Marketing Principle Springer Science & Business Media

Question: Understand the concept and process of marketing. Explain the various elements of the marketing process. Be able to use the concepts of segmentation, targeting and positioning. Answer: Introduction British Airways are a well-known airline company of United Kingdom. The company is ranked largest airline on fleet size of around 290 and premium airline services. British Airways' predecessor was Aircraft Transport and Travel Ltd. (Britishairways.com 2016).The head office of British airline is situated in Waterside Harmondsworth, London. This assignment focuses on analysis of the process and elements of marketing strategy of British Airways. Further, the assignment will also focus on determining the product and positioning strategy of British Airways in relation to the premium target market in which they serve (Grundy and Moxon 2013). Concept and Process of marketing (LO1) According to Kotler Keller (2016), marketing is the process, which aims at providing satisfaction by creating enhanced product and service value to the concerned group of target customers. Marketing is a strategic process that is used to assess and meet the needs of customer and multifaceted activity. Practically marketing involves collecting, recording and analyzing customer's data to establish a strategy for meeting their need (Khan 2014). British Airways generally follows the following elements of marketing process for enhancement of their services. Pricing strategies: British Airways generally focuses on adoption of premium pricing strategy since the airline service provided by BA focuses on attracting high-class customers. However, in order to compete with low cost airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet, BA has introduced different low cost airline service in some of the selected routes. Product strategies: Since BA is primarily a service provider thus the company focuses on providing high-class service at reasonable rates to all customers. The airway is connected to some of the busiest airports of the world including Heathrow airport. Apart from the flight services BA also provides complementary services like movies on board, radio channel browsing facilities, executive lounges for the gold and executive class customers and customized fooding options. Distribution strategies: Distribution strategy of BA focuses on making availability of its tickets to travel agents, online website booking and reservation systems. Around 20% of the tickets of British airways are sold through their official website and around 56% are sold through online reservations with the help of travel agents. Promotional strategies: BA generally focuses on high promotional strategies during the off seasons in order to cash through the sales of the tickets. Some of the promotional strategies of BA include selling low discounted tickets during Christmas, providing Christmas gift coupons along with the tickets and mobile promotions. Concept of segmentation, targeting and positioning (LO 2) Segmentation Targeting and positioning are strategic planning process that companies follow to place themselves in the market. British airways segment their market with niche concept. British airway segments the huge mass over the time and divides few customers and concentrate over them. With reference to BAs competitors, they created a unified market segment with high level of satisfaction and customer loyalty. (Wedel and Kamakura 2012). This helps British airline to concentrate on particular customer's taste and preferences. Accordingly, they plan to improve their airline services. Segmentation considers specific factors including viability, accessibility and measurability. British airlines offer services to individual within mass according to their common needs and preferences (Morel and Solimini 2012). According to Purcărea et al. (2014), stated that Targeting involves selecting a specific group of customers or prospects as a result of segmentation to offer the services and products. All segments of customers in airline industry need to target with a wide range of products. British airlines follow single line segment targeting and offers four different segments that are: economy, premium economy, executive class and first class. Segmentation bases Target segment ECONOMY PREMIUM EXECUTIVE FIRST CLASS Geographic Region Domestic flight in UK and Europe International flight Europe and international flight International flight Demographic Age Kids, teenager, old Teens, middle age Middle, old age Middle aged person Income Low Middle High High status Low Low and middle quality High status Size of family Joint Nuclear Nuclear Newly married Psychographic Lifestyle Moderate Moderate Achievement Achievement Personality Easygoing Easygoing Determined Ambitious Travel and tourism industry bases Customer expectations Low Medium High High Trip description Regular Recreational Business business Targeting strategy for British Airways Targeting involves selecting segmented groups to target customers to offer them services by airlines group. Targeting by Airline Company can be facilitated by various patterns. Single-segment concentration- here company target single market segment with limited product. Market specialization- a set of various products offered by a company to the same market segment Product specialization- here product remained limited but extended to several market segment British Airways follow single segment targeting to target their prospects. British Airline Company delivers costly services, so they concentrate on single segment only and offers only airlines services (Walker 2014). Positioning of British Airways A British Airway is a high-cost service provider, so they concentrate over a limited mass. Airways Company competes on the frequency of flights, services provided by them, a comfortable level they offer and price range for the different class. Positioning is also done to reduce the competition of the company and differentiate from the competitors as well. British Airways do position in the way to meet the customers need in a unique way. Positioning is a small piece of objective thinking and strategic planning but helps to reduce cost and increases the profit gradually. As British Airlines is one of the reputed flag carriers of United Kingdom, the positioning of the company in customers mind is very adorable. Perceptual map for British Airways References Wedel, M. and Kamakura, W.A., 2012.Market segmentation: Conceptual and methodological foundations(Vol. 8). Springer Science Business Media. Khan, M.T., 2014. The concept of'marketing mix and its elements (a conceptual review paper).International Journal of Information, Business and Management,6(2), p.95. Morel, J.M. and Solimini, S., 2012.Variational methods in image segmentation: with seven image processing experiments(Vol. 14). Springer Science Business Media. Purcărea, V.L., Coculescu, B.I. and Coculescu, E.C., 2014. The concept of marketing in the public-private partnership in the medical system in Romania.Journal of medicine and life,7(Spec Iss 3), p.20. Walker, K., 2014. Airline bashing: targeting airlines for ancillary fees and alleged lack of transparency, while piling on more takes has become sport in Washington DC.AIR TRANSPORT WORLD,51(10). Grundy, M. and Moxon, R., 2013. The effectiveness of airline crisis management on brand protection: A case study of British Airways.Journal of Air Transport Management,28, pp.55-61. Britishairways.com. (2016).Book Flights, Holidays Check In Online | British Airways. [online] Available at: https://www.britishairways.com [Accessed 21 Mar. 2016]. Kotler, P. Keller, K.L. 2016,Marketing management,15, Global edn, Pearson, Boston.