Consumer Behavior Trends And Their Impacts On Airline Marketing Essay

ABSTRACT

Aviation is the biggest UK industry having 235 million passengers a year. The particular sector of airline is dramatically growing and facilitating its passengers. The research is specifically based on behavior of baby boomers as a consumer. The reason for choosing the particular sector with relation to baby boomer is the diversity in the life style trends, the social changes vividly occurring, and the exposure of new generation which is comparatively high also affecting the behaviors of new generation attitudes. The demographic factors such as age, income, and traveling experience will be taken into consideration.

In the early age of this industry the consumers were not aware about the safety features of this mode of traveling which was the major factor for not using the airline as a mode of traveling, but later on when work has to be done in lesser time then people preferred airlines for their traveling purpose in order to be more efficient personalities and preference was to be more in time rather than on time. Specially the “me” attitude generation, commonly known as baby boomer generation their behavior is more individualistic, more lively and free spirited.

Consumer perceptions, attitudes and motivations

Out of all the discussions about consumer behavior, three contemporary issues are the e-consumer behavior, consumers’ buying behavior towards the services regarding airline, considering the environmental friendly nature of service and the ethical concerns about consumer behavior. With more and more airlines ensuring their presence on the internet and by conventional method of promoting their airline services, it is essential for the analysts to study the factors affecting the target market.

In travel industry different organizations have different strategies they use to make their consumers their customers as the people traveling from same air lines gains points, on the basis of those points they get discounts on their travels more over organizations design loyalty clubs for those frequent travelers so they can make loyal customers not consumers.

As far as concern with the consumer psychic they will always go for best deals more over thinking about to stick to a brand who is not providing them benefits compared to the other brand but when we talk about customers the scenario changes as they would stick to the brand till they can and organizations always hold their customers to them moreover old customers are more preferred than compare to making new one.

It is also essential to look for the factors which make a customer to switch from one airline service to another particularly young generation perceive value about the facility due to presence of the different substitutes where purchase are a matter of only few minutes. With increasing number of airline services being available, it is a matter of increasing importance by consider the young generation to facilitate them with the perceive value of time saving, status symbol, and the perception of consumers that air travel is the safest mode of traveling.

The baby boomers are more likely to spend money in traveling because they are more curious then elder generation, and having a perception of availing different facilities during their journey. As the purchasing power is an important factor to discuss, the baby boomers perception, attitude, and motivation of buying anything is leading towards brand consciousness, and brand awareness which is the perceive value of the customer (Macmillan, 2009).

Decision-making processes

The decision always based upon the demographic factors of consumers such as their income level they spend, their age, and their traveling experience. As the awareness of everything is increasing, young people have great exposure, so the traveling industries and their research authority are planning strategically according to the behaviors of the consumers, the facilities they are willing to avail and much more just to make their journey a memorable one.

The decision making process of baby boomers is evolving expectation around the perception made by the particular airline giving services including the complementary services just to create difference among its competitors.

The consumers take decisions on the bases of services facilities them which belongs to the status symbol, the human psyche, the concept of self expressiveness as the consumers are become more up to date and fit themselves in fixed time, the time saving cost is important to take into consideration. Apart from the entire psychological factor, it is important to take airplanes accidents into consideration, but it is still consider the safest mode of traveling

From the consumer perspective the baby boomer left undue liability over coming new generation. New generation go for brands, luxury, fine education institutions they are willing to give more exposure, more knowledge to their coming generation. As far as the income ranges concern the new generation is more diversify, and prefer to travel by airplane in order to saving time rather than focusing on the expenses of traveling. The people belong to 18-40 age group are more enthusiastic, more curious, and want to avail luxury, fine facilities in order to satisfy their selves, and associate themselves with the wealth and fine service they are getting and exploring the new ways by spending on traveling by air.

The consumer doesn’t need to take care of their luggage. It is the airline responsibility to take care of consumer luggage. It is so obvious to the consumer about the facilities they get while traveling.

Airlines have a huge number of strategies for making their customers loyal to particular brands more over different studies shows that they have big influence on kids and their family on the decision making of boomers as they advertise in such a way that it influence travelers and the money they spend on it have to give out something which is more likely to influence the decision on a family as people traveling with their families have different opinions and people doing research on this part are smart enough to understand that family and friends and people who are around you have a good influence on ones buying decisions, so as they spend their millions of dollars in portraying ones feelings are never a loss more over is always a good gain. As the way their advertise their adds it is always appealing too consumer more over kids are more attracted and more children are always influence on family decisions its the consumer psychic a nuclear family always have plans that are a family decision. As a research shows that in1997 children under 12 were the influencer of spending 500 billion dollars (Sultan & Simpson, 2000).

Sub cultural effects

There are different people comes from different part of the world and move together from one place to another. The diversity in subculture plays an important part in airplanes services.

The developed countries airlines are more concern about the complementary services, and focusing more on developing customer relationship so that their customers will use their service in the future.

With the passage of time the concept of developing customer relationship and giving services above the satisfactory level has been taken in a high consideration. As safety is one of the issues with the consumer the air traveling service treat their customer in such a way that their customer will be having secure feeling (Bruning, 1997).

Identity and self-concept issues

Behavior of baby boomer with the comparison to elder generation is much more different, and there is a big gap between these two generations. The baby boomers are more self-expressive generation their interest reflects where they are leading; they have much to do with fun, and fantasies. The classes in the airline according to the consumer is different, the first class consumers are more self expressive (Hares, Dickinson & Wilkes, 2010).

The analysis provides the perception that how these issues shape the passengers’ relationship with airlines, and determine how airlines maintain the relationship with their consumer. The U.S consumer’s perception and behavior about the traveling by air identify the emotional side of the consumer which is determined by their sentimental behavior towards the airline e.g. some consumers love to do air shopping. There are following factors which affect the passenger’s reliability:

The task of middleman in the air shopping

The additional products interest for travelers

The behavior of the consumers towards the airlines, and the trend that changes over time is ultimately changing the life style and the way of traveling.

Airlines maintain their relationship with frequent travelers; give more value to the consumer, which includes official travelers, and those travelers having high use of service.

Lifestyle trends

The life style has changed a lot with the passage of time; as young people are most likely to visit different places and get the exposure. The demographic structure such as age, income, and traveling experience has change life style due to change in the demographic factors which also affected the transport sector specifically airplanes.

By stating this research we can get how much families are influenced by their kid. That is consumer behavior which is how people get influence by family and friends and acquaintance around you more over one more quality of boomers are they like traveling with their family. According to different researches it shows that boomers believe that traveling brings family together and they find traveling as the trips make them understand their children more better therefore most airlines target their packages by studying consumer behavior as they target traveling with family brings them closer and change of place brings great exposure moreover they believe that targeting family get them customers. Packages of different airlines at the time of holidays are always expensive as they know people will travel in any cost its holiday time and more over occasion like Christmas (Tunstall & Penning-Roswell, 1998).