Linchi Kwok, Ph.D.

The 7 Ps marketing mix framework is a widely used managerial tool that helps businesses identify the principal components of a service product. The 7 P elements include Product, Promotion, Price, Place, Participant, Physical Evidence, and Process.   The 7 Ps framework can assist marketers in making decisions regarding segmentation, positioning, and differentiation. Even for the same type of products with different brands, marketers can still drive higher sales through the improvement of a product’s marketing mix.     The empirical study about 7 Ps of home-sharing services   Building upon the 7 Ps marketing mix framework, I led a research team in a big-data, supervised machine learning analysis of over 1.14 million English reviews of 37,092 Airbnb listings in San Francisco (SFO) and New York City (NYC). We aimed to discover new meaningful business intelligence through the analysis of an immense quantity of online review information that is created by consumers in th...

Gen Z and Millennials are key to travel industry’s recovery   That was the headline of a Travel Pulse report, which quoted a GlobalData survey. The survey suggests that younger and wealthier travelers would be the first to resume international leisure travel when the COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. Both generations belong to the younger group of travelers, with the oldest Millennials just turning 39 this year.   That assumption is probably right, but Gen Zers and the Millennials have their concerns too. For example,   Gen Z – “A worried generation”   Gen Zers  are those who were born after 1996 or 2000, depending on where the line is drawn. Even using the cutoff line of 2000/2001, Gen Zers make up 32% of the world population, above the Millennials at 31.5%.   Gen Zers have never lived without terrorism since the 911 Attack. They grew up from the Great Recession. As a result, they are  less likely to take risks  than previous generations. Som...

Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky talked about the future of travel in a CNBC interview last week. He stated: “Travel, as we knew it, is over. It doesn’t mean travel is over, just the travel we knew is over, and it’s never coming back. It’s just not.” His statement made headlines last week, but he also suggested in the same interview:      “… travel is going to come back. It’s just going to take a lot longer than, you know, we would have thought, and it’s going to be different.” What do you think? Will people travel again? The glass is half empty   Some places saw a spark of confirmed infected cases of COVID-19 in just a few weeks after the local governments lifted the coronavirus restrictions . Florida, for example, reported that its daily case count had increased fivefold in just two weeks . Moreover, the median age of the new patients dropped to 36, indicating the coronavirus is now spreading among the younger age group.   Along with Florida, Texas and A...

Places are easing coronavirus restrictions . Travel companies are reopening their business with enhanced sanitizing measures . People are ready to travel again.   Do you see early signs of recovery? Here are some positive updates, although it is still too early to claim it is business as usual.   TSA   The  Transportation Security Administration  (TSA) reported that 430,414 people passed the security checkpoints at airports on Monday, June 8. That was about  five times  the record low traffic day of 87,543 in April and accounted for 16.27% of the air traffic in the same weekday one year ago at 2,644,981. It is worthy to point out that the figure reported in 2019 showed an  84% increase  from 2018, which recorded at 1.4 million only.   The traffic reported by TSA continued to climb to 502,209 on Thursday, June 11, the first time when the number passed half a million since the pandemic. Thursday’s traffic was at 18.77% of the 2019 level ...