The Main Marketing Issues Of Emirates Air Lines Marketing Essay

Nowadays the travel and tourism organization is the most popular all over the world. People of the world are more interested visiting everything. In the modern world we can see people are visiting by airway as comfortable journey. The following diagram shows the five main industry sector within tourism and hospitality.

Figure 1 – Five main industry sector within tourism and hospitality, OTHM (2012)

After considering the above diagram it can be addressed that Emirates fits as a transport sector within tourism and hospitality industry. The Emirates Group has spread its wings into every aspect of travel and tourism to become a leading global corporation in its field. With one of the youngest fleets in the sky and more than 500 awards for excellence worldwide, Emirates airline is one of two key divisions in the group. The other is dnata, which provides services in ground handling, cargo, travel, IT solutions and flight catering. Established in 1959, today, dnata is the world’s fourth largest combined air services provider with a global footprint extending to almost 40 countries. Propelled forward by their united strength, the two have evolved at a phenomenal rate to establish the Emirates Group as an immense organisation, spanning a portfolio of more than 50 brands and employing over 62,000 people.

Stakeholder Analysis

A ‘stakeholder’ is any person or organisation who can be positively or negatively impacted by, or cause an impact on the actions of a company (Freeman 1984). It can also address that the individuals and constituencies that contribute, either voluntarily or involuntarily, to its wealth-creating capacity and activities, and are therefore its potential beneficiaries and / or risk bearers. (Post, Preston & Sachs, 2002). Stakeholder helps the organization in order to

Identify the stakeholders likely to be affected by or influence the activities of the organisation

Assess how stakeholders could be impacted or impact upon the organisation

Anticipate the consequences of any change in the organisation’s activities

Identify stakeholders’ ‘success criteria’

Assure a successful outcome for the organisation by developing co-operation with stakeholders

Emirates internal stakeholders are its employees, managers, directors, shareholders. Employees mainly have an interest in good payment, good development chances, working for a renown company, and obtaining all the benefits Emirates is offering to its employees (discount flights etc.). Amongst these interests, directors and managers also have an interest in running Emirates well and holding up its standard, reputation, and service. Shareholders mainly have an interest in the company’s profit. Emirates has a number of external stakeholders. Its most important are its customers who expect high quality service and appropriate prices for the service they obtain.

PESTLE analysis

PESTLE analysis is a common and useful tool to analyse a company’s environment. PESTLE stands for Political, Economical, Sociological, Technological, Legal and Environmental factors. Henry states that PESLTE analysis “can be used to help detect trends in the external environment that will ultimately find their way into the competitive environment” (Henry 2008, p. 51).

Political:  The political environment is the most important factor including areas such as policy of tax, law of labour, law of environment, restrictions of trade, tariffs, and political stability. Emirates follow different policy based on the countries they are flying.

Economic: Economical factors include economic growth, interest rates, exchange rates, and inflation rates. These factors have major impacts on how businesses operate and make decisions. For example, interest rates affect Emirates service cost of capital and therefore to what extent its business grows and expands. Exchange rates affect the costs of exporting goods and the supply and price of imported service in an economy.

Social: As a global airline the social factors are the most important factors which include the cultural aspects and include health consciousness, population growth rate, age distribution, career attitudes and emphasis on safety. Emirates is located in many different countries and its airplanes have an impact on the society they fly to.

Technological: As a modern airline Emirates uses wonderful technology. It includes technological aspects such as R&D activity, automation, technology incentives and the rate of technological change. They are able to determine barriers to entry, minimum efficient production level and influence outsourcing decisions and Emirates is able to maintain all technological aspect.

Legal: In order to offer proper service and increase popularity, Emirates airline maintains legal factors such as discrimination law, consumer law, antitrust law, employment law, and health and safety laws etc. As it operates in many different countries it needs to follow many different laws and makes it strategies and approaches very difficult.

Environmental: As a global airline, Emirates follows the environmental factors which include ecological and environmental aspects such as weather, climate, and climate change. Which may especially affect industries such as tourism, farming, and insurance, likewise, growing awareness of the potential impacts of climate change Emirates tries to create new markets and diminishing or destroying existing ones. It invest a lot of money into research and how to make its aircrafts more environmentally friendly.

The main marketing issues of emirates air lines

The vision of Emirates is to build and maintain the market leadership which is looking beyond conventional track. The leadership is busy to strive and make calculate decisions with modern ideas. Emirates business group is always trying to maintain the high standards of business ethics. Emirates marketing task is to built a long period of consistent, stable policies and excellent results regarding its brand.

Likewise, Emirate’s mission maintains its steady growth rate of 20% in the year which needs a lot of marketing to stay on the top of the airline ladder.

Another marketing issues is Emirates problem with flight re-timings, flight cancellations, and revised routings which is affected on aircraft. These adjustments must satisfy maintenance requirements, station departure curfew restrictions and aircraft balance requirements, particularly at the beginning and end of the recovery period. Emirates needs to push its marketing to promise its customers that it will take care of these problems and that it will not effect its quality service.

Task-2 Marketing Report

Marketing strategy deals with fulfilling the needs and wishes of people (customers, business partners, shareholders etc.). Marketing strategy derives from sociology, psychology, and economics and aims to better understand people’s behaviors, and motivations (Ferrell and Hartline 2011). Marketing strategy is never stagnant because it constantly needs to adapt to trends and changes that are on-going around the globe. Marketing strategy specifically changed since the mid 1990s when the internet and the development of technology increased the pace of the world. Furthermore, no other business focuses that much on building a relationship to its customers. Marketing is the tool that interacts with its people.

Segmentation, targeting, and positioning

To find out customers wants and needs and to provide the optimal service that will satisfy these, marketing managers often segment the market into different groups with similar needs and wants which is called market segmentation (Srydom 2007). Market segmentation and targeting are the most important aspects for developing business performance and achieving goals. If it has been decided about the target market, a company needs to position itself in order to differentiate itself from competitiors (Sahaf 2008). There are different kinds of market segmentation like:

Geographic segmentation: These kinds of segmentation such as nation, regions, cities, states, countries, zip codes, neighborhoods and so on. As can be seen the demand and satisfaction both are different in area to area. To fill up the geographic segmentation Emirate’s marketing group is busy to satisfy the many different geographical segmentations in many areas in the world.

Demographic segmentation: Variables for this segmentation are: age, gender, family size, income, occupation, education, religion, race and nationality etc. Emirates is addressing its service to all of these categories and tries to offer a comprehensive service that attracts all differences.

Psychographic Segmentation: It segments the market according to customers’ personality, values, lifestyle and social class. Emirates is a high quality company that delivers a high standard service. It therefore directs its marketing mainly to customers that have a good living standard enjoy a luxury lifestyle and belong to a social class that can afford expensive flights. It also has customers from lower income classes and also tries to deliver a great service to them.

Behavioral Segmentation: In this segmentation consumers are divided by groups according to their knowledge of attitude in order to response to a product.

Emirates’ main service

The Emirates is an international air transport organisation which is able to communicate with all international airports in the world. It is one of the most popular airlines for its service to all kinds of passengers. Emirates airlines were the second customer in the world when Airbus A 380 was launched. Today, Emirates has the largest fleet of Airbus A380 in the world. It offers:

A) First Class

B) Business Class

C) Economic Class Services

The service of first class

Emirates has distinguish first class service and provides 3 kinds of first class seat like:

The full suite with doors. Flat bed seat without doors which is Sky cruiser Sleeper Seats. The first class is a comfortable service where there is full suite with doors completely closing with a mini -bar, a coat rack and storage which is suitable for security and privacy. The seats are converted by 6 .7ft fully flat bed and ICE system in 58 cm. Private suites is available in the aircraft.

There are flat bed seat without doors which is Sky cruiser these kinds of seating are available on the remaining Boeing 777-300ERs, 777-200s, 777-300s. Likewise these types of seats are converted by flat beds using integrated passenger seat control and 48 cm ICE system. Likewise sleeper seats and these kinds of seating’s are available on 3-class A330-200 and A340-300 aircraft which is comfortable for passengers.

Business Class

The business class seats are enough on all class of modern air craft which include winged headrest with six-way movement, massage function, privacy partition, seat power supply, USB Ports and an RCA socket for laptop connection. On the other hand entertainment on ICE system which is shown on a 43 cm wide TV screen, per seat converted by overhead lights and reading light.

Economic Class

The emirates Economy Class are suitable for all kinds of passengers which is offer all time 79-81 cm standard seat. The seats are adjustable headrests, ICE In-Flight-Entertainment with 600-1000 channel and in-seat laptop power-outlets on newer aircraft and laptop recharging facilities in galleys in older aircraft.

Entertainment system

By the personal entertainment system Emirates became the first airline in the world. There are three types of entertainment system on Emirates like: ICE, ICE digital, digital widescreen and emirates TV and radio. There are also fleet offers for passengers with 15 video and 26 audio channels, as well as 50 video games.

Pricing strategies

Since the 1980s airlines have introduced dynamic pricing strategies which Emirates adopted as well. This model allows airlines to manage the seat capacity of each airplane while obtaining the highest price for each seat. Dynamic pricing is a complex methodology based on availability, customer demand and competitor pricing. As a result, pricing of individual seats is constantly in flux (Tuttle 2012).

Promotion mix

Promotion aims to deliver a message to various audiences (Strydom 2007). Each element of the promotion mix has its weaknesses and strengths, and the mix needs to be carefully selected in order to meet best the promotion objectives.

The main methods of promotion mix are:

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Source: The main methods of promotion mix, Farrell & Hartline (2011)

Advertising: Advertising is a non-personal presentation of goods, services or idea. In order to promote Emirates’ sales and service it communicates the message through impersonal media like: radio, TV, newspapers and magazine.

Public relation: The public relation is important to build good relationship with the company’s various publics by getting suitable publication likewise build up a good corporate image and handling stories and events. Emirates makes good use of this marketing mix and takes special care of its brand image.

Sponsorship: It is another important promotional activity and Emirates sponsors many international sports event like: football, cricket, badminton and so on.

Personal selling: It is important purpose of making sales and building customer relationships. In order to promote Emirates, it makes use of personal selling and arranges different kinds of presentation during specific times in many areas.

Direct marketing: Emirates is busy with direct communications, which carefully targets individual consumers to get an immediate response and cultivate lasting customer relationships.

Sales promotion: Are short-term incentives in order to encourage the purchase or sale of a product or service. On a constant basis, Emirates offers sales promotion also in combination with hotels or other tourist agencies.

Distribution strategies

In marketing areas, the customer and the product/service needs to be linked by the so called distribution channels. The distribution strategy is the most important in order attract customers to the company. Emirates follows different distribution strategies.

Intensive distribution: Refers to the low offer of Emirate tickets like special offer for winter or summer times at a low price. It is often offered by direct channels which are Emirates websites. This has the advantage that Emirates is in total control of its marketing activities and can directly analyse the demand for its service.

Exclusive distribution: This distribution strategy allocates airline tickets to tour operators and travel agents who are friendly related with its business. Especially when it comes to the service industry, companies often require wide geographical coverage (Shaw . However, agents cost, and the airlines needs to pay commission to each agent who is selling a ticket to a customer.

Selective Distribution: Special offers are given to selective customers or operators. Emirates makes use of external distribution channels where multiple airlines compete with each other. Many customers nowadays compare prices on these websites and make a buying decision based on the information they obtain there. Unless it is about frequent flyers who prefer to fly with one or two specific airlines all the time, the majority of customers nowadays use website that compare different airline prices. On the one hand it makes it harder for Emirates to compete while customer can compare prices on the other hand they would loose customers if they do not appear on these websites.

The marketing mix

The marketing mix concept was first given by Borden in 1965. It is a framework that enables marketing managers to make decisions configuring their offerings to suite customer needs. As far as we can see there are four elements of traditional marketing mix such as product, price, promotion and place. On the other hand a lot of authors additionally suggested adding another three element of marketing mix like people, process and physical evidence.

The uses of marketing mix with Emirates airlines

As an international airline company Emirates uses three important elements of marketing mix carefully i.e. people, process and physical evidence.

People: In the service market, the marketing mix people include both customers and employees. It is proved that this element covers front line sales and customer service staff who have an direct impact on how Emirates’ service is perceived. In order to provide excellent customer service through its staff Emirates trains its employees and transfers knowledge and skills to its staff.

Process: The customer buying process and consumes service which are both very crucial to the marketers. Important processes include booking, checking, in and out as well as queuing system and service operations which Emirates tries to run smoothly.

Physical evidence: The physical evidence refers to all the tangible, visible touch points that our customers potentially can see. As a luxury airline company it provides well equipped and nicely designed plains, nicely decorated lounges for business travellers, well dressed staff and a clearly arranged website.

Task-3 Market Research

The customer satisfaction is the most important indicator for a business to detect future trends and actions. Emirates always had a high interest in its customers’ opinions about its service. On a constant basis it collects feedback from its customers. In order to get the right feedback from customers to adjust Emirates’ service to its customers’ wishes it is important to set up a market research process or plan without a company cannot develop their performance effectively. A market research process includes:

Stage-1: Problem Definition

Stage-2: Research Design

Stage-3: Data Collection

Stage-4: Data Analysis

Stage-5: Report/Presentation

Problem Definition

2012 comes to an end and Emirates wants to investigate its customers’ satisfaction with its service to potentially improve on certain areas for the new year 2013. The management is therefore faced with setting up a market research plan that detects Emirates’ customer satisfaction.

Research Design

Once the problem has been identified, the research can be designed. Developers need to think about the methods that they want to use to collect data. Primary or secondary data can be used. Primary research provides the developers with up-to-date information about the issue and it is often self-developed such as a survey or questionnaire. Secondary research refers to existing sources that can be used to see what happened in the past. Emirates can analyse collected feedback or can collect new customer feedback. As Emirates is using the platform “airlinequality” to find out about its customer satisfaction, the website can also be used for this issue as it already exist and thus no new website needs to be set up. However, more questions could be added to the existing questions in order to collect more specific answers. The current questions are:

Please rate the:

Value for Money

Cabin Flown

Seat Comfort

Staff Service

Catering

Entertainment

Recommended

Here, customers have the chance to rate each category with 1-5 stars and write extra comments on the side. However, the stars tell Emirates no specific fault in their service and reading through all the comments can be very time-consuming. It is therefore recommended to use this website but with a different question set-up. Questions can be formulated more specific and instead of rating with 1-5 stars customers can click on possible options. For example:

Seat Comfort: Do you think the seats are:

Comfortable

Uncomfortable

Too small

Too narrow

Not enough leg space

A similar design could be used for the their categories. This way would provide Emirates more details and exact issues customers are facing with its service. The advantages are:

The website is widely known and Emirates would not need to advertise the survey as enough customers use the website.

This will save money and the new design would provide more specific answers to its original problem.

Data Collection

Data can be collected through “airlinequality” once the new questions are uploaded. A time limit should be implemented over what period of time Emirates wants to collect data and then analyse it. To obtain a good overview Emirates could set a time period of 4 months in summer time and 4 months in winter time. This way it would cover the busiest flying times. Data can be collected by the website (computer programme) and transferred into a analyzing system.

Data Analysis

Data can then be analysed by hired researchers or consultants or Emirates internal marketing and IT specialists. Answers need to be coded and then statistics can be created which will present the frequency of the specific answers. This can then be illustrated in graphs and diagrams.

Report and Presentation

Finally, the market research needs to be presented to the management. This can be in a report and presentation format. It should include all necessary information that is relevant to the management in order to adjust their service to customers’ complaints and recommendations. The report presents the results black on white and the managers can always use whenever they need it. The presentation offers the opportunity to ask questions by the management.

Task-4 Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability

As an international airline Emirates is able to maintain a number of social responsibility all over the world. Emirates places great value on corporate citizenship and social responsibility and believes that its business ethics are integral to its continued success. In order to maintain the competitive edge of its operation in global markets its member of staff’s commitment towards ongoing improvement combines.

Emirates Airline Foundation

The emirates projects has created one of the world’s most eco-friendly conservation-based destinations in Australia. Emirates people have a relationship with the people in the up to 100 plus cities. Likewise, to improve the lives of people mired in severe poverty. As an air transport provider it is busy to deliver humanitarian aid during tragedies, such as natural disasters and wars. The Emirates Group actively supports numerous causes both in the UAE and around the world, especially through the Emirates Airline Foundation.

It is a non-profit charity organization, which aims to improve the quality of life for children, regardless of geographical, political, or religious boundaries, and to help them maintain or improve their human dignity. The foundation’s aim is to help disadvantaged children realize their full potential by providing them with the basics which most of us take for granted such as food, medicine, housing and education. Focusing particularly on children caught up in extreme poverty, the foundation, made up of volunteer employees and friends of the Emirates Group, strives to reduce illness and childhood mortality rates.

Similarly Emirates provides humanitarian, philanthropic aid and services to children, with the minimum amount of administrative expense. In order to maintain its foundation it has strong management and is busy to decide on what projects to target with funds, which its passengers help build through their kind donations, as well as through its scheme to collect any loose foreign currency.

The Emirates Friendship Hospital Ship

The Emirates friendship hospital ship is able to provide vital medical assistance where more than two million people living in communities and isolated by the annual monsoon flooding in the most deprived region of Bangladesh. The registered called NGO which excess of $750,000 to Friendship and able to run the ship. Apart from this the foundation is maintaining salaries of a full-time team of doctors, nurses and support staff, where the operating expenses $150, 00 in total. Likewise, Emirates is busy to manage the contract with friendship for the boat which is cover 250 km in the River Brahmaputra one of the most medically neglected and inaccessible areas of Bangladesh.

There is mobile hospital which is equipped by doctors’ chambers, primary health care facilities, two operating theatres, two eight-bed wards, paediatric and gynaecology units, a dental room, a pathological laboratory, an X-ray room and an ophthalmic room. A pharmacy is able to allocate free medicine and the registration room can accommodate up to 24 staff and eight visiting doctors.

Emirates-CHES Home

HIV at Chennai in India has a place to call home thanks to the Emirates airline foundation. Its donation funded $ 642,000 cost of building the facility which is operated in conjunction with the Community Health Education Society plus for the next 20 years its $86,000 a year running. The CHES home of Emirates is giving children the chance to vastly improve the resident’s quality of life and offer them schooling at the centre’s education unit.

Emirates-AIM for Seva Student Home for Girls

The Tamil nadu state where girls living in remote tribal communities in India and the Emirates residential educational facility is able to remove poverty as a chance to break out of the cycle of illiteracy. Its foundation bought the land founded building where aim for girl’s student development which is the cost of approximately $70,000.Apart from this over the next 20 years the $17,000 annual running expenses will be funded by donations. The girls are able to learn and play in the secure environment of the hostel which opened in 2007 and provides a safe haven for them while they attend a government school in nearby Dharmapuri. The success of the home, which also offers training in music, craft classes, gardening, tailoring and folk dancing, has led to expansion plans – again funded by the foundation which will take its roll to more than 100 girls. With virtually no public transport, the distance from school made attending difficult for the girls whose parents are mostly agricultural labourers with an average monthly income of $25.

Emirates Airline Foundation School & Dhaka Project

Nearly 500 children have the chance to escape from the slums of its capital at the Emirates-funded school in Bangladesh. The school was launched to bolster the education of children in the Dhaka Project and an NGO founded by Emirates Cabin Crew member Maria Concepcion which is busy to help the social and intellectual development of families trapped in extreme poverty. As well as for adults the foundation organized tailoring, beauty treatment and driving and so on. The Dhaka project school covers basic human needs such as food, school uniforms, books, stationery, rain coats, shoes and toiletries – follows the Bangladeshi curriculum and provides an education for 100 children.

Emirates Learning Centre: Kidane Mehret Children’s Home

The Emirates Airline Foundation found children at an orphanage in Ethiopia by the care facility in Addis Ababa infants and teenagers both are benefited from a learning centre which was built by the foundation and features a library with more than 4,000 books in Amharic and English and a bank of PCs with internet access since 2006.

The Big Pen School

The school provides basic education and the hope of a brighter future for deprived children living in some of the worst slums in Kenya. Despite poor facilities its 500 students performed remarkably well in the 2005 national examinations tables, prompting the Emirates Airline Foundation to pledge money to build a new school in Korogocho, Nairobi. There was no land available close enough to the children’s homes so the decision was made to renovate their dilapidated school instead.

Conclusion: Emirates airline is an international organization which is famous and most popular all over the world. In many ways such as: service, co-operation, proper management, distribution, promotion, facility and so on. By the continuing success of Emirates airlines raises questions for students of leadership. In many ways like culture, location, and internal strategic decision-making contributed to the growing success of the business. On the other hand leadership made the main difference, or is it more to do with powerful financial backing at State level.