Emirates Airline Case Study: Utilizing Social Media in Business

This case study examines Emirates Airline's utilization of social media as an information system solution to enhance business operations, focusing on reaching consensus, managing change, planning IS development, and addressing privacy concerns. It highlights the airline's strategic approach to customer relationship management (CRM) through platforms like Twitter, balancing the benefits of real-time customer interaction with the challenges of data privacy and potential negative feedback. The study references Kotter's 8-step change management process to analyze Emirates' strategy and explores the integration of social CRM to improve customer experience and retention. Furthermore, the case touches upon outsourcing agreements, such as the one with IBM, and emphasizes the importance of effective communication plans via social media to foster a healthy customer-airline relationship. The analysis concludes by underscoring the need for robust privacy measures and data verification processes to safeguard customer information while leveraging social media for competitive advantage.

Running head: USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN BUSINESS
Introducing social media as an information system solution for the organization
: A case study of Emirates Airline
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction and background...........................................................................................................2
Reaching consensus.........................................................................................................................3
Managing change.............................................................................................................................5
Planning IS development.................................................................................................................7
Dealing with outsourcing.................................................................................................................9
Dealing with privacy......................................................................................................................10
Increasing awareness.....................................................................................................................11
Investing in information................................................................................................................12
Report findings..............................................................................................................................13
References......................................................................................................................................15

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Introduction and background
The rise of social media has a great impact on the process through which a customer
makes decisions regarding purchases along with making interaction with the brands with the
customers with the help of purchases cycle. Most of the organizations understand the concept of
promotion using social media. However, few people comprehend the way to make value for
particular attribute. In the present study, use of social media in order to manage business is
described.
Newman (2017) stated that Emirates Group is one of the top global brands with strong
corporate culture. The organization has entered through cargo shipping and continuously
enhances as well as renews their services in the airline. In addition, the organization manages the
requirements of target audience and decision for focusing on diversified market. The company
does not provide several places in the USA. However, it focuses on their high-end acquisitions
as well as diversification. However, the company does not provide facilities for budget travelers
as well as personalized services (White 2016). The company has developed continuously for new
generations and advanced airline with the aviation services. The competitor organizations for
instance Gulf Air and Eihad are considered as major threats.
In present situation, it becomes difficult to manage customers effectively as competence
is increasing day by day. Rapid development of information and communication technology
helps organizations to communicate with customers and know their demands. However, it
becomes difficult to use appropriate social media tool that can provide competitive benefits to
the organization.

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Reaching consensus
Social media produces a massive amount of data related to the customers in real time
(Piotrowicz and Cuthbertson 2014). Through daily activity as well as social listening, related
customer data as well as use of information makes the business smarter. On the other hand, it
increase brand awareness as well as loyalty. Social ads are considered as one of the most
inexpensive ways in order to promote business as well as distribute content. These are powerful
in terms of targeting options so that it is helpful to research to right audience. Apart from these,
use of social media is helpful to generate higher converting leads. Social media is also helpful for
increasing sales as well as customer retention by making regular interaction along with timely
service. In addition, use of social media is helpful to provide rich customer experience. A report
by Aberdeen Group has shown that the organizations involving in social customer service can
gain more profit.
Social media such as Twitter is also one of the largest places for an active group of
people known as ‘trolls’. These people have the sole intention of negatively impacting anyone
who is not aligned with their ideals. The queries or the feedback posted by an unhappy customer
might be a troller in disguise. They might post various comments on the twitter account page of
Emirates Airlines. This will impact the business of the company as not many people are aware of
the concept of trolling and might consider the negative feedback from such a person as true
(Pearlson et al. 2016). On the other hand, there is immediate future as well as long term to be the
best in the projects. There are various process lied in the success of the organization.
Knox, Marston and Imort (2016) commented that provided birth to social media. Social
media has been used in various context associated with distinctive technologies and the thing for

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accomplishment. Hajli (2015) stated that the process makes the web-based technologies in order
to transform as well as media monologues into the social media dialogues.
Figure : Customer management tool
(Source: (Siamagka et al. 2015,p.651)
\The social media technology supports democratization of knowledge as well as
transforming information from the content consumes to the producers. Hence, people can rely
more on the social media in order to learn regarding the events. There are several social media
websites like Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, Google+, LinkedIn, Youtube and Twitter (Siamagka et
al. 2015). LinkedIn is used for mainstream social networking sites. On the other hand, Facebook,
Orkut, MySpace and Google+ have the purposes for mainstream performance. Wikipedia is
used as the open-source online source encloypedia.

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Managing change
Kavanagh and Johnson (2017) stated that various advantages are generally observed as it
raises marketing return on the investment as well as development of product quality. The social
CRM form has technological standpoint bridges with traditional CRM. Hence, complete picture
can be developed when various elements weaved across social media and integrated as the part
of operations. Organizations working closely with the customers need to co-create ideas for
product service.
Kotter 8 step process is helpful to analyze the strategy taken by Emirate Airline. In the
first step, it is required to create urgency. For change to happen, it assists the entire organization
to work on it. Development of the urgency plan would be helpful to achieve the need of changes.
It is important to identify threats and develop scenarios for future. Analysis of the opportunities
could be exploited through it. In the second step, it is required to develop a powerful coalition
where it is required to convince people that change is essential.

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Figure 2: Kotter’s 8 step process
(Source: Stieglitz et al. 2014, p.541)
Finding effective change leaders in the organization is helpful for the organization. Use
of Twitter can be useful to influence people requiring work as a team. In addition, using Twitter
is useful for creating vision of change. Communicating the vision as using Twitter is helpful to
generate strong competition with others. On the other hand, removing Obstacles as privacy and
security issues need to be assessed (Stieglitz et al. 2014). Moreover, creating short-term wins as
short-time benefit for using social media for customer management is helpful for the
organization. Apart from these, develop on the change of demands and anchor the changes in
making corporate culture is required to achieve for implying social media as Twitter for the
organization.

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While adopting social CRM, there are several challenges. The vital part is privacy of the
user data. Using social listening tool can only access public data. There are regulations for
preventing storage as well as usage of the information. Social media uses the applications for
newer channels like micro blogs as well as communities that lead to higher customer association
with the organizations as well as brands (Stieglitz et al. 2014). However, the ID of social media
requires to be verified for preventing information with the unauthorized persons. It also provides
different aspects that look to the readiness for adopting SCM for gaining future opportunity.
Planning IS development
Customer relation management tool is used for understanding the role of social media in
business. In the current context, Emirates Airline has been selected as case study organization.
Moreover, as an internal solution Yammer is considered. The use of twitter in customer relation
management is described in the study.
However, there are several limitations faced by Emirate Airline in using Twitter as
customer management tool. The most important limitation is selecting mixed method approach
as it can lead to make the process effective. On the other hand, in order to clarify tendency of the
process, it is required to make direction of the process (Simon et al. 2015). Cross-functional
strategies would be helpful for creation of enhanced shareholder value by making proper
relationships with the customers as well as customer segments. CRM is viewed as the strategic
management approach concerned with the use of data as well as technology along with the
process of integration. Strategic management approach is helpful for diffusion of the knowledge
of customers. In order to sum up the attempts for establishing the functions and management of

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the process, long-term relationship as well as customer exchanges for customer relationship
lifecycle would be useful.
The perspectives are sales, relationships as well as management activities for
differentiating each other in the process. The network perspective includes highest depth of the
asset of customers as well as scope of the process (Parveen et al. 2015). It is important to give
attention on the perspectives for important interactions between the organization as well as its
customers. A holistic approach can be helpful for making cross-functional approach, which is
supported by strategies and technologies along with the process involved in the system. There
are several advantages of using social media platforms in order to provide beneficial value.
Data Flow Diagrams
Westerman, Spence and Van Der Heide (2014) mentioned that generation of proper
market intelligence for current as well as future requirements can be helpful for market
orientation. Stemming from the implication of market orientation is one of the approaches for
gaining better relationship in marketing principle implied a competitive benefits gained as well

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as sustained by fulfilling the demands of the customers. Sharing is one of the comparable ideas
of information reciprocity where consumer interacting as well as sharing information is
encouraged by multiple activities. It leads to a positive effect on the ability of the organization.
Sharing SM tools can be helpful to give advantage on the user exchange.
Dealing with outsourcing
Emirates Airlines has one of the largest customer bases among other competitor airlines
that currently dominate the global airlines market. Social media can be used to reach the highest
number of customers who use their services (Xu et al. 2016). IBM has signed ten-year
technology service agreement with Emirates Airline that is approximately $300 million. In this
perspective, it is important to develop effective communication plan that could be achieved with
the help of social media.
People check their social media accounts more frequently than their email accounts and
therefore social media is one of the greatest tool that can be used to promoting a healthy
customer-airlines relationship. Emirates Airlines can use Twitter to connect with their customer
base to handle their queries and any issues that they might have faced while using the service at
Emirates Airlines. The customer can post their queries or issues on the Twitter account page of
Emirates Airlines. A select team of experts will attend to such queries and would solve them
within a fixed amount of time. Such a technique is useful as most of the time the customer might
face technical troubles while calling the company and the calls does not always connect to the
right department who would sole the issue (Prpić et al. 2015). Many times, it has been observed
that connecting to the right department to solve a particular issue takes time and the customer

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might not be able to always afford such time. It only takes a few seconds to post a complaint or a
query on the account page and therefore it saves a lot of the customer’s time.
Dealing with privacy
Twitter has one of the highest user base and therefore it can be safely expressed that most
of the customers of Emirates Airlines will be able to sue this tool. Familiarity is one of the best
tools that can be used by a company to make a customer comfortable in an unknown
environment. Therefore, a customer might be hesitant to call or email to leave a feedback to the
company, they would be easily using their Twitter access to do the same. Leaving a few words of
feedback on the Emirates Airlines Twitter account page will therefore be beneficial for the
customer and for the company. However, several issues like dealing with privacy are one of the
major challenges of the organization. Hence, it is required to use DPA principle for using social
media in marketing management.
The first principle of Data protection principle needs to be processed lawfully. Second
principle shall be obtained for more specified process. Third principle shall be adequate, related
as well as not excessive related to the purpose of the organization. Personal data in Twitter of
Emirates Airline need to be accurate, whereas fifth principle processes personal data. Seventh
principle implies technical as well as organizational measures. On contrary, eighth principle help
to ensure personal data that should not be transferred out of the nation or territory.
Channeling the feedback to the correct department has always been an issue in large
companies. Most of the times, the call ends up at the wrong department or the email is lost
among a huge stack of other more important emails. Therefore, the tweet on the Twitter holds an
individualistic approach and the members at the company see to it that the feedback or the query

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of the customer reaches the correct department (Wang et al. 2018). The most important factor
being understandability of the priority level. Every organization has to deal with different issues
every day and it is the responsibility of the managers to segregate the issues based on their
priorities and then act accordingly. Due to this segregation, it is seen that most of the time the
customers might not be given enough priority (Ngai et al. 2015). However, customers are the
source of revenue and must be treated with the highest priority among all other operations and
using Twitter will definitely assist in achieving that.
Increasing awareness
Marketing strategies can be integrated with the Customer relationship management. CRM
allows such marketing strategies whereas other marketing tools do not allow it. The company
can solve the query or the feedback by the individual customers within a stipulated amount of
time and use that to advertise their competency to their existing customers as well as to their
potential customers. Shore, Bernstein and Lazer (2015) commented that customers can be
reached out and communicated with easily using Twitter. Studies show that people are more
open to replying to messages on Twitter than an email that they have received. The human mind
works in such a manner that makes answering or getting a directed reply in a group or public
chat group as more rewarding. The Social media tools such as Twitter utilize this aspect of the
human behavior. The customers of the company will openly share their feedback and reply to
messages if it is seen by them that they are being paid attention to.
Social media is very easy to use. However, implementing it effectively to serve the
objectives of the company might be tough. The people chosen to handle the queries from the
social media must be adept and diplomatic in their approach to the different problems that they