Marketing Strategies of British Airways

This report discusses the marketing strategies and programs used by British Airways to achieve its objectives. It explores the marketing concepts and principles applied by the airline, including the 7Ps of marketing mix and segmentation, targeting, and positioning. The report also highlights the relationship between marketing functions and other functional areas within British Airways.

Marketing Principles
&Practice
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3

a) Marketing concept and terminology applicable for British airlines........................................3
b) Marketing strategies and programs that helped British Airways achieve objectives..............5
c) Marketing concepts and principles used by British Airways..................................................7
Relationship between marketing functions with other functional areas..........................................8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Airline industry provides air transport service by helicopter or air planes to the paying
passenger and freight through regular route. UK Group is the largest airline on the basis of
revenue, passenger’s carried and fleet size. Air operating certificate or licence is issued by
government body to recognised airline companies. These companies form partnerships or
alliance to provide aircraft services to its customer. As the airline industry is growing at rapid
pace so the marketing strategies of airline industries should be innovative in order to buzz and
attract customers. As the competition is increasing the company are using various marketing
tools such as social media, non-traditional advertising, and loyalty program. It increases the
brand image of the company thus indirectly increase the loyalty of customer. In order to be
profitable and to achieve objective of organisation the company has to take various decision and
action to implement marketing successfully. On the basis of passenger carried and fleet size
British Airway is the second largest airline in United Kingdom. This report discuss about British
Airways marketing concept, strategies and principles that help in achievement of business
objectives. Also, this report discusses about cross functional relationship of marketing and other
department in British Airways.
MAIN BODY
a) Marketing concept and terminology applicable for British airlines
The Marketing concept is a strategy that implement by a company to maximize the profit, fulfil
the customer need, enhance the level of sales to survive the competition. There are some
marketing concepts that British Airways apply in their organization. These concepts are Product
strategy, Branding and Promotional strategy.
Product strategy: Product and services is very important factors in an organization. This is the
vision of the company to make a product a success in the industry. Product strategy helps to
mapping up the right design to build a product with innovation at low cost by maintain the
quality of that product\service (Ramli, 2016). Basically the product strategy refer that customer
prefers the product with good quality, performance, affordable price, innovation feature.
British Airways includes in their product strategy numerous destinations across the
world, work speedily, support customers, and satisfy customers need services, quality of flight.
British Airways apply this strategy they focus on market demand and plan. They provide quality
services to their customers in reasonable price, with including entertainment screen, beds, cabin,

extra space, meal course etc. that makes it more luxurious, to make the customer's journey
happy. They work for customer's better flight experience.
Branding strategy: Branding is a marketing concept used by the company to create an image
for company or product and services in customer's mind. Effective brand strategy differentiate
the company from competitors, the company's brand define about the company (Shinnar, 2016).
The brand includes company's Logo, website, packaging, and promotional material. Branding is
important for business to increase the value of company. It increases the investment opportunity
because the company is firmly established in market, create trust in customers, supports
advertising. Branding demonstrated by the consumers experience that the company attempts to
create.
British Airways create an image of being popular, reliable, luxurious and better flights
experience for the customers. British Airways has been voted as number one British brand, in
consumer and business super brand list for their world-class services. British Airlines get number
one position in travel – airlines in consumer survey which has enhanced it branding. They
provide better services comparable to competitive company. It attracts investors for investment.
Super brand consist quality, reliability and distinction, British Airways brand's current profile
leads marketing activities and new service development, provide comfortable journey to their
customers and surpass the expectation of their consumers, it makes them popular in their
customers. In consumer super brand British airways holds fifth position.
Promotional Strategy: Promotion is an attempt by the company to inform, reminds and
influences the customers with their product and services. Company has wide goals, so they need
to apply the promotional strategy. The Promotional Strategy is a marketing concept to grow the
business. It is the mode to influencing the consumer, there are various methods to promoting the
company for the marketing purpose, regarding the company's product and services. Strong
promotional strategy helps the company to grow in positive manner (Rakib, 2018). This strategy
is an idea to promote company's brand, logo, also create awareness, make customers to try
company's product, provides information about product and services, helps to find the customer.
Company promote with the traditional advertising, sales promotion, social media, e-commerce,
websites.
British Airways uses promotional strategy to promote and create awareness in customers.
British airways examine the market and determine their competitors, British airways launch a

social media campaign to integrate and promote their website, provides promotional updates and
customer services they create entertaining flight system as play current TV shows, music, games
or film that can give a company customer advantage, as well as they advertise their airport sights,
increase their existing customers experience of flights they work with brand ambassadors to
increase their brand awareness in consumer, innovate and improve ideas to providing service,
also provides discount on occasions to increase sales of tickets. They provide more luxurious and
comfortable services in less cost to its customers. Therefore, British Airways is popular in their
customer across UK and the world.
b) Marketing strategies and programs that helped British Airways achieve objectives
British Airways is always known for its different marketing strategies and unique
campaigns to market its products and services, attracting new customers. It connects people all
over the world, people with different background, stories. Some of most appreciated
advertisement and marketing programs of British Airways are described below.
1. Reinventing British Airways digital experience: This is the marketing strategy,
where objective was to eliminate customer pain-points before, during and after
journey smoothly. This has helped in better problem identification and speedy
resolution of it.
2. Fuelled by love: In this marketing campaign, British Airways came up with a
story to target Indian market where a UK based cabin crew member develops a
bond with one of her customer during her trip to India (COUASME and
GURGEY, 2016). This video acclaimed positive response, which shows how one
can find love and affection in India.
3. Technology: In this marketing strategy, British Airways aircrafts to be fitted with
full streaming, high speed Wi-Fi, using the latest technology customer would be
able to use internet after 10 minutes of take-off. It is also using biometric
technology to speed-up the boarding and arrival processes in few cities with long-
haul flights boarded in half the usual time (Taneja, 2016). During the journey,
passengers can make changes in bookings, can do business work which adds
productivity advantage to passengers.
4. Lookup campaign: Many a times people look up and see planes and think where
it is going so British Airways came up with an idea to combine this curiosity with

the technology by creating amazing digital billboard which gives live time info
about the flight that flew above. It is mostly targeting people which are at growing
stage of life like adults and which want to experience and know about everything.
This is an effort to support kid’s curiosity and questioning mind.
5. British Airways safety video: This film was designed to help customers absorb
safety messages while fund-raising for 'flying start' global charity partnership with
comic relief. This story sends message to donate. This video is being revolving
and being appreciated, which is raising the consumer awareness and brand value
for the company.
6. The unforgettable sale: It focuses in the concept of 'What if?’ memories and
unforgettable trips. In this, airline will offer holiday advice to its customers with
emoji’s and holiday destination based in personality and mood (Iordanova, 2018).
It offers numerous offers to its customers which makes journey more memorable.
In this way it is grabbing customers and enhancing experience which is one of its
objective.
7. Championing animal welfare and conservation: It is most unique marketing
strategy of British Airlines has developed, by partnering with the Born Free
Foundation to support animal welfare. It is helping customers make an informed
decision where hotels which are known for keeping captive wild animals by
indicating it in its product description.
8. Helping communities at the time of crisis: British Airways often work with
Disaster Emergency Committee at the time of crisis in order to ensure vital relief
reaches the needed ones as quickly as possible (Opreana and Vinerean, 2015).
This shows how the company is taking an active part in crisis, which contributes
to its CSR activity and enhances and publishes a positive image of itself.
British Airways have achieved its objectives ethical as it is the first UK airline to offset
carbon emission on all its flights from next year by investing in carbon reduction projects.
Airline is trying to connect to with people emotionally by valuing people's emotions. British
Airways have worked ethically in order to attain its objectives. It has putted customer well-being
on the top priority, it is targeting each level of people so that everyone who dreams of it, can
fulfil the dreams. British Airways works on continuous customer analysis, so that it can come up

with new objectives to attract new customers. Every issue to the society is taken as an objective
and opportunity to bring some changes.
c) Marketing concepts and principles used by British Airways
British Airways is the leading airliner in the world not only because of its quality and
service but also because of its strategic marketing which gives it a competitive advantage over
others competitors. To know more about its marketing strategies, detailed analysis of its
marketing concepts and principles are done below.
7Ps of Marketing Mix
7Ps is a marketing strategy framework which helps in evaluating the business and how
each element of the mix makes a business successful. So, to widen the knowledge 7Ps of
marketing mix is done on British Airways and how it has contributed to its success.
1. Product: It refers to what you are selling and how it will benefit your customer. British
Airways offers valuable and excellent product and services to satisfy its customers’ needs
and wants. It offers affordable prices for the flight tickets to any destination (Lancaster
and Massingham, 2017). They provide exclusive lounges, where passengers can spend
quality time, eat and relax.
2. Price: It refers to the pricing strategy of your product and services and how it will impact
your customer. The price of the British airways is decided keeping in mind every class of
consumers so that everyone can avail its services. It has implemented different pricing
strategy as per the different customer needs.
3. Place: It refers to where your product will to be made available and how your customers
will access it. British Airways has used this tool wisely as it flies to more than 400
destinations in the worldwide (West, Ford and Ibrahim, 2015). It keeps on merging with
significant destinations and it has its own warehouse for servicing the aircrafts.
4. Promotion: It refers to what promotional activities can be used to make your customers
aware about your products and services. To be in touch with its customers, British
Airlines has created mobile application for its special customers, for promoting its
services. It also provides special offers on different occasions like Christmas gift
vouchers for consumers to travel at discounted prices.
5. Physical evidence: It refers to everything that customers are interacting with respect to
business. The services and quality provided by British Airways make a huge distinction

from its competitors in terms of seat comfort, space, interiors, innovation etc. British
Airways has an effective physical evidences which can be notified by their planes, crew,
Logo, various counters at Airports across the world.
6. People: It refers to the employees or staffs who is working for your business. British
Airways have top level of training for its staff from crew to engineers. It always keeps in
mind its slogan “To fly. To serve.Today.Tomorrow.” with high aim.
7. Process: It refers to the process involved in manufacturing or delivering the product or
services to the customer (Groucutt and Hopkins, 2015). British airline need to have a
structured process so that it can provide same quality of services to its customers every
time like, in-flight meals should always be of good quality standard.
Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning
STP refers to marketing plan that helps marketers identify target customers. The detailed
analysis is described below.
1. Segmentation: It refers to market research and analysis to identify the customer needs
and segment market based on it. It has different segments, first demographic, where
customers are characterized based on occupation, education, social status, family size.
Second, geographic, characterized on age, gender, income, density etc. Third,
psychographic, based on lifestyle, personality and occasions. Forth behavioural, depends
upon benefits, status, attitude. Fifth is travel and tourism industry base, takes into
consideration customer expectation, image, trip descriptors (Palmatier and Crecelius,
2019). British Airways has taken into consideration all the above factors such as number
of domestic and international flights, customers demand, and lifestyle type of trips.
2. Targeting: British Airways has targeted different customer segments based on its level
of services: economy class, premium economy, executive club and first class. Targeted
every class of customers from low to high level class (Sahu, and Pradhan, 2017).
3. Positioning: British Airways serving different customers globally because of its
customer positioning as it has targeted on customers’ needs like regular trips, business
trips, family vacation, occasional trips, customer expectation etc.
Relationship between marketing functions with other functional areas
Covered in Poster

CONCLUSION
In these report Airline industry has been describe with the help of British Airway
company and the growing importance of marketing in airline industry. British Airway is the
second largest airline of United Kingdom in the basis of passenger carried and fleet size. The
first part explain various concept and terminology of marketing have been used some of them are
Product strategy, Branding and Promotional strategy. It can be concluded that there are various
marketing concept used by the British Airways to achieve its objectives. Also, there are various
marketing strategies and programs that have been used by British Airways in achieving their
business objectives. Also, the objectives which have been achieved were ethical. It can also be
concluded for the report marketing principle and concept which have been used by British
Airlines for its daily organisational operation and there exists a strong relationship between
marketing and other functional areas
RECOMMENDATIONS
 It is suggested for British Airways in order to attract huge audience with its offers, the
best way to use to social media marketing like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp etc.
This can help the company to target a huge audience with loss costs.
 Also, it is recommended for the company to market about its offers and discounts in an
effective manner and develops an effective marketing strategy.
 British Airways should keep on innovating its promotional and branding strategies in
order to keep customers engaged.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
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customers: Case studies of British Airways, SAS, Air France, Easy jet and KLM.
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AND MARKETING COMMUNICATION. Revista Economica. 68(2).
Groucutt, J. and Hopkins, C., 2015. Marketing. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Iordanova, D., 2018. Global film at global airlines: a “territory” in the air. Alphaville: Journal of
Film and Screen Media.
Lancaster, G. and Massingham, L., 2017. Direct marketing. In Essentials of Marketing
Management (pp. 279-297). Routledge.
McDonald, M. and Wilson, H., 2016. Marketing Plans: How to prepare them, how to profit from
them. John Wiley & Sons.
Opreana, A. and Vinerean, S., 2015. A new development in online marketing: Introducing digital
inbound marketing. Expert Journal of Marketing. 3(1).
Palmatier, R. W. and Crecelius, A. T., 2019. The “first principles” of marketing strategy. AMS
Review. 9(1-2). pp.5-26.
Rakib, A. H., 2018. Promotional strategies of iHover.
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performance in high-tech SMEs. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior &
Research, 22(6). pp.985-988.
Sahu, S. K. and Pradhan, S. K., 2017. Marketing Management: An Indian Prospective.
Educreation Publishing.
Shinnar and et.al., 2016. A branding strategy for business types. In A List of Successes That Can
STP of marketing
Taneja, N. K., 2016. Adaptation Strategies by Airlines. In Airline Industry (pp. 101-125).
Routledge
West, D. C., Ford, J. and Ibrahim, E., 2015. Strategic marketing: creating competitive
advantage. Oxford University Press, USA.
Wymer, W., Boenigk, S. and Möhlmann, M., 2015. The conceptualization of nonprofit
marketing orientation: A critical reflection and contributions toward closing the
practice–theory gap. Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing. 27(2). pp.117-
134.