Ticketmaster Case Study

1. How did Ticketmaster’s move toward greater transparency help its standing with customers? In what ways might transparency be potentially detrimental?

Ticketmaster’s move towards greater transparency helped its standing with customers by informing them up front about the cost of the ticket they wanted to purchase. Previously, customers were eager to purchase the ticket, but they could not realize if they could afford it until the end of the checkout process. Once customers found out the total cost, many became frustrated and cancelled the purchase. The latest transparent approach gives customers a clear standpoint of the ticket price and allows them to determine if they are willing to spend their hard earned money to purchase that ticket.

Ticketmaster transformed itself from a more client-friendly model (i.e., venue and promoter-geared) to a customer-friendly model (i.e., ticket purchaser-geared). How has this helped the company? How might it have harmed it?

Ticketmaster’s decision to transform from a more client-friendly model to a customer-friendly model changed Ticketmaster to become fun-centered, e-commerce company. The customer-friendly model allows consumers to see the price of the ticket up front and pick their own seats instead of having Ticketmaster select the seats for them. Electronic delivery of the tickets is very convenient and permits purchasers to print their tickets right after their purchase. Moreover, the customer-friendly model provides purchasers an opportunity to see which shows their friends are going to, via alerts on Facebook.

Alternatively, the customer-friendly model can be detrimental. During the purchase transaction, the purchaser provides the email address to Ticketmaster. This will provide access to event providers to send promotional emails to the purchaser. These unnecessary emails can be very frustrating for the receiver and disadvantageous for the

According to the definition, this classical model leads to an optimal decision, assuming the full availability of information, sufficient time, and the rationality of the decision maker (Neck, Lattimer, Houghton, 2014). The classical model assumes that the decision makers can make a reasoned judgment about the situation based on gathered information and a detailed analysis to generate possible outcomes. For Ticketmaster, the CEO had enough information gathered about why the customers were angry and unsatisfied with the way Ticketmaster’s ticket purchasing process ran, and therefore, he carefully analyzed the problem and the alternatives to make an appropriate decision to inform customers upfront about the cost of the ticket. He also, preferred the customer-friendly model and got recognition as a fun-centered e-commerce