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Event Ticketing

Bill Franz | billfranz@gmail.com

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Product

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AXS Ticketing

Online Ticketing
Primary Ticket Outlet
Secondary Market

I chose the company that I work for, AXS Ticketing to take a big step back and look at their product and how it could be brought to other markets.

I found this a great opportunity to take a look at the assumptions we’re currently making, and the biases we have.

AXS is an American event ticketing sales and distribution company based in Los Angeles.

It is a primary ticket outlet for sports teams, arenas, theaters, clubs, and colleges. It is also a secondary ticket market, allowing customers to resell previously purchased tickets.

Through their website and mobile app, customers can purchase tickets in the form of PDFs (e-tickets) or identity-based (Flashseats) digital ticket with rotating QR code which is available only through the phone app.

This product allows users to discovery events, purchase tickets, attend events. This involves communication, decision-making, social groups, and commerce. The ideal solution can be understood by different populations, ages, and literacy levels. It serves as a search tool, a purchase mechanism, and an identify/ticket verification.

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Event Ticket Lifecycle

Discovery

Purchase

Day of Event

Post

Event

In addition to purchasing the ticket, I wanted to take a step back and look at the larger event ticket lifecycle

At each step along the way is a chance to engage with the user, and give them relevant information and assistance.

It begins with the discovery process, how events are marketed by artists and discovered by fans.

This leads up to the pre-sale or on sale where tickets are purchased online through the website or app. Often users will be purchasing tickets on behalf of a group, so they will want to disperse tickets amongst their group and settle up funds.

On the day of the event, fans arrive at the venue and will scan their tickets at the entrance. There are opportunities to give them tools to guide them to their section and seat along with available food and shopping options at the venue.

After the event has concluded, engaging with the user encourages them to share their experience and sign up for future or related events.

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Cultures

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US, Japan, and China

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Contrasting Cultures: United States & China

	USA	Japan	CHINA
Individualism v. Collectivism	High	Low	Very Low
Power Distance	Low	Medium	Very High
Uncertainty Avoidance	Low	Very High	Low
Masculinity v. Femininity	High	Very High	High
Long-Term v. Short-term	Low	Very High	Very High
Indulgence	High	Low	Low

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Contrasting Cultures: United States & China

	USA	Japan	CHINA
Individualism v. Collectivism	High	Low	Very Low
Power Distance	Low	Medium	Very High
Uncertainty Avoidance	Low	Very High	Low
Masculinity v. Femininity	High	Very High	High
Long-Term v. Short-term	Low	Very High	Very High
Indulgence	High	Low	Low

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Contrasting Cultures: United States & China

	USA	Japan	CHINA
Individualism v. Collectivism	High	Low	Very Low
Power Distance	Low	Medium	Very High
Uncertainty Avoidance	Low	Very High	Low
Masculinity v. Femininity	High	Very High	High
Long-Term v. Short-term	Low	Very High	Very High
Indulgence	High	Low	Low

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Behaviors

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Collectivism

Emphasize in-group obligations and interdependence
More likely to adopt new technology when others in the group decide to do so
Existing relationship networks generate social acceptance.
Consumers highly value trust and social influence over technical factors
Businesses must create trends and lead the acceptance among users to help enhance adoption

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High Context

Communication is implicit, indirect and embedded in the context
Emphasis harmony, beauty, and oneness with nature
Implicit, indirect, polite, modest, and even ambiguous, while direct comparisons are not viewed favorably

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Design

Information dense designs
minimalism, and simplicity
Omotenashi (お持て成し)
Kawaii culture influence

Japan web aesthetic favors information density because of the number of glyphs in the Japanese language. In the west we perceive it as visual clutter, but the user finds the content valuable (Wyatt). Logographic-based languages can contain a lot of meaning in just few characters.

they actually allow Japanese speakers to become comfortable with processing a lot of information in short period of time and space

Japan is well known by its sense of aesthetics, which we usually relate to minimalism, and simplicity

Omotenashi (お持て成し), the standard social convention is the spirit of Japanese hospitality and the tendency of clean and elegance on graphic.

Japanese participants favored a visual approach which they said appeals to the user’s “emotion”. Kawaii culture influenced the modern traditional use of animations or cartoon with exaggerated features.

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Discovery

Group Decision Making
QR Codes
Influencers

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Tech Adoption

Mobile ticketing has been adopted to purchase tickets to events, transportation, and parking.
Japan

84% of population shops with their mobile phone
88% of mobile users have QR-Code readers
86% have used and accessed QR Codes

China

Over 416 million (30% of population) are mobile phone users
Mobile-first, desktop-second design

Both cultures are very mobile focused

In Asia, mobile ticketing has been adopted to purchase tickets to events, transportation, and parking. Consumers use mobile devices to feed parking meters and purchase cinema, train, and ski lift tickets online or at unattended point-of-sale (POS) terminals

In Japan,

84% of the population shops with their mobile phones, while half of all the e-commerce sales in the country were made through mobile devices in 2015

88.4 percent of mobile users had a QR-code (Quick Response Code) reader with their mobile device, and 83.6 percent have actually used and accessed QR codes.

Using RFID, subscribers use their phones as admission tickets for concerts or sports events or for shopping at convenience stores

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In 2006, Mobile phone users in China alone reached 416 million exceeding the entire population of the United States

The U.S. tech industry likes to talk about “mobile first” experiences, but that catchphrase doesn’t play out the same way that it does in China, which never developed the PC-centric culture that Americans experienced before smartphones took off.

WeChat’s mobile-first, desktop-second design. The mobile device is the primary method of logging into the service

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Payment

China

Credit cards and debit cards are not widely adopted
Prefer integrated Mobile Wallets

Japan

Limited use of credit cards
Cash
ikkai barai
Conveni payment model

Credit and debit cards are not widely adopted in China

However, Chinese consumers conduct 11 times more mobile payments than their US counterparts. These mobile payments come from digital wallets, which can be found inside almost every major Chinese mobile app. At least one in five active WeChat users are set up for WeChat Payments, 32% of all recorded WeChat activities were payments, confirming this service’s central role in WeChat.

These wallets allow Chinese consumers to buy things inside the app, buy products in real life (often through QR codes), send payments to their friends, pay for taxis, movie tickets, utility bills,

Because of the high uncertainty avoidance, Japanese are savers and less apt to have a rotating credit balance. When they use credit cards, they are for fewer, larger purchases, which they quickly pay off.

The common methods of payment in Japan are cash, bank transfer, or money order. Japanese are less likely to have revolving credit cards because of high transaction costs, and 85% of transactions are settled by ikkai barai, which is repayment in one installment.

With a highly concentrated population in major cities, Japanese consumers prefer the choice of the conveni payment model where the consumer will book a product online and pick up and pay in person at a convenience store. Because non-payment rates are low in Japan, many online shops would rather send merchandise first and collect the money later.

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App integration

WeChat bundles a range of features into one platform
WeChat is almost a proxy for mobile internet penetration
Retailer and brands prefer to operate within the environment

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At the event

Scan to enter event
Mobile Wallets enabled features for payment

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Japan Localization

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Japanese Mobile App

Establish trust
Online and offline payment options
Embrace high tech adoption, QR codes
Lotteries
Secondary Market
RFID mobile use for purchasing food and goods at event

For Japan, I propose a Mobile app

In order to quickly establish trust with new customers, it’s important to create relationships with trusted brands in the japanese market

Established mobile pay options (Line and Rakutan)
Alliances with major venue or sports team
Social influencers

Provide a mix of online and offline options in the purchase flow

Use a mobile wallet (Line or Rakuten) to complete transactions online
Users could book tickets online and then go to a convenience store to pay for their tickets and pick them up
Users could a credit card

Using QR codes to bridge online and offline. Currently AXS uses the rotating QR code only for ticket scanning when you enter the venue of an event,

but it could also be utilized in other situations to verify your identify, for example … when you show up to a 7-Eleven to pay for your tickets, scanning the barcode would bring up your order, ready to pay. It could be used to optimize the existing cultural practices.

Embrace ticket lottery systems for ticket pre-sales and the secondary market where use

Integrating RFID features into the event day experience, allowing interactive experiences at the venue, pay for food and merchandise using your app. Using that additional data, we can target products to those users.

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China Localization

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WeChat Platform

WeChat platform
Leverage existing social networks
Elevate the community of users and in-groups for decision making
Trusted mobile wallets as payment platform

Social acceptance is vital to succeed in a collectivist society like China, since consumers value trust and social influence.

By launching our product on existing popular platforms such as WeChat which are already known and trusted by the Chinese consumer, we are building off of that established trust, and going to where the users are.

WeChat has popularized the practice of chatting with brands and products through a chatbot experience.

Using that chat ui, we can engage with the user through the different stages of of the event lifecycle.

Because of the importance of the group in decision making, we’d create tools to make it very easy to share events during the discovery process, leading to group chats where details are shared of upcoming concerts and tours.

By using AliPay and WeChat payments as a primary payment method, we will take advantage of a trusted payment method that is already set up in one out of every five WeChat users.

Because of limited access to 3G internet in many areas of the country, we need to give the user tools to split up online purchases between sessions, and the options to book tickets online and conduct offline payments in cash or charge when tickets are delivered or picked up, similar to the Japanese app.

Ticket resale is not as acceptable in China as it is in the United States. Considering this hot button issue, and the importance of establishing trust in a new brand, we should remove the resale option from our product and focus on primary ticket sales.

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Gaps

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Gaps

Extrapolating from research

Online ticket adoption for travel
Online mobile banking

Future work

Tracking event ticketing behavior through lifecycle

In absence of dedicated research on e-ticketing purchasing behavior, my review extrapolating usage and behaviors from papers that discuss online ticket adoption for travel such as airlines and trains in Japan and China.

There are strong connections to online banking adoption and the willingness to manage and conduct financial transactions directly over the internet

Further research would need to be taken up to follow users and track their behaviors and expectations as they

discover events through advertising media, purchase tickets to these events
share these events with other inside their networks of family and friends
use their phone or paper ticket to enter the venue, and finally if they use their phone to complete any additional purchases at the event
How they want to be connected with post-event. In all these steps of the event ticketing customer journey,

I would pay special attention to what portions the user is more comfortable completing online, what users are more comfortable completing offline, and how the online/offline handoff occurs.

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THANK YOU