Marketing is that broad area of business activity that directs the flow of services provided by the carrier to the customer in order to satisfy customers’ needs and wants and to achieve company objectives. Marketing is more than selling: it involves a number of business activities, including forecasting, market research and analysis, product research and development, price setting, and promotion, including advertising. Marketing also involves the finance activities such as credit and collection that are associated with ticket sales. Marketing is customer oriented…Without marketing and sales, there would be no airlines. (p. 274)
The airline exists to market and marketing exists because of the airline. Without customers and sales there would be no marketing but there would be no customers and sales without marketing. It is an ever-evolving process and a circular process; one cannot exist without the other.
In marketing there is a mix which consists of types and amounts of controllable variable that a company will use over time. (Wensveen, 2011) The four variables are known as the “Four P’s”, these variables are:
1.Product: The product or service must be developed for the target market. In the airlines the product is not a physical item but services rendered. These services are not limited to but often include: Safety, timeliness (on-time arrivals and departures), convenience, in-flight services, and carrier’s image.
2.Price: A price must be set to add value to the consumer but also add revenue to the airline. Cost is considered the most volatile areas in the airline industry today; deregulation has forced pricing to become the major competitive variable. Like any industry supply and demand control the pricing elements of the ai...
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...mer wants it. (Wensveen, 2011) Allegiant is available by being in the right locale. For a lot of Allegiants customers they are the only option for them to get to highly desirable destinations, such as: Las Vegas, Honolulu, and Orlando.
Works Cited
Fast Company (2009, September). Heard of Allegiant Air? Why It's the Nation's Most Profitable Airline | Fast Company | Business + Innovation. Retrieved November 16, 2013, from http://www.fastcompany.com/1325762/heard-allegiant-air-why-its-nations-most-profitable-airline
REBRANDERY (2006, June 6). How Allegiant Air Travel Created A Branding Strategy Within Their Niche Market | Rebrandery [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://rebrandery.com/2013/06/how-allegiant-air-travel-created-a-branding-strategy-within-their-niche-market/
Wensveen, J. G. (2011). Air transportation: A management perspective. England: Ashgate.
Spirit makes our fares so low because they know that draws in the attention of the consumer. Once they have your attention you’re shocked at the price so you go for the deal, oblivious to the fact that you walked into their trap. Southwest’s symbol for shareholders is LUV while Spirit’s is SAVE. They are not the only companies to start to enter into these paths. Hotels, rental cars and cruises are all faced with the same choice to embrace the LUV or the thriftiness with SAVE (Elliot
Spirit Airlines has long been considered an unorthodox airline. They, of course, address all four P’s in their marketing strategy; however, they focus a large amount of their effort on price and promotion. They focus on cutting price through “unbundling”. They focus on promotion through taking advantage of social issues and breaking news. Many advertisements and deals promoted by Spirit have given the public a definite shock-factor. Spirit has made two objectives very clear: they are furious at getting the customer the lowest fare possible by any means necessary, and they will similarly use any means necessary to get those potential customers to notice those fares. Such a blatant marketing strategy works. Even going up against some big competition, Spirit finds ways to be competitive and successful in flagrant fashion.
Airline of choice: Remain the top choice for international flights for premium customers as well a...
Marketing In this day and age is vital for a company to perform at its possible best. Marketing’s main focus is to give great satisfaction to a customer. There are many aspect of marketing, these aspects give marketer’s the tools to help strive for the best possible success they can achieve. They hope that they can create exposure for their brand, product or service.
United’s Marketing Determining the marketing strategy for a massive airline, like United Airlines, is fairly difficult and extremely complex. Why? Because each city, season, route, and time of day will have some minor to major difference in how the airline presents itself. The difficulty in marketing and advertising for an airline is harder than other industries because each airline is selling thousands of different products. At first glance, United is selling flights, and that seems to encompass one product.
In a dysfunctional time for the airline industry, most airlines, especially major carriers, are adapting the concept of "doing less with more." One low-cost carrier, JetBlue, is changing the domestic aviation landscape in this regard and is defying the odds. Here is a company that has examined each marketing mix elements carefully, has adapted them to its customer’s needs, and is succeeding because of this approach.
First we will discuss product. Within marketing terms, the product can be defined as a good or service that is provided for consumption or use by a customer. An easy example of a service product is hotel customer service. Another example of a product service can be the omnipresent use of cell phones, pertaining to their service providers. Product goods are easy to define, with footwear manufactured by Nike, or soft drinks such as Coca Cola.
Airline and travel industry profitability has been strapped by a series of events starting with a recession in business travel after the dotcom bust, followed by 9/11, the SARS epidemic, the Iraq wars, rising aviation turbine fuel prices, and the challenge from low-cost carriers. (Narayan Pandit, 2005) The fallout from rising fuel prices has been so extreme that any efficiency gains that airlines attempted to make could not make up for structural problems where labor costs remained high and low cost competition had continued to drive down yields or average fares at leading hub airports. In the last decade, US airlines alone had a yearly average of net losses of $9.1 billion (Coombs, 2011).
Porter stated; “for an airline to succeed in the marketplace, it must have a sustainable competitive advantage” (Porter M. E., 2008). The airline industry is the highest competitive industry, and I believe a sustainable completive advantage is essential to succeed in the future of the aviation industry. The competitive advantages that an airline embrace, needs to be based on the airlines strategy and differentiation to competitors. Emirates displays how it has a strategy and how the airline gets ahead of its competitors through how unique it is.
DuBois, S. (2012, February 17). The real threat facing the airlines - Fortune Management. Fortune Management Career Blog RSS. Retrieved April 29, 2014, from http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/02/17/the-real-threat-facing-the-airlines/
With the first of the Ps, price, it is commonly known in the airline industry that ticket prices are volatile primarily because of the fluctuating fuel prices. Fuel costs make up a large portion of Lufthansa’s overall operating expense at 23% (Lufthansa Group, 2013). Another factor to consider for determining the price of a ticket is the time of year in which the available seats are to be sold, namely during the holidays when the demand for travel is high. To take advantage of simple supply and demand effects on the market around the holidays, Lufthansa specifically caters to the higher holiday demands by advertising for holiday customers.
Within the airline industry currently the airlines can be divided into low cost airlines and full service airlines. The low cost airlines targets customers that are seeking no frills connectivity between cities at low ticket prices. The full service airlines provide several add-ons like free meals, on plane entertainment, and communication facilities. The target market for full service airlines are customers who are willing to spend extra for the services that the airlines provides.
The major objective of any company is to make profits. Marketing is responsible for identifying a company’s customers anticipating their needs and wants, satisfying theses needs while keeping the its major goal which maximizing profits
Marketing is very important to the success of a business. Before people can buy a product or service they have to know about it. However, marketing entails more than just letting people know what your company has to offer. Throughout this paper, I will define marketing, offering my personal definition as well as more formal definitions from other sources. Furthermore, I will explain to the reader the importance of marketing to organizational success giving real world examples in support of this explanation. The field of marketing can include many things. I believe, however, the most important thing which it should include is communication with customers as to the value and benefits of using that particular company's products and services. It should help to establish the business's niche in the industry and distinguish it from other such businesses.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA). 2014. Airline Cost Performance. IATA Economics Briefing. [report] IATA, p. 31.