MaaS: a love story starting from the first date

Habits are extremely difficult to change. And this affects many aspects of our life, including our daily habits of movement.

Starting from this assumption, it is easy to hypothesize that MaaS, the incipient revolution of mobility explained in detail within this article, will enter our lives almost imperceptibly, probably helping us initially to make only occasional movement. Then, having gained confidence, reliability and discovered the advantages and benefits of MaaS, it can become a faithful travel companion, also suitable for those who travel frequently on a daily basis.

Quite efficiently, MaaS is configured as a simple tool for mobility to be used as needed or can it aim to become our daily travel companion?

MaaS can potentially be both, depending on the needs of each of us. The possession (or not) of a car is certainly an element to consider in answering the question “what can MaaS be for me?”.

If you own a car, MaaS can serve to complement personal mobility (perhaps with a pay-per-use mechanism), because in this case a strong investment has already been made by purchasing the car, which is therefore the tool around which complementary mobility rotates. “For everything else there’s MaaS.” one could say.

On the other hand, if you do not own a car (which is more and more possible and frequent, especially in urban contexts), MaaS effectively becomes “the” mobility itself. This means greater demands and rewards for MaaS: on the one hand it must guarantee a complete and reliable mobility offer, since there are no alternatives for these users; on the other hand, it can intercept the entire spending power of those who choose to make a progressive investment in a mobility service rather than purchasing and owning a vehicle.

In both cases, MaaS wants to be tested, both by those used to traveling by car and by those who use other forms of shared transport. How can MaaS make itself known? The answer is trivial: through advertising.

According to OpenMove’s experience, the best advertisement for a digital mobility service is – paradoxically – old-fashioned advertisement; it seems almost absurd, but the most effective way to advertise a MaaS offer is by placing stickers on board the vehicle or posters at stops and stations. The explanation is simple: analogue advertisement on vehicles or at stops is able to meet users at the moment of greatest need for mobility.

Even the mandatory activation, by the means of a recognizable “social gesture” of scanning a QR code, can be seen as a powerful marketing tool. In fact, we are naturally inclined to imitate the gestures of other people (“if that person can do it, why can’t I do it too?”) and most of the time the waits (at the stop or during a trip) allow free time that people usually spend with the smartphone in their hand: that is the perfect moment to download an app and sign up for a MaaS service.