TravelEdge: Decoding choices in multi-ethnic markets
Research in multiple ethnicities demands more than fieldwork. Understanding local culture is critical to decoding insights, and dialect is so much more critical than just language support. In this work, such capabilities were key towards successfully navigating a singular mandate across fundamentally different communities. The brief was to advise the leading online travel brand on its positioning and product offering, to win in an increasingly competitive travel-tech environment.
Understanding the middle east
Often clubbed into a single zone by regional revenue, research in the middle east suffers from over simplification. But the region is characterised by deep cultural differences. The two biggest markets, Saudi and UAE are culturally similar. Take their Hoefstede score for power distance within the Arab world, and deference to authority, for example. Or the almost tribal, extended family roots. There are subtle differences, though, as the UAE charts its path into the future and an essentially collectivist community begins to alter its approach to gender; social obligations begin to be negotiated across generations.
Within this complex fabric, travel is not about convenience or price, but about what holidaying and enjoyment mean to communities. Specifically its also about how group dynamics shape choices. And it was this objective that Humanify designed the study to explore deeply, towards informing an online travel provider.
How culture inform choices, and so govern decisions
Traveling for work is essentially different when traveling as a couple or with family and friends. The context changes everything for the same persona or demographic, and it becomes important to offer the right choices for the specific context of travel. Moreover, ethnic communities behave differently from immigrant communities even within the same country and same context. Add to this the measure of culture and you have a complex weave of travel choices. This work mapped how different cohorts discovered, evaluated, and made online travel bookings, taking all of this into consideration.
Two Dashboards: AI and DIY
The AI dashboards help transform user narratives into summaries and structured themes, quantifying insights and priorities findings. The DIY dashboards allow for deeper analytics using filtering/tagging options, that allow researchers to drill down to nuances and uncover patterns by themselves.
AI Dashboard:
To see quick answers the AI Analytics dashboard helps identify patterns, summarise results, and prioritise the insights for perspective.
Analysis can be grouped by pre-determined discussion guides, with sectional summaries of what respondents have said and what the key takeaways have been. These summaries are also available by different cohorts, defined by demographics, usage patters, or custom groups. The analytics also provide a way to deep dive into the findings using multiple Ai prompts within the investigating insight. The dashboard also quantifies the emerging insights and ideas by applying weights to each one of them.
DIY Dashboard:
DIY Dashboards are built to ease the researchers burden and focus on insights through patterns in the dataset.
AutoClip/Reels: A researcher's viewpoint is the lens through which he views the study. Humanify's platform can create itemisation of video or audio data, saving precious researcher time. While tags are available to help researchers group observations into intuitive arrangements, clips can also be combined into video reels reflective of the lens the researcher chooses to apply to the data. And a great way to tell a story in respondents own voice.
In this study, the researcher created clips that were pre-decided and scripted as per the Interview Discussion Guide. Tags were used to filter the findings based on cultural personas, and their discovery preferences. By filtering on how choices were made by different persona's, it became clear what factors governed travel choices. Helping the team deliver the study objectives.
Forward paths
The study eventually advised discovery and booking journeys, app navigation preferences, preferred services, and factors influencing loyalty and brand perception. We did this by uncovering what trust means to different cohorts in the context of travel plans, and how that influences brand loyalty. We did this through discovery of what influences choices and decisions, and the preferences and expectations that shape travel experiences for these communities.
The insights helped understand travel choices deeply. And realise how the context of travel would shape different paths to purchase and experience journeys. The forward path was built on customising the best approach to each context and persona, refining localized approaches and align offerings with specific traveler expectations. Towards strengthening customer acquisition and retention.