BYOMSPM

In this post I outline some key points from Josh Kaufman’s book “The Personal MBA” with a focus on how some of the concepts might apply to the Capital One Travel Portal.

The first point that Kaufman discusses is that to succeed in delivering value to customers, business should generally aim to surpass customer expectations. He lays out a theoretical equation to explain this: quality = performance – expectations. This depends on both delivering a high quality product experience along with not setting customer expectations too high beforehand. Does the Travel Portal exceed expectations in any way? The Travel Portal sets the bar high in its marketing pitch by claiming that it’s the smarter way to book travel, and my feeling is that it sets future customers up to expect that the actual experience of searching and booking will be more seamless or powerful than with competitors; however, in my opinion it is not. The Portal does technically meet the expectation of giving a higher reward rate for travel booked through it, but it could do a better job of reminding customers immediately after booking about the extra value they received to reiterate that their expectations have been met.

In the equation that Kaufman lays out, he explains that performance depends on qualities like uniformity, consistency, reliability, and fitness of purpose. Moreover, the measure of the quality of a product is dictated by not only its performance but also things like what features are available, its reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability, aesthetics, and perception. Which of the qualities that inform a product’s quality could the Travel Portal improve upon, and which does it do well? Not all search features available in travel booking site competitors are available in the Travel Portal, and there aren’t really any other features unique to the Portal, so the Portal could improve its feature availability. On the other hand, the search and booking features use an interface that is reliable and conforms to the general standard for booking sites.

The last thing that Kaufman discusses is the quality signals can increase a user’s perception of quality, and these signals are often synonymous with the aesthetics of a product. What quality signals does the Travel Portal use? The calendar that is color-coded with a relative assessment of price fairness stood out to me as a quality signal. The aesthetics of the search results page is also very clean, which to me is a quality signal.

Overall, the aesthetics of the Portal are strong, but some of its deeper functionality needs to be improved.

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Works Referenced

Kaufman, Josh. “The Personal MBA.” New York, N.Y. : Portfolio/Penguin, 2012.