LSBM101 Marketing Principles and Practice

Air Canada

Air Canada is acknowledged to be the biggest airline company as well as flag carrier of Canada in relation with passengers carried and size of the fleet. This company is regarded as a founding member of the Star Alliance® network. With the help of its 28 members airline network, the respective airlines company provides its clientele with access to over 1320 destinations across the world (Armstrong and et. al., 2014).

Growing value of marketing within airline industry

The marketing of products is much easier than that of services. In this regard, one of the most prominent and increasing industry across the globe is regarded to be airlines sector. To keep the top positioning of this sector maintained, companies pertaining to this industry make use of extensive marketing techniques as well as channels (Alserhan, 2017). The respective sector witnesses a large number of technological trends on a rapid basis, looking upon which airlines introduce several changes within its confines. The offerings of airline sector need to be promoted among the customers in an effective manner so that they get persuaded to experience it once. This helps in building extensive goodwill across the global periphery.

Structural response

The following project contains an overview of key marketing concepts and terms pertaining to airline sector. Also, it consists of the marketing strategies which provided assistance to Air Canada in achievement of corporate objective. Further, it comprises of the marketing idea as well as principles used within the respective airlines (Kotler and Armstrong, 2013). Apart from this, it encompasses the interconnection of marketing with other business functions. Lastly, recommendations are given for the firm to enhance effectiveness of company.

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2. The Main Body

Branding strategy is seen as the long term plan of the company that is developed by them for attaining success. Branding is mainly done towards specific goals and objectives that respective organisation wants to attain in the particular period of time. With reference to Air Canada, it has been analysed that the respective manager of this company follows effective brand strategy that is developed by focusing on all business activities along with the effective alignment with needs and requirement of customers (Kotler and et. al., 2014). Air Canada make use of hashtag campaigns as its branding strategy in order to develop their effective brand image among customers.

Product strategy is mainly seen as the base or foundation for every product. This allows businesses to start from zero stage and develop effective product or service according to the customers needs and expectations (Ennew, Waite and Waite, 2013). With reference to Air Canada, manager of this company ensures that develop effective service strategy according to customers requirement only so that they can get satisfied at higher extent. Here, the main focus of company is on providing airline services to its customers at affordable prices that comes under their budget only.

c. Promotional Strategy

Promotional strategy refers to the effective strategy adopted by business enterprises for promoting their products and services in appropriate manner. In context of Air Canada, the manager of this company prefers to use social media as its main promotional activity. Social media is helpful for Air Canada is spreading awareness about their services and additional features among customers (Christopher and Peck, 2012). The company also make use of promotional campaigns on various social media channels that informs customers and about existing as well as upcoming offering of the company. This directly results in the higher increment in sales performance of the Air Canada as it has more number of loyal customers with them.

Air Canada is a globally renowned airlines and the most profitable and appealing within the confines of Canada. This globally recognized airline inflates its local and international networking by way of Capacity Purchase Agreements entered into, with regional airline companies. Such entities operate airlines in lieu of Air Canada (Burns, Bush and Sinha, 2014). This airline firm put due emphasis over marketing in order to gain an edge over rival firms and inflate its existing market share as well as value. The marketing overview of Air Canada is given as follows:-

Mission: The mission statement of Air Canada is “Connecting Canada and the Globe.

Vision: The vision statement laid down by the management of Air Canada is “Building loyalty through passion and innovation.”

Objectives: The management of Air Canada has laid down the following objectives for 2019-20:-

• To attain annual EBITDAR margin of 17-20%.
• To have an annual Return on Invested Capital of 13-16%.
• To increase the reach of company by 10%.
• To enhance the revenues and profits of company by leveraging social media marketing campaigns.

Overall marketing strategy: Air Canada leverages upon social media marketing campaigns to appeal to a large base of people and thereby fulfil their needs and demands to enhance the market standing of company at international scale (Gbadamosi, 2013).

Ethical Considerations

The ethical considerations that need to be taken into account by Air Canada are safety and security concerns Benitez and et. al., 2018.The entity needs to ensure that customers have access to safe travel at all times so that they can derive maximum satisfaction from them. In this relation, it has been ascertained that Air Canada attains its objective in an ethical manner so that it does not have to face any legal complications.

Marketing is an extensive activity which encompasses several concepts and principles that are applied by organisations operating across the global periphery (Lilien, Rangaswamy and De Bruyn, 2013). In this regard, Air Canada also applied certain marketing concepts and principles. It has been ascertained that the respective airlines company applies marketing mix (7Ps) and STP model in its day to day organisational tasks and practices. These are explained in a detailed manner as follows:-

Marketing Mix (7Ps)

Marketing mix is a concept that is applied by the management of Air Canada with a view to devise the marketing strategy for company. (Shaw, 2016) With respect to this, the marketing mix, i.e., the 7Ps of this airlines company is presented as follows:

Product:

Air Canada is the biggest local as well as international airlines of Canada when measured in terms of size of fleet as well as total number of passengers carried by it. This airline provides services to over 200 airports within a total of 6 continents. This airlines company has a number of subsidiaries which pertain to its offerings. These are enlisted below:-

• Air Canada Cargo
• Air Canada Vacations
• Air Canada Rouge
• Air Canada Express
• Air Canada Jetz
• The organisation operates Maple Leaf Lounges across the global periphery whereby the access is complimentary for clients travelling by way of business class or to its elite, platinum and gold members. Also, the entity has providence of frequent flyers program whereby a client can gather and spend points as well as gain status & lucrative rewards (de Boer, 2018).

Price:

Air Canada appeals to a large base of people by offering the exceptional feature of lowest price guarantee. Hereby, the respective airlines company claims that if anyone finds a ticket which is priced lower than that of Air Canada in a time span of 24 hours from execution of ticket purchase from organisational website, them a promo code of $50 together with the difference underlying between both the prices will be given to the client (D'Amore, 2019). This unique and strong pricing strategy illustrates the faith that company has in relation to delivery of tickets at reasonable prices opposed to the rival firms within the same corporate sector. The entity provides its base of clients with a Basic Economy fare class that is evident to be relatively cheaper than the regular Economy Class.

Place:

Air Canada is headquartered at Montreal, Quebec. The respective airlines company has 4 of its primary hubs situated within the confines of Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. The services of this company pertain to transmission of passengers within more than 185 locations in a total of 6 continents.

Promotion:

Company has its own community of people making use of social media accounts whereby they leave direct direct links to the app which has resulted in increment in their usage. Further, the entity began hashtag campaigns and proactively executed them on a number of social media accounts. Some of the most renowned campaigns run by Air Canada are acknowledged to be “Hello/Goodbye”, “You and I were meant to fly” and many more (Case and Jones, 2018). Apart from this, the tag line of this brand ‘Your World Awaits' is appealing enough to gain the attention of customers and persuade them to experience the services provided by Air Canada once (Air Canada Marketing Mix (4Ps) Strategy, 2019).

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People:

Main focus of management team of Air Canada is to keep the level of satisfaction high. It has been identified that company has a strong market position within Canada. Staff members feedbacks are essential and company mainly focuses on the design & final décor in order to keep the staff members as well as customers satisfaction high. Air Canada is a service industry where workforce came into contact on a regular basis with their customers (Sivaramakrishnan and Carvalho, 2019). Therefore, it employee rating plays very essential role in order to attain positive results. Along with this, they have a tag line which is “Flight Path” shows the overall commitment and professionalism of the staff members.

Process:

It is said that, Air Canada have their own well maintained procedure for both customers and staff members. In case of customers, they can book their tickets with the help of mobile applications and online and make sure that they get highly satisfied facilities (De Boer, 2018). It is the process which mainly focuses on timely deliverables so that positive outcome will be produced within given time frame. This element of marketing mix highly emphasis on customer satisfaction.

Physical Evidence:

In the beginning, company have light blue colour which is later changed to black and also white colour with a black belly along with red Maple Leaf accents. Generally this shows the contrasting season of Canada along with the wildlife of that country (Sivaramakrishnan and Carvalho, 2019). It has also been analysed that rebranding of the company is mainly done with the aim to provide more confidence to the staff members so that they will be able to work in a more positive manner. Furthermore, with the help of this up gradation, large number of customers will be attracted towards Air Canada.

3. CONCLUSIONS

According to the above analysis it is summarised that marketing holds immense significance for a corporation in the modern era. This is so because it aids the entity in setting effective networking with people in order to influence them to make a purchase. Further, it is analysed that STP model helps in ascertainment of target audience and ways to position organisational offerings among them. Strategy of Product, branding as well as promotional strategy are some of the marketing concepts that are relevant to respective airlines company. Additionally, it is ascertained that marketing is effectively interlinked to other business functions, thereby providing aid to a firm in attaining the corporate objectives within due course of time.Need assignment help?Talk to our experts.

4. RECOMMENDATIONS

On the basis of above detailed discussion over Air Canada, the following recommendations have been devised:-

CHIP CARD: The respective airlines should leverage Unique Selling Point by launching a new system of CHIP CARD which would provide travellers with the opportunity of directly swiping and entering the lounge without waiting for boarding passes. With this, Air Canada would also be able to make the bookings easier for customers. At present, this technique is not being used by any airlines company across the globe. Thus, application of this system would provide edge to the entity over other rival firms

Tactical Marketing: Air Canada should put due emphasis over market disruption by installing 4 pistons over its engine. As a result of this, horsepower inflates and operations can be executed in a faster manner. Further, the marketing department should advertise this by modifying their mission such that this feature can be highlighted. The new mission of the firm can be "Connecting the Globe and Canada by capitalising on speed" (Air Canada shifts marketing focus to increase global presence, 2019).

Web Analytics: The respective airlines firm is suggested to make use of web analytics tool for measurement of range of promotional and advertisement campaigns. This tool will ascertain which one out of the all campaigns provides aid to Air Canada in enhancing its knowledge about customer behaviour and setting a healthy relationship with them. Further, it would also aid in analysis of visitors' behavioural pattern over company's website. This will allow Air Canada to gain the attention of new customers and retain the old ones. 

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