HARRAH’S ENTERTAINMENT INC

SECTION – ‘A’ | GROUP - 7

 Q1) WHAT ARE THE OBJECTIVES OF THE VARIOUS DATA BASE
MARKETING PROGRAMS AND ARE THEY WORKING?
Programs Objectives Result
New Business Program To improve the effectiveness at This resulted in a more effective and
converting total new gold members into more profitable new business program
loyal customers

Loyalty Program – Frequency Upside Designed to identify customers that were It worked as the number of customers
only giving a small share of their total increased from 30 in Jan –May 1999 to
spending in a particular market 150 in July-Dec 1999 (per month)

Loyalty Program – Budget Upside To encourage the customer to visit It didn’t make any difference in the
Harrah’s first and thereby capture the number of customers visiting
majority of the single casino trips

Retention Program To reinvigorate customers who had It resulted in an increase in the number
broken their historical visitation pattern of customers after sending out the mail
or had demonstrated other signs of
attrition
Q2) WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO USE THE “CUSTOMER WORTH” IN
THE DBM EFFORTS RATHER THAN OBSERVED LEVEL OF PLAY?

• Harrah’s core competency is customer loyalty.

• Early approach: In the early strategy they focused on customers using their past behaviour rather than the
value they are providing to the casino. At that time few customers who are providing great value by spending
less time in the casino were neglected which reduced the profits or performance.

• Later Approach: Data base marketing is a customized marketing strategy to capture the customers who bring
higher profits to the casino. They use the data analytics to estimate the customer worth. Through customer
worth they can accurately predict the customer based on his level of play.
Q3) HOW DOES HARRAH’S INTEGRATE THE VARIOUS ELEMENTS
OF ITS MARKETING STRATEGY TO DELIVER MORE THAN THE
RESULTS OF DATA BASE MARKETING?
• They integrated various elements using the integrated IT network under Total Gold Program by sharing the
real time customer gaming theoretical value across their various casinos.

• Total Gold Program- they captured the lost business of the customers and as a result of this their cross
market revenues have grown significantly.

• Total Rewards program- they captured even the small share of customer’s gaming budget by adding
emotional component. They segmented the customers into Total Gold, Total Platinum, Total Diamond and
provided complimentary offerings by translating the customers reward credits.

• They held give-away events for all cardholders at each property to encourage new sign ups.
 Q4) WHAT IS THE SUSTAINABILITY OF HARRAH’S
ACTIONS AND STRATEGY?
The major benefits
of DBM are:

Increment in
Entices New
Revenue from
Customers
present Customers

• Increment in Revenue from new customers: As there exists no upper limit on the amount of revenue from an existing
customer (because of casino industry), thus the average revenue can be increased from a loyal customer through
upselling and cross selling different facilities. Detailed information about customers playing pattern, preferences makes
this benefit more sustainable. Data analytics aids in formulating correct on the go decisions
• Entices New Customers: Looking at the present competition in the casino industry, attracting new customers seems
challenging and the rate of new customers may see a dip. Thus, the action of Harrah’s to engage better with the
customer through the preferences and reward policies powered with marketing analytics insights will result as a
sustainable strategy in future.
 Q5) EXPLAIN WITH A DIAGRAM THE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
ECOSYSTEM USED IN HARRAH'S Datacenter: Casino
based DB, gain
insights on real time
and sends data back
to warehouse to
append

Step 1: Integrated IT network that links all transactions and

customer information from all properties together.
Step 2: Perform Data analysis:
Step 3: Data Insights: Determine customer worth, integrate
historical records, determine level of service, type of customized
offer, revenue and seamlessly append the new customer data.
Assess as a whole various type of customer segments, find caveats.
Step 4: Senior management (COO) decision and update of plans if
required and live tracking on real time basis. New business, loyalty Data
programs based on budget and frequency, and retention programs warehouse: ETL,
are tracked and configuration is modified as per decisions integration, data
analytics
Step 5: Back propagation of insights and new decisions and
reanalyse from step 2
Datacenter: Casino Datacenter: Casino
Other integration steps: Individual datacentres are also based DB, gain based DB, gain
interconnected with the data warehouse and other datacentres insights on real insights on real
time and sends time and sends
data back to data back to
warehouse to warehouse to
append append