British Airways Research on Websites and Online Business Strategies

This article discusses British Airways' e-business model, competitive strategy, customer traffic data, e-CRM, cyber security measures, and more. It explores how the airline stays competitive in the industry.

BRITISH AIRWAYS
RESEARCH ON THEIR
WEBSITES AND
ONLINE BUSINESS
STRATEGIES

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
E-Business Model Concept..........................................................................................................3
Strength & Weakness of Model Used.........................................................................................3
Competitive Strategy & Digital Business Strategy......................................................................4
Customer Traffic Data and Suggestions for further improvement..............................................4
E-CRM and Social Network Channel .........................................................................................5
Cyber Security Measures & E-business Ethics............................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
British Airways is a flag carrier airline of United Kingdom, headquartered in London,
England. It is premium segment airline and goal of the company is to “ be the airline of choice
for premium customers” and meets the customers needs for longer period. And its vision is to
become world most responsible airlines. It is second largest UK based airline. It was created in
1974, by the British government to manage the two nationalized airlines. Further on 31 march
1974 four airlines merged together and formed the British Airways (Airways, 2017). British
Airways use number of e-business model and competitive strategy to keep competitive among
other major players. To keep manage the relationship with its global customers it uses e-crm
tools to get connected with them.
MAIN BODY
E-Business Model Concept
E-business model are simply the approach used by the company to become a more
profitable. There are several types of e-business model. The e-business model pursue by British
Airways is B2C model and the Website used is Single Seller E-Commerce Website. B2C
Concept of e-business model deals with retail aspects of e-commerce, the sale of goods and
services to end customers through digital means. It enables clients to have a detailed view of
their proposed selection before confirmation. As it uses Single Seller E-Commerce website, it
allows him to follow his own designed business model and in offering of their own services. The
website used by British Airways are it own and let its clients to view remotely (Efthymiou and
Papatheodorou, 2018).
Strength & Weakness of Model Used
Strength
 Low operation cost & great Customer
service.
 It let their client to enjoy the service
remotely.
Weakness
 As of single seller website, the volume
of traffic is limited.
 Margins are lower than the B2B
website.

Competitive Strategy & Digital Business Strategy
British airways uses the combination strategy of focus and differentiation. Due to its
efficiency in service delivery process it has attained a competitive advantage with addition on its
supplementary services that enhance the customer experience. It keeps on standardizing its
services in terms to offers the personalized services to its customers. British Airways with its
competitive strategy goal provide: Airline of choice, its remain the top choice of international
flights for premium customers as well cargo, shorter and economy flights. Its top quality
services provide the customers with the best customers services on all routes and classes of travel
and improve online services. Its quality services keep it competitive among the other players.
British Airways uses number of Digital business strategy, which help him in both
qualitative and quantitative results. As it has its Vendor Specific website, it also gives
importance to social media platforms, pay-per- click, affiliate marketing as its business strategy.
Social media platforms and pay-per-click are paid of form of advertisement marketing tool
which help it in reaching its prospects clients and essentially to increase traffic on their website.
Affiliate marketing is somehow similar to referral programme. These are some business and
marketing strategy which are followed by British Airways (Bieger and Agosti, 2017).
Customer Traffic Data and Suggestions for further improvement
British Airways which ranks 3 in its segment. It has total 12.57M visitors with an average
time duration of 07:14 and bounce rate of 30.50% on its official webpage britishairways.com .
Out of its total 12.57M visitors, with major traffic of 63.30% from United Kingdom and lowest
of 2.11% from India. Its marketing strategy is focused on search with 46.79% of traffic coming
from search channels and 43.08% are followed direct (Petluri and Al-Masri, 2018).
It can work more on referrals and social media platforms to increase it traffics, as it
currently have a share of only 3.1% & 0.56% respectively. British airways has scope of covering
those field. It should focus on reducing the bounce rate, it can be done through making a
necessary changes in their website which makes easy understandability and access (Subashini
and et.al, 2019).

E-CRM and Social Network Channel
British Airways uses Teradata CRM application to manage its relationship with its global
customer base. Its Customer relationship department implemented CDW (Customer Data
Warehouse) based on oracle and codenamed. But due to its number of issues, further they have
implemented TCRM (Teradata CRM). It was quick and easier to operates. This Teradada CRM
helps to drive specific campaign, re-launch of loyalty programme, in cost reduction and leisure
database. It allows British airways to adapt and add newly founded customers. Customers
information is also connected to commercial database, and allow in rapid campaign response in
operational events. TCRM has enabled the campaign operations team, to control the campaign
process and give them visibility of clients pages without their prior approval. TCRM has more
than 600 campaign databases, addressing 4000 – 5000 customers (Karami, 2017).
Cyber Security Measures & E-business Ethics
Cyber Security Measures are the tools or the application which control to protects system
network, program's, devices and data from cyber attacks. Those measures result in reducing the
risk of cyber attacks, and protects again the unauthorized use of network and data. There are
number of measures which protect from cyber attack are: installation of firewall, set up an access
control, use of web-flitering system, wary of peer-to-peer sites, get cybercrime insurance, update
programme and system regularly (Berkman and et.al, 2018). British Airways use several
numbers of measure in terms to safeguard its database and website from cyber attack. Majorly it
has taken the cybercrime insurance, it keeps on updating its password and network access on
regular basic. IT department keeps looking into all those measure and reduce the risk of cyber
attack.
CONCLUSION
Above discussion and facts conclude that British Airways is one of the largest airline
based in United Kingdom. It uses numerous of e-business model and strategy to keep it
competitive. With its successful implementation of digital business model it was position 3 in its
segment. With 12.57M visitors on its website, reflects that it has huge customer base. To
safeguard its database and webpage it keeps updating its password and network page, and get

cybercrime insurance which helps in reduction of losses in term of money too. Their operations
and strategies that are formed all are in ethical manner.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Airways, B., 2017. British Airways. Where we fly.[Online] Available at https://www.
britishairways. com/travel/where-we-fly/public/en_gb/map [Accessed 10 October
2019].
Berkman, H., and et.al., 2018. Cybersecurity awareness and valuations. Journal of Accounting
and Public Policy. 37(6). pp.508-526.
Bieger, T. and Agosti, S., 2017. Business models in the airline sector–evolution and perspectives.
In Strategie Management in the Aviation Industry (pp. 41-64). Routledge.
Efthymiou, M. and Papatheodorou, A., 2018. Evolving airline and airport business models.
In The routledge companion to air transport management (pp. 122-135). Routledge.
Karami, A., 2017. Corporate strategy: evidence from British Airways plc. In The Changing
Patterns of Human Resource Management (pp. 46-64). Routledge.
Petluri, N. and Al-Masri, E., 2018, December. Web traffic prediction of British Airways. In 2018
IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data) (pp. 5427-5429). IEEE.
Subashini, A., and et.al., 2019. Forecasting website traffic using prophet time series
model. International Research Journal of Multidisciplinary Technovation, pp.56-63.
Online references
A, B., 2018. [Online]. Available through <>
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