Marketing Consumer Behavior For Cruises Australia

Describe about the Marketing Consumer Behavior for Cruises Australia.

The P & O Cruises Australia is the leading cruise line for Australia with operational headquarters in North Sydney, New South Wales Australia. The British-American owned cruise line has its another sister company in United Kingdom. It was previously a part of Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company. As this company was regarded as the first passenger ship in the world, P & O Cruises can also be regarded as the oldest cruise line in the world. Currently it operates five ships sailing in and around different ports of Australia and New Zealand. The five cruise ships include the Pacific Dawn, the Pacific Jewel, Pacific Eden, Pacific Pearl and the Pacific Aria. The pacific Eden and the Pacific Aria is regarded as the largest fleet cruising round the year in Australia. The length of cruises is between 2-21 days and it mostly departs from capital city of Australia. These fleet covers has covered important Australian events till now and assist with all the travel needs of tourists. Another future fleet, the Pacific Explorer will enter the service for P & O Australia (Lines & Cruises, 2017). 

The magnificent Pacific Aria Cruise was added to the P & A Cruise’s fleet in 2015. It can accommodate about 1500 guests and has marvelous cruise facilities like variety of dining options, casino, top deck pool, plenty of dining options, Marquee Theatre, spa and fitness facilities and many more facilities. It has about 16 restaurants to provide unique dining experience in the form of traditional cruise ship buffet as well as modern Australian cuisines (Lines & Aria, 2017). 

The Roy Morgan lifestyle segmentation system is an innovative system of market segmentation that focus on the values, beliefs and attitudes of consumers instead of demographic and psychographic detail of consumer. By this approach, organizations can identify the factors that motivate consumer behavior and know about their lifestyle details like preferred brands, medias and leisure activities of consumer. This kind of analysis can help to understand factors influencing consumer behavior and decide what change would compel consumer to accept any product or service (Dawes, 2015). This system guides organization to develop the change management plans and predict the factors that can affect change process. This form of segmentation system helps a leader to target audience and plan new product according to consumer’s lifestyle needs. The main advantage of the Roy Morgan segmentation system is that customized segment of products or services can be made for target clients and even identify the real customer for specific product line (Rundle-Thiele et al., 2017).

Theories related to Roy Morgan segmentation system

Lifestyle is an effective way to segment the market as it helps in giving more options for products to customers and it helps to retain consumer’s loyalty to any product or brand. In business practice, lifestyle segmentation is done to classify consumers and their choices. If any organization is successful in meeting the needs of consumer through their products or company, it adds to the values of the company and maintaining great relationship with consumers (Shani & Chalasani, 2013). Companies can adopt different strategies to identify lifestyle segmentation. Firstly, the customer loyalty factor such as calculating the sales of good and products can help in predicting current customer’s loyalty to the brand. It can be done by question like-

• Which segment of customers contributes to the highest sale of products?
• For which products, there is more demand among consumers?
• Which segment of consumer respond to new sales ad of organization (Böttger et al., 2015)?

Another strategy for lifestyle segmentation can be done through expected profit per sale report to identify the best selling years and most sought after products and services. The liabilities in sales and losses can also be analyzed through discount variables like how likely a product is going to be affected increase or decrease in tax. Hence detailed lifestyle demographics of consumers can be attained by geographic, behavioral, demographics and psychographic analysis of target consumers (Lysonski & Durvasula, 2013).

Different types of Roy Morgan segments include the values segments, technology adoption segment, appealing food segments and the brand equity segmentation and targeting (BEST). The two Roy Morgan segments selected for P & O Cruise includes the value segments and the BEST. While the value segment gives an idea about factors that influence consumer behavior, the BEST segment will help the Cruise Company to evaluate the strength of their brand in the marketplace and know about the positive perception of their products (Keller, 2016).

To achieve and increase sale of P & O Cruises in the values segment and the BEST segment, changes need to be brought in service through analysis of lifestyle factors of consumers. This marketing strategy is relevant for Cruise Company as demonstrating quality and value of products on board is essential to provide exciting surrounding and experience to consumers (Rodrigue & Notteboom, 2013). P & O Cruises is keen to build on customer loyalty and a well thought out change management plan can help them to achieve this goal.

Change has become the new norm in the cruise ship industry due to rapid growth and competition in this sector. With the increase in size and capacity of passenger and crew of Pacific Aria, there is an added responsibility for P & O cruises to provide unique cruising experience to passengers and add values to cruising service (Kahle & Kennedy, 2013). In the value segment, the sale can be increased after knowing about consumer’s behavior towards any product (Hyun & Han, 2013).The factors that affect the behavior of cruise customer or tourist can be done by lifestyle segmentation approach. This approach of marketing strategy will help P & O cruises to evaluate the impact of demographic shift, varying consumer’s taste, new trends and social changes on business of the cruise company (Hakam et al., 2015). As P & O Cruise’s main business is centered in and around Australia, evaluation of Australian lifestyle will be necessary. Australia is a multicultural nation with technology driven and health conscious consumers. Besides this, it is also a region with ageing population. Therefore, all the facilities and amenities on board the Pacific Aria will be planned keeping in mind the unique identity, culture and values of Australians (Rasmi et al., 2014).

Different types of Roy Morgan segments

To add values to Pacific Aria’s service, all social and cultural factors will be analyzed that influence consumers behavior and the cruise market. Firstly presence of ageing population in Australia means that P & O Cruises needs to provide facilities which older people could enjoy on board (Ruhanen, Mclennan, & Moyle, 2013). Secondly internet usage and online purchasing is increasing at the highest rate in Australia. Therefore P & O Cruise’s executive can think of ways to promote their cruising services and new cruise experience through online means. This will help to retain loyal consumers who always expect some new and exciting cruising experience at P & O’ s cruise and create values for their services among target consumers (Standing, Tang-Taye, & Boyer, 2014). The lifestyle values of Australians can also affect media consumption and spending and P & O’s manager can seize this opportunity to convince consumer that their cruise liners can provide world class holiday experience through exciting cruise and dining facilities on board (Moorman, 2014). Sports and recreation is also an important of Australian culture and cruise marketers can partnership with reputed sports personalities to bring in more consumers on board after campaign and promotional activities regarding sports events on Pacific Aria. As Australia has health conscious consumers, special attention needs to be given on making healthy and innovative dining facilities available on the fleet (Rowe, 2016). This marketing strategy of P & O Cruise based on lifestyle segmentation approach can be a useful intervention to improve sales and create values for their products and services among target consumers.

To boost the sales of P & O cruises in term of brand equity segmentation and targeting, the change program needs to be planned by focusing on factors giving added commercial values to the services of Pacific Aria and providing exceptional cruise experience that distinguishes it from other competitors. The evaluation of brand values of P & O Cruise can be done by means of identifying risk and opportunities in its business. Brand equity can be achieved by means of sustaining market share through modernized vessels, service quality improvement initiatives and addition of new routes on the radar (ALKAN et al., 2015).

Conclusion

The report summarized the marketing strategy of P & O Cruises in relation to two Roy Morgan segments- the values segments and brand equity and segmentation segments. The detailed background of the Company was summarized with detail about one main service of the fleet Pacific Aria. The marketing strategy and change management plan was discussed keeping in mind the methods by which sales can be increased in the two selected segment. This report gave the implication that lifestyle segmentation can be a useful approach to understand the behavior of consumers and retain customer loyalty in business.

Reference

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