already popular world of cloud computing, BaaS is a new phenomenon, which is rapidly gaining prominence [4]. After advent of cloud computing, offering hardware infrastructure and software components as a service is gaining momentum. Any software, be it a desktop or a web based application that we develop or use can be broadly categorized in two parts: frontend and backend. Frontend is basically your programming language part and backend is related to database and its queries. So as the name suggest, Backend as a Service is an abstraction layer on top of traditional database and its queries. A company develops a set of APIs on top of a database for create, update, delete and get data operations and expose them to App developers. Apart from these, they also provide support for push notifications, analytics and some other utilities which are useful for developers. So basically data is stored in a database on cloud and developer access it using API calls. This is useful especially to mobile app developers. Benefit for Developers: BaaS helps mobile app developers in 2 major areas. Firstly, they don t need to be well versed with SQL and neither are required to write complex queries. They simply have to make REST based API calls and it does the trick for them. Secondly, they don t need to worry about storage and space issue as data is actually stored in remote machine on some cloud based infrastructure. Support for push notifications, geo location and analytics also helps them in utilizing these features easily in their apps and seamless integration Data mining Data mining [5] (sometimes called data or knowledge discovery) is the process of analyzing data from different perspectives and summarizing it into useful information - information that can be used to increase revenue, cuts costs, or both. Data mining software is one of a number of analytical tools for analyzing data. It allows users to analyze data from many different dimensions or angles, categorize it, and summarize the relationships identified. Technically, data mining is the process of finding correlations or patterns among dozens of fields in large relational databases.

4 3. Methodology The methodology of this research consists of four sections. First, definition the functions of this app will be shown, which can also represent the value proposition that can be provided to users. Second, we use a flow chart of an example of the MRT riding process to show the customer journey. The third section is how this app acts as a two-way interaction platform. And the last section is the whole business model of this project. I will use the 9 Building Blocks of a Business Model in the book Business Model Generation [6] to explain it Functions of the app (Value Proposition) Now we play the role of the app developer and the platform owner. The users, which are the transporters in this case, can first download our app, so that they can connect with free Wi-Fi. And then their phone will receive the preferential information, the riding discount, the shopping coupon, and so forth. Besides, it is a location-based service (LBS), for example, when you are near the Taipei Main Station, the system will send you the advertisements of the restaurants or stores near you. This LBS function is based on the GPS system in mobile phone to detect the location of users. Another function is that users can login with Facebook account or account, so that you can save the messages. Figure 1. Functions of the app 3.2. A customer journey of the MRT riding process with the app The app can be used in different kinds of public transit, such as bus, MRT, train, and so on. Here is a simple example of the customer journey of the MRT passengers when they use our service. First, they enter the MRT station. And then, they can connect with our free Wi-Fi and download our app. (This step is only for the first time users.) The next step is to login with Facebook or account. Recently, registering to be an app member is very easy, just as the method mentioned above. On the contrary, the shopping websites are tend to let users shop first, login later. Researches [7] show that the improvement of shopping process on a website leads to more profits. However, it will be more convenient for users to login first upon using an app. Because the system will recognize users behavior, and store the data into the memory or the cloud. Thus, it is better to login an app when you first use it. Of course, users usually only need to login once and the system will memorize your account. Hence, this step is also for the first

5 time users. After users logged in, the system will automatically jump out about three advertisement messages. Users can decide to click it or choose another advertisement. After reading the information, users can save the preferential coupons into the message box for further usage. At last, users would get a riding discount QR code. They can scan the QR code when they leave the station to have some discount on the fee. The flow chart below is the customer process. Enter MRT Station Connect with Free Wi-Fi Download app Log in with FB or Read Advertisements Get Coupons Put in Message Box Get a Discount QR Code Scan the QR Code Figure 2. A customer journey of the MRT riding process with the app Although we have been taught some other tools for drawing flow charts, such as the behavior model in Income, I still choose Visio to show the whole customer journey process. The reason is that this process would not be a Standard Operation Procedure. There is a lot of freedom upon using this app. Users can decide to read more advertisement and get more preferential coupons after they have got the riding discount QR code, and they can choose to save it or not. Many steps priority can be different by different users. Thus, I don t use Income to present the flow chart. The figure 3 below is the simple prototype of using this app. The first one is the Wi-Fi connection page. The second one is login page. Users can choose which account they would like to use, Facebook or account. The next one is the preferential information from shopping malls, restaurants, theaters, and so forth. The last one is the riding discount QR code. Users can scan the QR code when they leave the station to have some discount on the fee. Figure 3. Prototype of the app

6 3.3. The two-way interaction of through app and the back-end system This app is not only used as a service to the passengers, but it also can do the data mining and analysis. For example, we have the data of users account, their age, gender, and their preference. The back-end system can do the normalization, recognize the users behavior pattern, and other analysis. And next time the system will push the advertisements that the user might like, to their phone. Figure 4. The two-way interaction of through app Generally, data mining (sometimes called data or knowledge discovery) is the process of analyzing data from different perspectives and summarizing it into useful information - information that can be used to increase revenue, cuts costs, or both. Data mining software is one of a number of analytical tools for analyzing data. It allows users to analyze data from many different dimensions or angles, categorize it, and summarize the relationships identified. Technically, data mining is the process of finding correlations or patterns among dozens of fields in large relational databases. The figure 5 below is the database of the back-end system. I used SQL to present them, including Member Information, Message Box, History Record and Click Through Rate, Advertiser Information, and Category. The data and the behavior patterns will be stored in the cloud for the back-end system to do further analyzing.

7 Figure 5. The database of back-end system The figure 6 below shows that how the back-end system deal with data, such as collecting, doing normalization, using data mining tools, analyzing members preference, and integrate them for further usage. Figure 6. How the back-end system deal with the data

8 3.4. Business model The figure 7 below is the whole business model of this project. I use the 9 Building Blocks of a Business Model in the book Business Model Generation [6] to explain it. Figure 7. Business model Key partners The first key partner is telecommunication companies. We have to apply for the mobilepush service form the telecom, and they will provide lots of services to us. After the app is developed, it has to be launched to app stores, such as Google Play and App Store. Besides, the advertisers are very important. The shopping malls, department stores, theaters, restaurants, online-stores, and even schools are all our advertisers. In addition, we cooperate with the public transit like Metro Taipei, bus companies, and taxi companies for the Wi-Fi access points. Key activities The whole project involves a lot of key activities. For instance, platform design, daily updating and maintenance, advertiser management, data analyzing and data mining, are all our key activities. Key resources The app and the social network are both important resources. Besides, we need the hardware such as Wi-Fi router. Application programming interface (API) is also an indispensable back-end techniques. And the financial resource also needs to be wellmanaged.

9 Value proposition The value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered and acknowledged and a belief from the customer that value will be delivered and experienced. We provide free Wi-Fi and preferential advertisements for passengers. They can not only make a good utilization but also get lots of information and coupons that they might like. Besides, the riding fee can be discounted. It is very preferential for the passengers who need to take public transit every day to use this app. Customer relationship This app is not only used as a service to the passengers, but it also can do the data mining and analysis. For example, we have the data of users account, their age, gender, and their preference. The back-end system can do the normalization, recognize the users behavior pattern, and other analysis. And next time the system will push the advertisements that the user might like, to their phone. Channel The channel in the whole business model includes App store, Google Play, Metro Taipei, bus companies, taxi companies, and advertisers. Customer segments The customer segments is the passengers whoever take the MRT, bus or taxi. Cost structure The following is the cost structure, including the app s R&D cost, the slotting fee that we want to have our app launched, contract fee with transportation companies, hardware facility cost like setting the Wi-Fi router, personnel cost, and daily maintenance cost. Revenue Streams One kind of the revenue comes from the advertising revenues. For instance, if we post the information of some specialized advertiser for 1000 times, the advertiser has to pay us $500 dollars. The other revenue is the commission depending on hitting rate of the users. The more the users click on, the more that we can earn. 4. Conclusions This project utilizes the latest mobile push technology on public transit. Although mobile push has already been used in many department stores, there is still no one combines it with public transit. Due to the high penetration of smart phone in Taiwan, the market of Smartphone Addicts is very considerable. By sliding the finger on the screen of a smartphone, a lot of business opportunities show. In the world with so many choices in our daily life, people would need a platform like this to recommend them about what near them are. Through the back-end system and data mining, the preferential and target market van be analyzed. Thus, this project should be well-considered. Maybe in the future, this business model can really be achieved.

10 References [1] Research from Institute of Information Industry, Accessed: 7/20/2015. [Online]. Available: [2] Mobile Push [Online]. Available: [3] Why You Should Build Apps With An API Backend BaaS, Accessed: 3/16/2015. [Online]. Available: [4] Backend As a Service (BaaS), Accessed: 7/16/2014. [Online]. Available: [5] Data Mining: What is Data Mining? [Online]. Available: [6] Osterwalder A. (2010). Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers. America: John Wiley and Sons. [7] 6 Ways To Improve Your Online Checkout Process, Accessed: 9/23/2014. [Online]. Available: