ALR 703 | AirBnB | Case Study Report

ALR 703
Airbnb
NAME
STUDENT NUMBER
SUBMISSION DATE

Contents
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY..................................................................................... 3
2. BRAND OVERVIEW........................................................................................... 3
3. TARGET MARKET............................................................................................. 3
4. AUDIT OF DIGITAL MEDIA CHANNELS..............................................................4
5. EVALUATION OF DIGITAL MEDIA CONTENTS....................................................6
6. SWOT ANALYSIS.............................................................................................. 7
7. RECOMMENDATIONS....................................................................................... 8
8. REFERENCES................................................................................................... 9

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The world is moving on a fast pace and now everything has shifted to digital.
People are using digital platforms on daily basis through desktop, mobiles and
laptops and companies has started adopting marketing strategies. The main
motive of this study is to know the digital marketing strategies adopted by
Airbnb and to understand the efforts organization had put in order to achieve the
objectives. In the below report, there is an overall description of marketing
techniques adopted by Airbnb like social media and inbound marketing and it
also reflects the creativity that helped the organization in growing fast. In this
report, strategic analysis has been done for the digital marketing tools that has
been used by the organization.
2. BRAND OVERVIEW
Airbnb is an online corporation that was created in lodging industry. It is a peer-
to-peer corporation. The main motive for the same is to create a common
platform where people offer space in their own property or offer the whole space
to the guest. There are two main parts: one is offered by the host and other is
experienced by the guest. The main feature of the product is that everything in
this case is tangible in nature like number of rooms, location as well as size
(Muller, 2019). The second feature is the attribute of the host like hospitality,
fairness and responsiveness. The company was started by Brian Chesky and Joe
Gebbia when they both flatmates started Airbed and Breakfast to provide airbed
mattress and their living room as accommodation in San Francisco in the year
2007. Afterwards Airbedandbreakfast.com was started and at that time Nathan
Blecharczyk joined the project. After some time, they change the name of the
company to Airbnb. Its first office was in Humbug and now it is operating in
34000 cities in 91 countries. They ate earning a good revenue and growing in a
faster pace (Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging
the digital generation, 2014).
3. TARGET MARKET

Marketing strategy of Airbnb is altogether different from other companies as
other companies try to focus on one market segment at a single time but in the
case of Airbnb, it is dealing with the both niche customer segments at the same
time: the hosts as well as the guests (Yevseytseva and Volkovynska, 2019).
 The Hosts- They are the people who want to get monetary benefit
by letting out their space or just want to meet new people, It is
considered as the fastest growing Airbnb host demographic.
 The Guests- They are the people looking for an affordable option,
alternative to a hotel that can give home like feeling and promise a
local experience. Such people are minded travellers and belong to
a generation that is quite techno savvy. Airbnb has started to
attract a diverse range of guests with the help of targeting young
families, high end travellers and LBT couples. However, Generation
Z and millennials comes from their most important and valuable
customer segment (Indrian and Arba'in, 2019).
Below is the segmentation of target market of Airbnb:
 Geographic: It is present in more than 191 countries and density
is of rural as well as urban in nature (Tsourgiannis and
Valsamidis, 2019).
 Demographic- The target age group is between 18-45 years who
are mostly youngsters in bachelor stage or newly married
couples. Their occupation is professionals, students or
employees.
 Behavioural- The loyalty degree is hard core loyal, soft core loyal
as well as switchers and they took advantage of the cost and
variety. Those people are generally easy going.
 Psychographic- Target market’s social class is working people,
lower class, upper class and middle class.
Airbnb used digital media in an effective way as this is the most convenient way
for the organization to reach to their target market and provide them effective
services. Digital provided has made them so famous as they are growing like
anything and increasing existence in more countries.
4. AUDIT OF DIGITAL MEDIA CHANNELS