Marketing Principles & Practice

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A) Marketing Concept and Terminology Applicable For British Airlines

The Marketing concept is a strategy that is implemented by a company to maximize profit, fulfil customer needs, and enhance the level of sales to survive the competition. There are some marketing concepts that British Airways applies in their organization. These concepts are Product strategy, Branding and Promotional strategy.

Product Strategy:

Products and services are very important factors in an organization. This is the vision of the company to make a product a success in the industry. Product strategy helps to map up the right design to build a product with innovation at a low cost by maintaining the quality of that product (Ramli, 2016). Basically, the product strategy refers to customers preferring the product with good quality, performance, affordable price, and innovative features.

British Airways includes in their product strategy numerous destinations across the world, works speedily, supports customers, and satisfies customers' needs for services, and quality of flight. British Airways applies this strategy they focus on market demand and plan. They provide quality services to their customers at a reasonable price, including entertainment screens, beds, cabins, extra space, meal courses etc. that make it more luxurious, to make the customer's journey happy. They work for customer's better flight experience.

Branding Strategy:

Branding is a marketing concept used by the company to create an image for the company or product and services in the customer's mind. Effective brand strategy differentiates the company from competitors, the company's brand defines the company (Shinnar, 2016). The brand includes the company's Logo, website, packaging, and promotional material. Branding is important for a business to increase the value of the company. It increases the investment opportunity because the company is firmly established in the market, creates trust in customers, and supports advertising. Branding demonstrated by the consumers experience that the company attempts to create.

British Airways creates an image of being popular, reliable, luxurious and a better flight experience for the customers. British Airways has been voted as the number one British brand, in the consumer and business super brand list for their world-class services. British Airlines got the number one position in travel - airlines in the consumer survey which has enhanced its branding. They provide better services comparable to competitive company. It attracts investors for investment. Superbrand consists of quality, reliability and distinction, British Airways brand's current profile leads marketing activities and new service development, provides a comfortable journey to their customers and surpasses the expectations of their consumers, making them popular among their customers. In consumer super brand British Airways holds the fifth position.

Promotional Strategy:

Promotion is an attempt by the company to inform, remind and influence the customers with their products and services. The company has wide goals, so it needs to apply a promotional strategy. The Promotional Strategy is a marketing concept to grow the business. It is the mode of influencing the consumer, there are various methods to promoting the company for marketing purposes, regarding the company's products and services. A strong promotional strategy helps the company to grow in a positive manner (Rakib, 2018). This strategy is an idea to promote the company's brand, and logo, also create awareness, make customers try the company's products, provide information about products and services, and help to find the customer. The company promote traditional advertising, sales promotion, social media, e-commerce, and websites.

British Airways uses a promotional strategy to promote and create awareness among customers. British Airways examines the market and determines its competitors, British airways launched a social media campaign to integrate and promote its website, provides promotional updates and customer services they creates an entertaining flight system by playing current TV shows, music, games or films that can give a company customer advantage, as well as they advertise their airport sights, increase their existing customers experience of flights they work with brand ambassadors to increase their brand awareness in consumer, innovate and improve ideas to providing service, also provides discount on occasions to increase sales of tickets. They provide more luxurious and comfortable services in less cost to its customers. Therefore, British Airways is popular with its customers across the UK and the world.

B) Marketing Strategies and Programs That Helped British Airways Achieve Objectives

British Airways is always known for its different marketing strategies and unique campaigns to market its products and services, attracting new customers. It connects people all over the world, people with different backgrounds, and stories. Some of most appreciated advertisement and marketing programs of British Airways are described below.

• Reinventing British Airways Digital Experience: This is the marketing strategy, where the objective was to eliminate customer pain points before, during and after the journey smoothly. This has helped in better problem identification and speedy resolution of it.
• Fuelled by Love: In this marketing campaign, British Airways came up with a story to target the Indian market where a UK-based cabin crew member develops a bond with one of her customers during her trip to India (COUASME and GURGEY, 2016). This video acclaimed a positive response, which shows how one can find love and affection in India.
• Technology: In this marketing strategy, British Airways aircraft to be fitted with full streaming, high-speed Wi-Fi, using the latest technology customers would be able to use the internet after 10 minutes of take-off. It is also using biometric technology to speed up the boarding and arrival processes in a few cities with long-haul flights boarded in half the usual time (Taneja, 2016). During the journey, passengers can make changes in bookings and can do business work which adds productivity advantage to passengers.
• Lookup Campaign: Many times people look up and see planes and think where it is going so British Airways came up with an idea to combine this curiosity with the technology by creating an amazing digital billboard which gives live time info about the flight that flew above. It mostly targets people who are at a growing stage of life like adults and who want to experience and know about everything. This is an effort to support kids' curiosity and questioning minds.
• British Airways Safety Video: This film was designed to help customers absorb safety messages while fund-raising for 'Flying Start' global charity partnership with Comic Relief. This story sends message to donate. This video is being revolving and being appreciated, which is raising consumer awareness and brand value for the company.
• The Unforgettable Sale: It focuses on the concept of 'What if?' memories and unforgettable trips. In this, the airline will offer holiday advice to its customers with emojis and holiday destinations based on personality and mood (Iordanova, 2018). It offers numerous offers to its customers which makes the journey more memorable. In this way, it is grabbing customers and enhancing experience which is one of its objectives.
• Championing Animal Welfare and Conservation: It is the most unique marketing strategy British Airlines has developed, by partnering with the Born Free Foundation to support animal welfare. It helps customers make an informed decision where hotels which are known for keeping captive wild animals by indicating it in their product descriptions.
• Helping Communities at The Time of Crisis: British Airways often work with the Disaster Emergency Committee at the time of crisis in order to ensure vital relief reaches the needy as quickly as possible (Opreana and Vinerean, 2015). This shows how the company is taking an active part in the crisis, which contributes to its CSR activity and enhances and publishes a positive image of itself.

British Airways has achieved its objectives ethical as it is the first UK airline to offset carbon emissions on all its flights from next year by investing in carbon reduction projects. The airline is trying to connect to with people emotionally by valuing people's emotions. British Airways has worked ethically in order to attain its objectives. It has put customer well-being on the top priority, it is targeting each level of people so that everyone who dreams of it, can fulfil the dreams. British Airways works on continuous customer analysis so that it can come up with new objectives to attract new customers. Every issue in society is taken as an objective and opportunity to bring some changes.

C) Marketing Concepts and Principles Used by British Airways

British Airways is the leading airliner in the world not only because of its quality and service but also because of its strategic marketing which gives it a competitive advantage over other competitors. To learn more about its marketing strategies, a detailed analysis of its marketing concepts and principles is done below.

7Ps of Marketing Mix

7Ps is a marketing strategy framework that helps in evaluating the business and how each element of the mix makes a business successful. So, to widen the knowledge 7Ps of the marketing mix is done on British Airways and how it has contributed to its success.

• Product: It refers to what you are selling and how it will benefit your customer. British Airways offers valuable and excellent products and services to satisfy its customers' needs and wants. It offers affordable prices for flight tickets to any destination (Lancaster and Massingham, 2017). They provide exclusive lounges, where passengers can spend quality time, eat and relax.
• Price: It refers to the pricing strategy of your product and services and how it will impact your customer. The price of British Airways is decided keeping in mind every class of consumers so that everyone can avail of its services. It has implemented different pricing strategy as per the different customer needs.
• Place: It refers to where your product will be made available and how your customers will access it. British Airways has used this tool wisely as it flies to more than 400 destinations in the worldwide (West, Ford and Ibrahim, 2015). It keeps on merging with significant destinations and it has its own warehouse for servicing the aircrafts.
• Promotion: It refers to what promotional activities can be used to make your customers aware of your products and services. To be in touch with its customers, British Airlines has created a mobile application for its special customers, to promote its services. It also provides special offers on different occasions like Christmas gift vouchers for consumers to travel at discounted prices.
• Physical evidence: It refers to everything that customers are interacting with respect to business. The services and quality provided by British Airways make a huge distinction from its competitors in terms of seat comfort, space, interiors, innovation etc. British Airways has effective physical evidence which can be notified by their planes, crew, Logo, and various counters at Airports across the world.
• People: It refers to the employees or staffs who is working for your business. British Airways has a top level of training for its staff from crew to engineers. It always keeps in mind its slogan “To fly. To serve.Today.Tomorrow.” with high aim.
• Process: It refers to the process involved in manufacturing or delivering the product or services to the customer (Groucutt and Hopkins, 2015). British airlines need to have a structured process so that it can provide the same quality of services to their customers every time like, in-flight meals should always be of good quality standard.

SRIP4

Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning

STP refers to marketing plan that helps marketers identify target customers. The detailed analysis is described below.

• Segmentation: It refers to market research and analysis to identify the customer needs and segment the market based on it. It has different segments, first demographic, where customers are characterized based on occupation, education, social status, family size. Second, geography is characterized by age, gender, income, density etc. Third, psychographic, based on lifestyle, personality and occasions. Fourth behavioural, depend upon benefits, status, attitude. Fifth is the travel and tourism industry base, taking into consideration customer expectations, image, and trip descriptors (Palmatier and Crecelius, 2019). British Airways has taken into consideration all the above factors such as a number of domestic and international flights, customer demand, and lifestyle type of trips.
• Targeting: British Airways has targeted different customer segments based on its level of services: economy class, premium economy, executive club and first class. Targeted every class of customers from low to high level class (Sahu, and Pradhan, 2017).
• Positioning: British Airways serves different customers globally because of its customer positioning as it has targeted customers' needs like regular trips, business trips, family vacations, occasional trips, customer expectations etc.

CONCLUSION

In this report, the Airline industry has been described with the help of British Airways company and the growing importance of marketing in the airline industry. British Airways is the second largest airline in the United Kingdom on the basis of passenger carried and fleet size. The first part explains various concepts and terminology of marketing that have been used some of them are Product strategy, Branding and Promotional strategy. It can be concluded that there are various marketing concepts used by British Airways to achieve its objectives. Also, there are various marketing strategies and programs that have been used by British Airways in achieving their business objectives. Also, the objectives which have been achieved were ethical. It can also be concluded from the report marketing principle and concept which have been used by British Airlines for its daily organisational operation and there exists a strong relationship between marketing and other functional areas

Also read:- Analysis of Personal and Managerial Effectiveness

RECOMMENDATIONS

• It is suggested for British Airways in order to attract a huge audience with its offers, the best way to use social media marketing like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp etc. This can help the company to target a huge audience with loss costs.
• Also, it is recommended for the company to market its offers and discounts in an effective manner and develop an effective marketing strategy.
• British Airways should keep on innovating its promotional and branding strategies in order to keep customers engaged.

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