Data Analysis Is Creating New Business Opportunities
May 2, 2011
The explosion of data analytics tools is being spurred by a fundamental economic truth: the plunging cost of memory technologies. “Enterprise disk” refers to large storage drives used in data centers.
Credit: Credit Suisse and Gartner
Sitting in the left-field upper deck to watch the San Francisco Giants play baseball on May 11 would cost you eight bucks if you’d bought the ticket in late April. If you wanted the same ticket for the May 21 game, though, you’d have to pay $45.50.
The capabilities of software have finally caught up with what scalpers have always known: ticket prices should depend on demand. With the help of a data analytics system from Qcue, a company in Austin, Texas, the Giants have adopted dynamic pricing, which enables ticket prices to change depending on circumstances that affect demand—even up to the last minute. The system quantified just how low prices would need to be in order to fill seats at a Wednesday-night game against the mediocre Arizona Diamondbacks, and how much more people would be likely to pay for a Saturday-afternoon game against the Giants’ cross-bay rivals, the Oakland A’s.