Current Issues In Marketing: A Case Study Of Emirates Airline

Background of the organization

Discuss about the Current Issues in Marketing.

As the business environment has become dynamic in nature, the organizations both SMEs and large organizations have been facing some major critical challenges related to marketing. Measuring the Return on Investment of marketing activities is the top marketing challenge in accordance to the 2015 “State of inbound report” (Thompson et al., 2013). Apart from this, there are some other issues such as pricing issues, segmentation issues, issues related to the issues and other strategic issues. Thus, in order to understand the possible marketing issues often faced by the organization across the globe, the current working scenario of Emirates Airline, UAE has been considered in the present report. As per the current global scenario, the airline industry is one of the fastest growing industries as it is supporting the globalization as well as internationalization objectives for businesses around the world (Hur, Won Moon & Jun, 2013). Emirates Airline has been chosen for the current report since it is a major competitor for many global organizations. In the current report, an intensive analysis of the brand has been presented identifying the major critical issues.

Emirates is airline organization, which is based in Dubai and the government of United Arab Emirates in 1985 first established the organization. One of the major activity performed by the organization is commercial air transportation service. Emirates Airline gains a huge popularity across the globe due to its extended services. Emirates currently operates 3400 flights each week. In addition, Emirates Airline is one of the fastest growing international airline. The annual growth of the company has never fallen below 20% (Selnes, 2013). It is identified that Emirates achieved the progress due to the ability of the workforce. The employees of Emirates understand the process of fitting the world together. The success of the organization does not only come from the industry and the customers; some external factors are also there to influence the business. Some critical factors such as global economy, shifting of population, trade and politics, diversity and sustainability could influence the business of Emirates Airline. After two decades of the establishment, Emirates has expanded its empire with the 85 aircrafts in more than 55 countries souring to 78 destinations (Namukasa, 2013). Furthermore, Emirates Airline has the largest number of cabin crew and they are failing from 95 different nationals.

Figure 1: Logo of the organization

Goals, Mission Statement, Vision Statement and Objectives of Emirates Airline

(Source: The Emirates Group Companies, 2016)

Goals: The major goal of the organization it to see the world from the top by enhancing what they perform

Mission Statement: Emirates Airline exist to provide people with a new experience of watching the world.

Vision Statement: The major vision of the organization is to make the civil aviation safe, remarkable and sustainable.

Objectives: One of the major objectives of the Emirates is to retain and increase frequent business class travel’s market share.  Another objective is to maximize the market share 45-60% by 2020 (Chen & Hu 2013). The organization is also determined to tap the low cost carrier market share to ear return on investment of the organization. Another significant objective is promote Dubai’s Tourism activities and represent Dubai the world.

Positioning statement: “The finest in the sky”

The campaign of Emirates Airline continuous to grow from travel brand to global lifestyle brand. The campaign of Emirates Airline also includes the digital activities in a bid to engage with the young audience. The current scenario of the organization indicates that the new target of the organization individuals who are well-travelled, and ambitious to become well-travelled and the people who adopt the opportunity to try the unfamiliar. The brand aspect of Emirates Airline are discussed below with six different brand elements.

Memorability: As mentioned by Hennig-Thurau, Hofacker and Bloching (2013), the brand elements help to achieve a greater level of brand awareness to the brand. The brands should be represented in a way that customers easily recall the brand at the time consumptions as well as the purchase. In such a context, the Emirate Airline gains the opportunity of running the operation from Dubai, which is one of the largest and economically developed cities in the world. Thus, attaching the brand name with the largest city Dubai creates a positive impression in the views of customers. Therefore, people remember the brand as Emirates, Dubai.

Meaningfulness: The brand Emirate has an understandable meaning and it is credible. The name “Emirates” inherited from the United Arab Emirates (Shani & Chalasani 2013). All big cities in Middle East come under UAE. Thus, people find a corresponding category while considering an inherent meaning. In addition, “Fly Emirates” represents a positive practice of nature such as “flying in the sky”. This indicates that people find a corresponding option in the name.

Likeability: As mentioned by Brodie et al. (2013), the brand names should be inherently interesting and colourful and not necessarily directly related to the brand. In addition, the brand could use the recent trend for playful name that easily offer the readily available URL. In such context, the brand name “Fly Emirates” is one of the trendy names as people find a corresponding category in the name. The popular social media tool Twitter promotes the page of Fly Emirates.

Analysing the brand aspects

The above-mentioned criteria forms the offensive strategies toward building the brands. Likewise, the following three criteria forms the defensive strategies towards maintaining the brand equity.

Transferability: As mentioned by Shapiro & Varian (2013), transferability is referred to a degree based on which the brand elements could add brand equity to the products and services. Yoo and Bai (2013) added that marketers should know that brand ability should have the ability to add brand equity across geographical boundaries. In such context, Emirates Airline comes with an incredible idea to add brand equity and increase brand value. It is evident that each individual has the dream to fly in the sky or individual might have the fantasy to touch the sky (Dobruszkes 2013). Thus, the word Fly of “Fly Emirates” creates fantasy among people to fly in the sky or it generates the idea that if one could fly in the sky, also touch the sky. Likewise, Emirates gets into the mind of people and represent itself adding the brand equity.

Adaptability: It is evident that customer perception, opinions and values keep changing over time (Gluckman, 2013). Therefore, the brand should be adaptable and flexible so that it becomes easier to change and update. However, the organization does not changes its brand logo or update. Emirates Airline has wide range of products and services based on the needs and demands of the industry. On the contrary, the organization promotes its products and services based on the current events and affaire. For example, in 2014, the footballer and the legend Pele and Cristiano Rolando joined Emirates global campaign to connect sports fan around the world as global ambassador for Emirates Airline. However, this strategy does not make the brand flexible.

Protectability: This is the final criteria in selecting a brand element. This means the brand should be protectable both legally as well as comparatively (Gluckman, 2013). Therefore, the brands elements should be chosen in such a way that it could be protected globally. In such context, the brand name “Fly Emirates” becomes the synonymous with the service Fly Emirates.

The above-mentioned discussion helps to learn that Emirates Airline has successfully presented its brand in the market. However, the Emirates could apply new strategies to represent the brand more successfully.

It has been identified that operational cost of Emirates Airline is extremely high and it is because of the large investment on technologies, best quality services and aircrafts. In such case, the organization needs to control its cost as well as minimize the overall cost through enhancement and development of operational activities. Emirates should focus on better utilization of the resources such as Aircrafts. They also need focus on the maintenance process. Another significant way of reducing the cost of operation is the implementation of the technologies. By developing the technologies, the organization could cut the labour cost. In response to the challenge of low price airlines in United Arab Emirates could offer advance level services as well as control the cost. Likewise, the organization may not have to reduce the price of the products. They could introduce its new brand as subsidiary, which must be based on the low cost.

Conclusion

On the completion of the report, it can be mentioned that the overall operation of Emirates Airline has been effective, as the revenue has increased. In addition, due to the increased global presence, Emirates has the control over the global market. However, ad discussed above, the organization needs to cut the cost of operational activities. Thus, in such as case, the organization could take the advantages of technologies. Progress in information technology is most important for extending the operation of Emirates Airline. With the help of the technologies, the company could align the business with E-Business for improving the services and increase customer satisfaction.

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