Customer Journey Analysis: Airline Industry and New Age Marketing

This essay examines the customer journey within the airline industry, focusing on the UK market. It explores changing consumption behavior, particularly the impact of environmental concerns, online booking preferences, and mobile phone usage, using the Buyer’s Black Box concept. The essay identifies key aspects for new-age marketers to enhance customer experience, such as timely, relevant, consistent, memorable, easy, and personal service, based on the 6 x Dimensions of a Good Customer Journey. The analysis draws upon primary data from interviews with airline consumers and secondary data on industry trends. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of customer experience for customer satisfaction and the need for marketers to adapt to evolving consumer expectations to improve the overall customer journey.

Customer journey

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
ANALYSIS......................................................................................................................................1
Change in consumption behaviour in context of airline industry................................................1
Key aspects required to be understood by the new age marketer in order to provide an
enhanced customer experience....................................................................................................2
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Customer journey is the set of experiences from which a customer goes through while
interacting with an organisation. This journey is directly linked with the customer experience and
relationship between service provider and consumer (Ampountolas, 2016). The main aim of this
essay is to build an understanding regarding the change in customer behaviour in airline industry
in context to United Kingdom. In this essay two concepts are considered from the course which
are related with primary data collected by conducting interview sessions with 3 airline service
consumers and secondary data. These concepts are; Buyer’s black box concept and concept of 6
x Dimensions of a Good Customer Journey. Using these concepts and primary data, in this essay
few key aspects are identified which are required to be understood by new age marketers to
provide an enhanced customer experience.
ANALYSIS
Change in consumption behaviour in context of airline industry
Consumption behaviour is a pattern in which a consumer consumes services. This change
can be better understood with the help of Buyer’s black box concept. This concept states that
every response and change of buyer against a particular service or product is the result of market
conditions and stimuli (Figueiredo, 2016). Marketing stimuli and environmental factors forces
consumers to react in a certain way which sometimes results in positive and sometimes in
negative impact on growth of product. These marketing stimuli includes product, price, place and
promotion. On the other hand, environmental factors include economic, demographic,
technological, political etc.
Airline industry is one the most growing industry but even then organisations working in
this industry has to face ample issues when it comes to changing customer behaviour. From the
primary data of interview and secondary data collected, there are various patterns of change
identified which makes it simple to assess consumption behaviour in context of airline industry.
From the data, it has been seen that nowadays, consumers are concerned about their actions
which impacts the environmental sustainability. Increasing global warming and environmental
pollution has convinced people to mind their actions. It is a known fact that flying takes a lot of
energy and roughly release 2% carbon dioxide in environment (Hapsari, Clemes and Dean,
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2017). These facts and concerns of people have encouraging them to adopt mediums which has
less carbon footprint on environment due to which consumers of airline industry are decreasing.
Another pattern which is seen in consumption behaviour in airline industry is preference of
consumers against online ticketing and intermediaries. From the primary data, it is analysed that
consumers don’t even remember when they last printed a ticket of their flight. Nowadays almost
every company engaged in aviation industry provide service of online ticket booking which has
made the life of consumers easier. Along with primary, secondary data collected has shown
findings that every year consumers using online booking are increasing. It has been seen that
online sales of travel intermediaries were 3566.2 million GBP in 2014 and 4157.4 million GBP.
This increasing shift in online sales shows change in consumption behaviour of people. From the
primary as well as secondary data collected, it can be said that people are more tend to book their
air ticket online as this way is technology friendly and provides and ease in people’s lifestyle.
Mobile phones are the most essential part of today’s people. This technology helps people
to develop an ease in their lives. From few years a drastic change is observed which is people
now tend to book their air ticket from their mobile phones rather than any other medium
(Karoubi, 2014). From the secondary data collected, it has been seen that total mobile travel sales
to residents were 6023.3 million GBP in 2014 which raise to 1405.6 million GBP in a period of
just 5 years. Even from the primary data collection, it is ascertained that consumers tend to book
their air ticket from their mobile phones using applications like Booking.com. Their perception
against this change was: booking flights from mobile phones provides access to multiple options
and even provide benefit of offers and schemes.
From the above change patterns, it can be easily understood that how consumption
behaviour of consumers has been changed in airline industry.
Key aspects required to be understood by the new age marketer in order to provide an enhanced
customer experience
Customer experience is the relationship between organisation and the customer in which
these two parties interact in order to provide maximum satisfaction to customers (Marinosci,
2019). In order to attain growth and development, it is important for organisations to provide
maximum satisfaction in their experience while consuming the services. A new age marketer is
an individual which makes efforts to promote their brand so that their organisation can be
developed. It is important for marketers to offer what consumer needs so that their maximum
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satisfaction level can be achieved. There are few key aspects which new age marketers must
understand to provide an enhanced customer experience. These aspects can be understood with
the concept of 6 x Dimensions of a Good Customer Journey. This concept provides six
dimensions which if considered can provide enhanced customer experience. These dimensions
are timely, relevant consistent, memorable, easy and personal.
These six dimensions are based on the principles of enhancing customer experience. The
first dimension is timely; according to this dimension services must excel at delivery. The most
challenging issue which is identified by interpreting the primary data is that consumers are un
satisfied with the services of airline organisations as the timings of the flights are illogical
(Vieira and et.al, 2019). Most of the flights are either of early morning or after mid night. These
timings tend people to travel with rails instead of flights. In order to enhance customer
experience, new age marketers must consider that they deliver their services when they are
needed by consumers. Another dimension for this journey is relevance. This aspect is based on
the principle of “Know your customer at granular level”. In this, marketers must conduct
effective market research in which they must obtain information about their customers related to
their travel patterns so that schemes can be offered to them which can be relevant to their plans
by which maximum customer satisfaction will be obtained.
Consistent is another dimension which is most important in case of airline industry as there
is no consistency in the flight plans of airline industry. Timings of flights and number of flights
change frequently with the changing demand. These changes impacts consumers which requires
consistent flights for their regular travel plans. In growing nation like United Kingdom, there are
various diplomats and personalities who travel at the same time regularly but because of non
consistent flights plans of organisations, consumers have to suffer. From the primary
investigation (interview 3), it has been seen that consumer has to suffer due to delays and
cancellation in flights. Considering this dimension, new age marketers can emphasize on
consistent service to gain enhance customer experience. Memorable is a dimension which
doesn’t have to do anything with primary needs of consumer but definitely provide an add on
value in customer experience. The new age marketers must consider that their consumer have a
memorable travel experience with them.
Easy is based on the principle of “Ensure a seamless Omni channel experience” (Principles
of good customer experience, 2019). According to this dimension, service must touch each and
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every touchpoint so that accessing the service can be easier for consumer. From the primary and
secondary data collected, it has been identified that majority of the passengers book their air
tickets using online service as it provides them an ease. This ease is most important in current
lifestyle of people of United Kingdom due to which new age marketers must emphasize to
promote their service which offer this ease. The last dimension of a good customer experience is
personal. According to this dimension, the services which are offered to consumers must be
personalised so that maximum consumer satisfaction can be attained. From the secondary data
collection, it has been seen that every year number of air travellers is being increasing, this is a
great opportunity for new age marketers to grab this opportunity and offer personalised plans to
their customers and potential clients so that their experience can be enhanced.
Above aspects are required to be considered by new age marketers operating in airline
industry so that they can provide an enhanced customer experience which will ultimately be
beneficial in enhancing customer behaviour against the services provided to them.
CONCLUSION
From the above essay, it has been concluded that consumer experience is the most important
aspect which is need to be considered and enhanced in order to gain maximum level of customer
satisfaction. The above essay summarises that airline industry is facing various challenges in
satisfying their customers due to which new age marketers must consider various aspects which
can help them to enhance customer experience.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Ampountolas, A., (2016). Revenue management, dynamic pricing and social media in the
tourism industry: A case study of the name-your-own-price mechanism.
Figueiredo, L. M. R. S. P., (2016). Equity research-Deutsche Lufthansa AG (Doctoral
dissertation, Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão).
Hapsari, R., Clemes, M. D. & Dean, D., (2017). The impact of service quality, customer
engagement and selected marketing constructs on airline passenger loyalty. International
Journal of Quality and Service Sciences. 9(1). pp.21-40.
Karoubi, M., (2014). Investigating brand personality of state-owned and private airlines: Maham
Versus Iran Air. Management Science Letters. 4(6). pp.1245-1254.
Marinosci, I., (2019). Big data in the Tourism Industry: how online reviews can affect hotel
performance (Bachelor's thesis, Università Ca'Foscari Venezia).
Vieira, J. & et.al., (2019). Airline choice and tourism growth in the Azores. Journal of Air
Transport Management. 77. pp.1-6.
Online
Principles of good customer experience. 2019. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.strategy-business.com/article/10-Principles-of-Customer-Strategy?
gko=534a0>
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