Marketing Mix, SWOT, And Digital Marketing: A Case Study On British Airways

Marketing and the 7Ps

The study sheds light on different marketing efforts taken by the chosen organization, British Airways. Also, the application of marketing mix, SWOT framework can consider different products, promotions, abilities and strengths of the company to gain competitive advantages. Lastly, the study explains how digital marketing can improve the performance of the organization with different recommendations to improve the profitability in future.

Marketing defines the activities and initiatives taken by a company to promote their selling and buying of goods and services. According to Dvorak, and Razova (2018), marketing also includes advertising, delivering and selling of products to the targeted consumers. British Airways is one of the famous flag carrier airlines of the UK. The company was established in 1974 by the British government following different marketing and promotions of strong branding at over 70 airports around the world, safety of passengers, loyalty program for consumers and other excellent experiences. The brand also uses affiliate marketing programs to display personalized advertisements to the target market of 20 to 50 years Adults for frequent flyers of the airline (O’Neill 2018).

The seven Ps marketing mix mainly refers to the marketing planning and analyses in an organizational context. The 7P formula mainly considers product, promotion, price, place, positioning, process and people to achieve the maximum results for development in the chosen organizational context. 

Figure 1: 7Ps of Marketing

(Source: Akbar, and Kisilowski 2020)

• Products and Services of British Airways: British Airways always offers travel classes for the passengers based on business economy, economy, business and first class. While the first class provides premium experience Such as bar treatments, stylist suite, the economic class provides value for economic services such as good baggage allowance, and food preferences.
• Price Strategies: the price strategy of British Airways offers the lowest and basic fare to allow travelers with lower income. Also, there are Standard and premium packages for World Traveler services depending on their circumstances (Akbar, and Kisilowski 2020).
• Promotional Strategies: British Airways mainly targets digital media by TV advertisements, influence of celebrities, social media channels for promoting their services. As well as the traditional method Also serves different raised concerns to revitalize the brand in the global market.
• Place Strategy: British Airways flies to 400+ Destinations worldwide that utilize air tickets by online sales, offer off-line sales by different intermediaries (britishairways.com, 2022).
• physical Evidence: British Airways aims to offer cabin design, ambience of the flight, premium mails and excellent in your experience to achieve their goals towards excellence.
• process Strategy: British airways have different processes to retain their employees and customers both. For instance, passengers are offered premium Hotel bookings, night-stay facilities and Bookings on cab for delayed and canceled flights. However, the services are limited to a limited number of locations.
• People: There are over 42,000 people working in British Airways according to 2020 that the company aims to retain their stuff by Value creation, applying diversity and inclusion and recruiting female flight in Services for gender equality (Jory et al. 2019)

Swot framework defines strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to analyze organizational management techniques related to business. The application of the framework can provide strategic management techniques to overcome challenges and determine what new opportunities can be processed for organizational growth.

 Application of SWOT in Organizational Context

Internal
Strengths   1. British Airways has a fleet size of over 260 aircraft with a strong hub (britishairways.com, 2022). 2. British Airways in the UK manages the second largest Airways and has an excellent global presence. 3. The Airways has recently 150 international destinations to fly over six continents.	Weaknesses 1. British Airways has decreased punctuality and reduced the number of flights limited by the aviation agency. 2. In addition, the brand is heavily dependent on the local market for its revenue generation. 3. The current trends of COVID-19, Brexit have impacted operating losses of €7.42 billion in 2020 (britishairways.com, 2022). 4. There are different criticisms faced by British airlines while establishing employee retention in 2019.
External
Opportunities 1. The brand’s sponsorships on different events such as Wimbledon, Olympics boost their marketing strategies. 2. Also British Airways provides new opportunities to the company with the help of machine learning, artificial intelligence and other advancements for future.	Threats 1. Companies constantly require time and budgets to fight off the competition. Singapore airlines, EasyJet, Virgin group and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd are the biggest competitor of British Airways (Cozmuta 2021) 2. British Airways also has great dependency on the labor market to have considerable impacts on immigration and labor laws in the UK (Iruthayasamy 2021). 3. There are different Cost structures such as rising fuel costs can reduce the profit margins of the British Airways

• Analysis: The highly competitive market places need regular investments and advancements of technology. British Airways must implement technology, labor excellence and advertising to promote their services such as in-flight entertainment, first class lounge and loyalty programs. The expansion of the Company also must include international routes to popular tourist destinations to stabilize the revenue resources and target increased customers.

Ansoff matrix is called the product and market expansion used to analyze organizational strategies for growth. There are four strategies in the matrix: market penetration, product development, market development and diversification. 

Figure 2: Ansoff Matrix

(Source:)

Explaining how Ansoff’s matrix can be used by an organization to analyze their growth strategies

	Existing product	New product
Existing Market	Market Penetration 1. Increasing sales of loyalty schemes, on board service menus to match the needs of customers. 2. Providing strategic alliances to develop different routes and targets to tourist locations.	Product Development 1. In-flight Wi-Fi services 2. Internet access at all time 3. Customers with greater comfort and satisfied with the experience
New Market	Market Development 1. Increased travelers within the EU 2. Expanded budgets for airline market 3. Targeting different products with premium facilities, different budget flights between routes and expanding new market segments	Diversification 1. Diversifying into hospitality opportunities such as rentals, resorts, hotels. 2. Advantages of cancellation before 24 hours 3. Stepping into various and related industries such as shoes, apparel, banking sector and hospitals with the advantage of successful brand name

• Analysis: British Airways must develop their marketing penetration in the existing market to secure their dominance in the growing Airline industry (Stephen 2018). Also, it can be recommended that product development can target new routes within geographical locations and expand their business and target new segments such as premium facilities, aircraft operations, in-flight Wi-Fi to facilitate customers during the flight.

Digital marketing can help organizations to grow by the use of digital media such as email marketing, content marketing, social media support, online advertising and also identifying user behaviors and their preferences. The digital media marketing solutions also can evaluate cost-effective digital marketing plans to spend on different channels of marketing, to convert a large number of target audiences in high conversion rates. Organizations generate higher revenues with the help of improved ROI as compared to traditional markets. Also, digital marketing by search engine optimization (SEO), Effective brand campaign, website development, social media channels and also content marketing can personalize the ability to retain and target core customers of the industry

British Airways use digital marketing to display personalized advertisements on their websites and deliver relevant content to measure the effectiveness of these advertisements.

• Mobile Travels: the smartphones built in GPS shared different guides from their favorite city and British Airways uses the application available to different locations. It can connect with different android or iPhone generating most effective customer experiences that consumers can browse for inspiration on things to do (Efthymiou et al 2018).
• Email Marketing: British Airways inspires email marketing campaigns to enhance their brand loyalty and ROI. The brand also promotes exclusive club mobile applications with the help of email campaigns to manage their check-ins, accounts and reservations, and access real-time flight information for their premium and standard customers.
• Social Media Marketing: British Airways include engagements with social media analytics and share different campaigns such as #unforgettable holiday moments inviting people and sharing their bank of memories as the most effective component of today.
• Influential Marketing: featuring some Britain’s Best love personalities such as Gordon Ramsay can target more sophistication and focus on competitive market places of British Airways.

Conclusion

The study analyzes current growth strategies of British Airways. The marketing strategy must focus on quality standards to gain the competitive advantages of the organization. Also, the recommendation must enable employee motivations by training and programs for changing the service delivery and improvement in customer satisfaction, reducing travel time and ensuring customer safety.

References

Akbar, Y.H. and Kisilowski, M., 2020. To bargain or not to bargain: Airlines, legitimacy and nonmarket strategy in a COVID-19 world. Journal of air transport management, 88, p.101867.

britishairways.com, 2022. About Us. Available at: https://www.britishairways.com/travel/home/public/en_in/ [Accessed on 17th March, 2022]

britishairways.com, 2022. Annual report. Available at:

https://www.britishairways.com/cms/global/microsites/ba_reports0809/pdfs/Financial_statements.pdf

Cozmuta, A., 2021. Selling ‘The World’s Favourite Airline’: British Airways’ privatisation and the motives behind it. Business History, pp.1-20.

Dvorak, J. and Razova, I., 2018. Empirical validation of blue ocean strategy sustainability in an international environment. Foundations of Management, 10(1), pp.143-162.

Efthymiou, M., Njoya, E.T., Lo, P.L., Papatheodorou, A. and Randall, D., 2018. The Impact of Delays on Customers’ Satisfaction: an Empirical Analysis of the British Airways On-Time Performance at Heathrow Airport. Journal of Aerospace Technology and Management, 11.

Iruthayasamy, L., 2021. What Is Business Strategy?. In Understanding Business Strategy (pp. 1-25). Springer, Singapore.

Jory, S.R., Benamraoui, A., Tunahan, H. and Çitçi, U.S., 2019. A Critical Examination of Etihad Airways Equity Alliance Strategy using a Case Study Approach. Available at SSRN 3328520.

O’Neill, B., 2018. Developing future leaders at British Airways. In The Photofit Manager (pp. 72-89). Routledge.

Stephen, H., 2018. Changing Planes: A Strategic Management Perspective on an Industry in Transition: Strategic Choice, Implementation, and Outcome. Routledge.