Marketing Management
Assessment 2
Introduction
Marketing management refers to the art of identifying and maintaining clients, advertising and promoting goods and services as well as creating superior consumer value for a brand. For all these functions, the marketing department of a corporation is liable. The marketing team of a company is responsible for these activities (Deepak and Jeyakumar, 2019). The main job of a marketing team is to generate leads for the company so the demand. A company can therefore increase its profitability by addressing the demand with an efficient supply of goods and services. In this report, the role of marketing in terms of creating long-term customer loyalty and the use of target marketing in achieving success will be discussed.
Main Body
Identify how marketing can create long-term loyalty to an organisation in different market contexts as discussed in the case.
The airline industry will be able to create long-term loyalty with its customers in the following ways:
Customer satisfaction:
An airline company will be able to create long-term loyalty with its customers by satisfying them. As per the case study, Dubai is a major tourist destination and has seen an increase in the number of tourists over the past few years (Kotler and Keller, 2015). Customers are a demanding bunch and they have increased their demands over the past years. Airlines companies can satisfy their customers in many ways:
Taking a customer-first approach: An airline company can satisfy its customers in the following ways,
Interacting with their customers in a friendly manner and responding to their queries in every possible way.
The airlines must address customer problems and must acknowledge their needs.
Airlines must keep their customers updated on the arrivals and departures of the flight. Companies can do this by providing their customers with regular email and SMS alerts.
If the airline company can provide its customers with a seamless experience, they will also benefit from the word of mouth publicity.
Airline companies must understand customer preference by interacting with them and anticipate their future needs.
Supporting customers: Airline companies can also improve customer experience by interacting with them through social media platforms. The airline company can choose the social media platform of their choice. Twitter can be a very useful social media platform for airline companies as it gives people the latest news on airlines cancellation and time alerts.
An example, of such an event, was when a passenger of the JetBlue tweeted that their T.V was not working. This would damage the reputation of the company. However, the company immediately responded to the customer and when it was not able to troubleshoot the issue the customer got credit in return. The customer was happy with their service and retweeted with an appreciation comment (twitter.com, 2021).
Collaboration in the internal departments: Collaboration can help an airline company to improve their services as well as satisfy their customer. Collaboration between the marketing team and the customer service team can improve the passenger experience. The customer experience will be able to communicate genuine information to their customers and solve their problems. The marketing team will be able to give strategic suggestions on how to reply to customers to decrease company cost as well as solve the problems of their customers (Homburg et al., 2012).
Encouraging customer loyalty: An airline company will be able to increase its profitability by ensuring that their customers get better service on their next trip. Companies can gain customer loyalty in the following five ways, offering conveniences, taking advice from their customers and implementing it, rewarding their customers and making customer service a priority. Offering conveniences include ease of access to food, water and blanket on the aeroplane. By providing customer loyalty points the aeroplane company will be able to help themselves as well as their customers. Customers can use these points when travelling to a destination in the future and the company will also be able to retain their customers.
Service quality: The quality of service also determines whether the company will have to create long-term loyalty with their customers. In order to improve the service quality, the airline company will have to focus on the following factors,
Reliability: Reliability refers to how long the company can provide quality service without any errors in their operations. Many times airline companies lose a large amount of customer base if negative news about the company comes up. Since air travelling can be very risky passengers tend to choose a company whose has a clear record. An airline company must always check their systems to minimise any error in the system of the vehicle (Aaker and David, 1996). Reliability tests will help the airline company to determine how long their passenger carrier will be able to fly without any interval.
Responsiveness: Responsiveness refers to the time required by the company to respond to the queries and problems of their customers. The customer rate a company's customer services based on different factors such as the speed of their response, the way they approach them and the speed of resolving an issue. The company will not be able to get a good customer rating if their response is quick, however; they are not able to solve the query of the customer. In order to get everything right, the company must hire professional employees and provide them with proper training and teach them to handle different situations.
Assurance: A company should make sure that their customers get all the services that the company has promised to provide to them. If a customer finds that, service is missing, however, they have paid for it they may rate their experience as to as expected. This may damage the image of the company and people would choose a different option when travelling next time.
Tangibility: Bing in the airline industry a company must always provide their customers with the best quality serviced which also includes being perceivable by touch. A company that provides its customers with luxurious experience are guaranteed to have an increase in their customer bases in the future. Customer may also suggest their relatives use the service of a certain company (Cateora and Graham, 2007).
Security and safety: An airline company has to gather the information of their passengers so that they can allow them to fly, as per the rules and regulations of the country. It is important to keep a record of the customer data for any federal reasons. Since the company handles all data they should keep it safe and secure in their system. Any kind of leakage of information will damage the reputation of the company.
Analyse how target marketing using integrated marketing channels can drive business growth has discussed in the case above.
Integrated marketing refers to interacting and communicating with customers in order to help the business grow. An airline company will be able to attract more customer if they communicate their speciality to them. Targeting customers is one of the most important marketing function. The marketing department of the airline company is responsible for targeting customers through a various approach such as paid media, earned media and owned media (Wall et al., 2010). Paid media refers to advertising, direct marketing, commercial marketing and online display. Earned media refers to the ways a company can gather customers with the help of their content, PR and online influencer outreach. Owned media refers to the customers that the company gains through their backlinks, social media, on-site UX, email marketing and direct messaging (Grewal et al., 2020). All of these are the integrated marketing channels that an airline company can use to expand their business.
The airline industry is very huge and can target any kind of customer no one is restricted from travelling. An airline company can target most of the customers through direct marketing channels. One of the most widely used devices used by people is their television. Customers watch sports, movies, cartoons and news on their television. Therefore, advertising using a television will help a company to target many potential customers. The company can also advertise by sponsoring different sports teams. Since there is a large number of people who are interested in sports company can make effective use of it. Sponsoring is a very effective integrated marketing strategy (Adromida, 2011). Example of an airline company is the Fly Emirates. The Fly Emirates sponsors one of the most prestigious teams in the English Premier League. When people watch sports, they become aware of the different sponsors that are visible to their naked eye (emirates.com, 2021). Since this league is followed by people all around the world the airline company can target potential customers from all over the world. These are the paid integrated marketing channels.
Another way that an airline company can target customers is through earned media. Earned media refers to the customers that a company gains through their efforts. An airline company can target customers by forming public relations. One of the most useful ways of forming public relations is to practice corporate social responsibility activities. Corporate social responsibilities refer to the activities that a company performs to help the society or to perform activities to protect the environment or by providing benefits to their employees and customers. People usually track these things while choosing a company (Belch and Belch, 2007). When a company performs such activities if forms a good brand image. Therefore, it can target more customers. The company can form great public relations by providing those benefits such as discounts on their first flight. This gains that attention of many customers and after the company can get customers to use their service, they focus on retaining them.
Content marketing is also a way of earning customers. An airline company will be able to attract more customers by displaying its content in the form of a blog or a video. Video content marketing is more effective since it gives the customers a clear picture with the description of their system. People interested in travelling are always looking for the best experience according to their budget. Online influencer marketing can also be included in earned media. Online influencer marketing refers to when a company uses an influencer for marketing its products to a large number of people. This is a very effective strategy since influences have the most number of followers on social media (Gordon et al., 2016). Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are examples of online influences. These people have a large number of followers and people usually tend to follow what these people use for their daily activities. If such an influencer forms a good image of a company by a small advertisement on their page, the company will be able to target a large customer base.
Owned media refers to the customers that the company can directly reach with the help of social media, messages, e-mails and backlinks. Airline companies usually take the information about their passengers when they register for a flight such as their phone number and e-mail addresses. By gaining such information, companies will be able to send offers regarding flights to them with the help of email marketing and direct messages. It is up to the customer if they want to receive such kind of offers (Müller, 2018). If a customer gets irritated with the number of emails and messages sent by a company, they may stop using the service of such an organisation. Therefore, companies must send such offers to their customer only with their permission. The company must also provide an option where the customer can unsubscribe from receiving such messages.
Airline industries should make it easier for customers to book tickets from their websites. In order to form a good customer experience an airline company, it is advisable to for a good user experience. In order to do so, the interface that the company provides to their customers to book tickets must be attractive and should be easy to use. The company can also guide the users by proving guideline at a place that will be very easily visible to their customers or by providing a help section. A help section is a place where customers can find solutions to the issues they are facing with using their website.
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the report that an airline company can use various techniques to make loyal customers. The best way a company can gain loyal customers is by customer satisfaction and through the quality of service. Retaining customer is a very difficult task but with the right procedure, companies can do it without any hassles. Airline companies can also target their customers through integrated marketing channels. There are their ways of targeting customers that are, paid media, earned media and owned media.
Reference list
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Gordon, R., Russell-Bennett, R. and Lefebvre, R.C., 2016. Social marketing: the state of play and brokering the way forward.
Emirates and Arsenal Renew Sponsorship Deal. 2021. Emirates and Arsenal Renew Sponsorship Deal. [online] Available at: <https://www.emirates.com/media-centre/emirates-and-arsenal-renew-sponsorship-deal/#:~:text=In%20addition%20to%20being%20shirt,and%20initiatives%20around%20the%20world.> [Accessed 30 January 2021].
