Discuss about the American Airline Rainbow team and its Strategy to Target the LGBT Segment.
Marketing management is considered as the discipline of organizational discipline which mainly focuses on the practical application of marketing orientation and techniques inside organization. This report will be reflected the analysis of case study which topic is American Airline’s Rainbow Team & its Strategy to Target the LBGT Segment. It will define the concepts of market which would be helpful for further studies. Marketing segmentation is a process which divides potential customers in to group. A complete discussion will be mentioning in this report regarding marketing environment, market research, consumer behavior, targeting and positioning, products and services, decision of distribution, integrated marketing communication and price consideration (Guaracino and Salvato, 2017). These above elements will be helpful for student to know more about case study. Case study will be analyzed effectively by taking all elements which is mentioned above.
American airlines are a well repudiated airline in all over the world. The head quarter of it’s situated at Forth Worth, Texas, U.S.A. It was founded in 1930 and it was considered as one of the largest airline which was known by its services to the customers. It has 900 aircrafts in its fleet. The marketing and sale team of American Airline was strong. With the help of marketing and sale team American airlines was able to being a first airline to enhance the specialty market and sales team for LGBT, African Americans, women customers and Hispanics.
Marketing concept refers the research and analysis of the customers to formulate strategies so that they can make aware about the brand awareness, cross promote and transfer viewers into ongoing clients. Marketing concept is just the philosophy in which enterprise analyzes the needs and demands of customers and then builds decision to satisfy them. Logo was a channel of gay cable. In April 2009 when Logo launched a travel website which is dedicated to LGBT community, American Airlines came ahead at that time to become a site wide sponsor. There was a team which name was Rainbow team and the marketing manager of rainbow team was appointed to put focus on the LGBT segment (Vorobjovas?Pinta and Hardy, 2016). It was said by George Carancho manager of rainbow team that we would do work hard to make high reputation of American Airlines in the progress of LGBT. The partnership with Trip out Gay Travel and LGBT will help AA to bring most efficient services to LGBT customers. AA was the first company to an LGBT focused marketing and sales team. The marketing program had been started in the early 1990s was later renamed with Rainbow Team and it was led by Bett Young and Carrancho, who was gay and lesbian respectively (Alonso, 2013).
Consumer behavior is the concept which shows that how individuals, groups and organization select products and consume them. It is necessary for the marketers to know the behavior of consumer. There are several steps which have been followed by consumer to take decision. Firstly consumer find the problem, problem recognition arises when consumer find the difference between current position of affairs and desired position (Puar, 2013). After that consumer search the information from family, commercial approach and public approach. Once a customer recognized the problems and explored the possible options then he evaluate the alternatives. Purchase decision of consumer is must but it can be two types one is purchase intention and purchase decision. AA airlines identified the behavior of consumer efficiently and after that it started to provide the services appropriately (Borges, Ulbricht and Pallas, 2016,). It initiated AA.com website on 2008 which was enabled to check the fares of travelers and also had access to check the range of travel offers.
Image: process of customer decision making
Source: ( Witeck, 2014).
American airlines had approached market segmentation and after analyzing the market it started to provide the services to LGBT. An American airline was the first airline that made so many strategies so that it could able to target LGBT segment. AA had also made a name for itself in the field of inclusion policies and diversity (Berezan, Raab, Krishen and Love, 2015). According to case study of American Airline’s Rainbow Team & its Strategy to Target the LBGT Segment, it has been analyzed that AA has 15 groups of employee resources which were known by its diversity and varieties of communities. These groups were appointed for the purpose of give guidance and ideas about airlines business initiatives (Visser, 2014). AA airline had set up councils which are divided into two parts, first one was focused on women travelers and second one is made for LGBT travelers. These were the segmentation process of AA airlines to its business and LGBT was the target market for AA airlines. Due to effective services it has been analyzed by the experts that AA had successfully tapped the rapid growing segment of LGBT.
Figure 2: Market segmentation for airlines
Source: (Wanke and Barros, 2016)
We’re off again defines that there is many kind of travelers who travel frequently via airlines. They are considered as the experienced travelers who are likely to be a loyal for airlines. These kinds of segments have significant ability to attract the other customers to make purchase decision. The second market segmentation is for quiet regular airline travelers. The main purpose behind traveling of travelers is mostly personal reason or holidays. This kind of travelers are considered as the highly brand loyal. This segment of airlines is long term and gauged as an ideal target market for airlines. Urgent travelers are infrequent as they travel not in frequent basis. The involvement of traveler in this segment is made on urgent basis because they travel for certain reason such as wedding or funeral. In that condition airlines sold its ticket at premium rate. The segmentation of airlines for business travelers is the market which is relatively brand loyal to an airline.
Positioning is an act which involves the implementing of targeted market. Positioning strategy includes target customers and competitors. AA had chosen to position itself and that is why it involved in the sponsorship of LGBT. As per case study it has been analyzed that AA had launched the microsite in November 2005, which was mainly targeted to the segment of LGBT. It was observed by airline industry that it was the first site which aimed at tapping the LGBT segment based on their travel habits (Lucena, Jarvis and Weeden, 2015). The microsite has been listed with special 50 destinations to the LGBT travelers and along with that it offered special vacation packages to them. By approaching those kinds of strategies AA was enabled to make position in the airlines. It was one of the main factors which attracted so many travelers to American Airlines. It was the microsite which was enabled to combine airfare of LGBT with other services such as rental car, hotels and packages of tour. It was offered by American Airlines that whosoever booked trips through microsite would get bonus up to 1000 miles. These miles could be purchased by traveler in the use of travel packages booking including rental of hotels and many more. Brand is an image which is able to attract customers towards services and products. American Airline was branded airline and it involved in so many activities so that progress of country can move ahead. Carrancho was the manager of LGBT who said that once again we are proud to lead as a first U.S. airline in the airline industry with its own packages. These were all the aspects which were covered by American Airline to being as branded.
Marketing management is a process through which individuals or groups achieved what they need. It is the management of satisfaction of customers at a profit. Without considering the competition focus on satisfaction of customers referred as marketing management (Hollensen, 2015). There are so many features and content which was offered by AA.com or Rainbow team. There were no booking fees from the side of AA for LGBT and along with that AA provided number of services to LGBT such as lowest fare, e-special news letter, small business travel program, community calendar of LGBT and many more. This kind of marketing management by American Airlines made position of US airlines in all over the world. AA was not believed in advertising to the segment of LGBT (Olson, 2017). Nevertheless, it was the company that advertised this community online. It was analyzed through case study that there was no requirement of advertisement for the first ten years. It was perception of American Airlines that dollars could have been invested in the sponsorship and LOGO. As per the case study market research has been conducted by Harris interactive and Witeck combs and it has been founded by them that among all online adults, lesbian and Gay spent most of their time in most popular three sites that is facebook, friendster and Myspace. AA teamed up to approach them and enhance the popularity of LGBT segment. To target audience Facebook was gauged as one of the most popular social networking site (Kauhanen, 2015).
As resulted the sales and marketing team of American Airlines earned huge profit from LGBT segment. It was a part of the American Airlines that people who work unwilling to self identifies but also likely to travel in American Airlines because of its friendly credentials regarding LGBT. It has been analyzed through case study that American Airlines gained high levels of brand loyalty among the LGBT customer. The customers of entity LGBT was very satisfied and preferred American Airlines to travel anywhere because of their services. As per the commitment of Manager of LGBT segment that the core principle of marketing LGBT that the situation of both parties will be same. It was the concept of American Airlines that profit should be considered not only for the organization that also the community
Conclusion
It has been concluded that marketing management is a management which is done by business to earn more profit. LGBT used to refer collectively lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender people. American Airlines was one of the airlines who took sponsorship of LGBT segment and provided to my services regarding LGBT. The entire report has been made with the help of case study American Airline’s Rainbow Team & its Strategy to Target the LBGT. In this report the Marketing concept of American Airline has been discussed which represent the Research and Analysis of the customer so that they could aware about brand. The Concept of marketing has been discussed through considering LGBT segment of American Airlines. Consumer behavior, segmenting targeting, positioning and branding are the main elements of the concept of market which has been mentioned in this report. Marketing management is a management that takes care of the need of customer and tries to make them satisfied by providing better services. It was a different approach by American Airlines to make itself different from other Airlines. It has been analyzed through case study that competition was set to increase in LGBT segment in the form of companies but American Airlines was effective enough resolve the issue regarding services of LGBT.
American airlines were one of the airlines that started LGBT segment. However, this report has been made on the marketing management but there is some recommendation which should have in the procedures of American airlines. American airlines should consider another segment as well because as it is not possible for the company to connect with all customers. Segmentation is the approach which helps to divide the customers into different segments. Targeting is a part of market segmentation which focuses on targeted market (Limpanitgul, et. al., 2017).it has been recommended that the manager of the specific segment should be genuine and have leadership skill. In 2003, American Airline has declared at the official airline of more National and local LGBT leadership organizational than any other field (Cattan and Vanolo, 2014). It was a great effort that was put by American Airlines in the favor of LGBT segment and due to it; there are so many awards and recognition they got. It has been evaluated that in comparison of before so many airlines has come in this field that started to provide services to LGBT segment. It is recommended to American airlines to provide different services so that differentiation can be made. This difference can be made by providing different services such as special offer on tickets of LGBT segment. AA can hire candidate from the community of LGBT segment, it would encourage them to study more and get high professional life. AA should hire candidate of LGBT community not only for providing services to LGBT segment but also other segments. It will encourage equality among people. Apart from that AA should take care of competitive advantage and promote LGBT segment via advertising, referral and by accepting many more way
References
Alonso, M, 2013, A Case Study on LGBT Tourism: An Isomorphist Opportunity with Regard to an Emerging Segment, In Best Inclusion Practices (pp. 168-188). Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Baker, M.J., 2014, Marketing strategy and management. Palgrave Macmillan.
Berezan, O., Raab, C., Krishen, A.S. and Love, C., 2015, Loyalty runs deeper than thread count: An exploratory study of gay guest preferences and hotelier perceptions, Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 32(8), pp.1034-1050.
Borges, M.C., Ulbricht, M.R. and Pallas, F., 2016,When Culture Trumps Economic Laws: Persistent Segmentation of the Mobile Instant Messaging Market, In International Conference on the Economics of Grids, Clouds, Systems, and Services (pp. 115-126). Springer, Cham.
Cattan, N. and Vanolo, A., 2014, Gay and lesbian emotional geographies of clubbing: reflections from Paris and Turin, Gender, Place & Culture, 21(9), pp.1158-1175.
Guaracino, J. and Salvato, E., 2017, Handbook of LGBT Tourism and Hospitality: A Guide for Business Practice, Columbia University Press.
Hollensen, S., 2015, marketing management: A relationship approach. Pearson Education.
Kauhanen, S., 2015, Think Pink in Tourism-A Study of LGBT+ Tourism.
Limpanitgul, T., Limpanitgul, T., Boonchoo, P., Boonchoo, P., Kulviseachana, S., Kulviseachana, S., Photiyarach, S. and Photiyarach, S., 2017, The relationship between empowerment and the three-component model of organisational commitment: an empirical study of Thai employees working in Thai and American airlines, International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, 11(2), pp.227-242.
Lucena, R., Jarvis, N. and Weeden, C., 2015, A review of gay and lesbian parented families’ travel motivations and destination choices: gaps in research and future directions, Annals of Leisure Research, 18(2), pp.272-289.
Olson, E.D., 2017, An exploration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender pride festival sponsors, In Journal of Convention & Event Tourism (Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 60-73). Routledge.
Puar, J., 2013, Rethinking homonationalism, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 45(2), pp.336-339.
Visser, G., 2014. Gay and Lesbian Tourism Practices, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Tourism, pp.435-444.
Vorobjovas?Pinta, O. and Hardy, A., 2016, The evolution of gay travel research, International Journal of Tourism Research, 18(4), pp.409-416.
Wanke, P. and Barros, C.P., 2016, Efficiency in Latin American airlines: a two-stage approach combining Virtual Frontier Dynamic DEA and Simplex Regression, Journal of Air Transport Management, 54, pp.93-103.
Witeck, B., 2014, Cultural change in acceptance of LGBT people: lessons from social marketing, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 84(1), p.19
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