Marketing Communications – British Airways

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Marketing Communications – British Airways Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction...........................................................................................................................................4 2.0 Literature Review..................................................................................................................................4 2.1 Integrated Marketing Communication...............................................................................................5 2.2 Integrated Marketing Communications Tools....................................................................................6 2.2.1. Advertising................................................................................................................................6 2.2.2 Sales promotion..........................................................................................................................6 2.2.3 Direct marketing.........................................................................................................................7 2.2.4 Personal selling...........................................................................................................................7 2.2.5 Public relations...........................................................................................................................7 2.2.6 Mobile marketing........................................................................................................................7 2.2.7 Social media marketing..............................................................................................................8 3.0 Market Environment Analysis...............................................................................................................8 4.0 Critical Analysis and Discussion...........................................................................................................9 4.1 Brand positioning..............................................................................................................................9 4.2 Communication mix management.....................................................................................................9 4.3 Critical assessment..........................................................................................................................10 5.0 Conclusion and Recommendations......................................................................................................10 References.................................................................................................................................................12

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Executive summary This paper seeks to analyze, assess, and develop integrated marketing communication mix strategies for British Airways and recommend future actions based on such evaluation.

Integrated marketing communication has become essential in helping companies create awareness about their products and increase their sales. In the study, various integrated marketing communications tools have been identified and discussed. The UK airline industry is highly competitive because of the low-cost carriers that are quickly gaining popularity in the market. There is a need for British Airways to improve its integrated marketing communication strategy by incorporating social communication tools.

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Marketing Communications – British Airways 1.0 Introduction Today, marketing communications have become necessary for any business and its operational efficiency. Marketing communication refers to the ways by which organizations inform, educate, encourage, and apprise customers about their services, brands, and solutions. It helps companies to connect their brands with emotions, events, experiences, places, and people.

Marketing communication can even help a firm to showcase how its product works, its uses, the reason for its use, who benefits from using the product, and the product's value prepositions to the target audience (Finne & Grönroos, 2017). Companies have adopted a mix of marketing communication strategies to help them increase awareness about their products and enhance their competitiveness in the highly competitive industry characterized by many industry players. This has resulted in a concept called integrated marketing communication. This paper seeks to analyze, assess, and develop integrated marketing communication mix strategies for British Airways and recommend future actions based on such evaluation.

2.0 Literature Review In the highly competitive markets that exist today, marketing is now an integral part of the business of any given company. Marketing promotes the exchange of value between businesses and consumers to meet both their needs and wants. The adoption of a market-driven strategy can significantly help businesses gain a deeper understanding of the market needs, which form the basis for their customers' market. Such an understanding will lead to increased customer value and profitability for the organization.

The field of marketing has changed and continues to evolve over the years. Therefore, businesses and marketers need to be innovative in their tactics and strategies used to create or

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maintain their competitive advantage. Traditionally, businesses relied on such communication strategies as Word-of-Mouth communications, the AIDA model, the interactive model of communication, and the linear model of communication. To begin with, Word-of-Mouth marketing is a traditional method of spreading the news about a company's product by having customers inform their families and friends about their experiences with the product.

Nonetheless, this marketing is often slow as customers take time to spread the news about the products. Similarly, a business is generally limited in the number of potential customers it can market to at a particular time when using this strategy.

According to the AIDA model, potential customers go through four phases that include awareness, interest, desire, and action when deciding whether to acquire a product. The model holds that awareness leads to interest, which results in desire, and finally, action (Ullal & Hawaldar, 2018). However, critics of this model have pointed out that the model does not consider the purchase decision process anymore once a customer makes a purchase. All such post-purchase effects as customer ratings, dissatisfaction, satisfaction, and recommendations remain unattached. Apart from Word-of-Mouth marketing and the AIDA model, the organization also traditionally utilized an interaction model of marketing communication and a linear model of communication to create awareness and encourage the purchase of their products.

Nonetheless, with the recent revolution of the internet as a new marketing channel, marketing communications have significantly changed to satisfy the new online customers' needs.

2.1 Integrated Marketing Communication The area of marketing communication has dramatically changed over the last thirty years.

Such change in the market environment has been the basic force behind the development of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC). According to Duralia (2018), IMC is an approach

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to brand communication that entails the use of different promotional methods for a marketing campaign. In the IMC model, potential customers are presented with a clear and consistent message about a brand. Bruhn and Schnebelen (2017) point out that in today's highly competitive market with many marketing and advertising mediums as well as powerful marketing campaigns, companies have to communicate a consistent marketing message through the use of a 360-degree approach. Doing so will help the companies enhance their position in the market and significantly impact their existing and potential customers.

2.2 Integrated Marketing Communications Tools IMC effectively integrates various modes of brand communication and utilizes them to simultaneously promote an organization's product to the customers to ensure increased revenues for the company. The tools in IMC include; 2.2.1. Advertising It refers to the non-personal and paid forms of brand promotion. Advertisements in billboards, newspapers, radio, and television reach a wider audience within the shortest time possible.

Advertising helps to create brand awareness about a product or service and to increase its consumption. It is the responsibility of an organization's marketers to ensure that the right message about their company's product reaches the target customers at the right time.

2.2.2 Sales promotion It refers to the short-term incentives given to the customers to increase product sales. The provision of short-term incentives gives the customers a reason to purchase the product through the provision of such attractive offers as rebates, low-cost financing deals, price packs, sweepstakes, samples, premiums, contests, and discount coupons.

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2.2.3 Direct marketing It is a communication strategy that involves direct communication with the end-users through promotional letters, brochures, catalogs, text messages, emails, telephone, or fax. Today, many customers make purchases online; thus, marketers help them in their buying process by sending them catalogs and other marketing materials to simplify their online acquisition.

2.2.4 Personal selling It involves face-to-face interaction with the end-users of a product with the primary objective of creating awareness about the product and convincing the customer to buy the product. In this approach, a salesperson directly communicates or engages the buyer, provides a solution to their issues on the spot, and aims to establish a long-term relationship with the end-users.

2.2.5 Public relations It encompasses all practices aimed at managing the relationship between the public and the company. It entails two-way communication that allows the public to give their feedback to the company. An organization carries public relations activities to create goodwill in the industry and give the company's product a positive image. Event sponsorship, public appearances, news, and press releases are some of the ways in which promotion using this strategy can be carried out.

2.2.6 Mobile marketing Mobile marketing is the cheapest traditional means of product promotion. It entails communication with customers through their mobile phones by sending them text messages informing them of a product.

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2.2.7 Social media marketing It is one of the most powerful tools used by companies. In this strategy, companies promote their brands through social media channels. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram are the primary channels used for promotion in this strategy. Promotions done through these channels can reach a large number of customers established in different markets across the globe within seconds. Social media marketing is one of the low-cost promotional methods used by businesses in which a huge number of customers are targeted at a go.

3.0 Market Environment Analysis The UK's airline industry is highly competitive, consisting of legacy carriers like Virgin Atlantic, Lufthansa, and British Airways that traditionally provide full-service flights. It also consists of low-cost budget carriers like EasyJet, Ryanair, Jet2, Thomas Cook, and Flybe, which provide a no-frills service. Due to the liberalization of the European Union markets as well as deregulation in the United Kingdom, market opportunities and competition have increased for a legacy career like British Airways (Mason & Alamdari, 2017). Competition has intensified as an increasing number of market competitors are encroaching on the company's market share.

Some of the market dynamics that would significantly affect the company's marketing communication initiatives encompass the emergence of various low-cost budget carriers that have initiated a different business model in the industry. Such carriers have managed to redefine operational strategies and cost structures previously perceived as the industry's standards. For instance, through the utilization of a radical cost-cutting approach, such low-cost carriers as EasyJet and Ryanair managed to make air travel accessible to everyone by reducing airline ticket prices. They managed to achieve this by removing standard extras like insurance and seat reservations, baggage handling, and inflight meals and entertainment that were normally offered

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as free complementary services within airline ticket prices (Halpern, Graham, & Dennis, 2016).

Furthermore, the aging population and the spread of coronavirus are also areas of possible concern to the company. While the older populations have more time to travel, the spread of coronavirus may force the company to adopt spread control measures that may prove to be expensive to maintain.

4.0 Critical Analysis and Discussion 4.1 Brand positioning Positioning strategy enables a company to attain an optimal market position and enhances an organization's image in the customers' minds. In its operation, British Airways has positioned itself in the airline industry through differentiation. The firm has positioned itself as an airline that is caring, conscious of the comfort and class of the customers. The company does not promote itself as one that offers the cheapest flights. Instead, it has focused on metropolitan areas in which most business owners live and work. Customers view the services offered by the company to be of high quality.

4.2 Communication mix management Currently, the marketing communication of British Airways specifically targets three customer groups that include leisure, business, and premium travelers. For instance, in the company's promotion campaign towards leisure, British Airways focuses on educating the consumers on the existing difference between no-frill airlines and full-service ones. In such a campaign, the company intends to make the customers understand the hidden costs that come with low-cost carriers. This shows that the promotion strategy of British Airways is aimed at attacking customers.

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4.3 Critical assessment The integrated marketing communication tools used by the company include; a). Advertising In using advertisements to communicate to its target customers, British Airways utilizes such different mediums as the press, the print, and outdoor medium. The company also integrates a catchy slogan like "Value flying" to influence customers in their purchasing pattern. b). Face to face communication British Airways uses face to face communication campaigns to communicate with business travelers. Doing so enables the company to comprehensively understand the decision-making process of the consumers. In the end, the organization can use this information to influence the decision-making process of the consumers. c). Public relations The company also has a program that sees more than 1000 small business entrepreneurs travel across the North Atlantic from the United Kingdom and the United States. d). The website (Emerging technologies) The company has also integrated an emerging technology into its marketing communication mix.

It has managed to achieve this by coming up with a website that features a value calculator, which enables its customers and potential customers to look at the hidden cost of industry rivals like Ryan air and Easy jet and then compare with the company's price offerings.

5.0 Conclusion and Recommendations It can be seen from the above discussion that British Airways lacks an effective integrated marketing communication strategy. In this case, the company has failed to integrate other marketing communication strategies such as public relations and sales promotion.

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Succeeding in this highly competitive business environment requires the company to seriously consider the integration of emerging information communication technology. Examples of emerging marketing communication medium that British Airways should significantly consider integrating are social communication tools.

For instance, the firm should expand its internet marketing communication to include such tools as Myspace, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. Currently, the organization's integrated marketing communication cannot be said to be efficient, given that it fails to incorporate internet marketing. By incorporating social communication tools, the business increases its chances of attaining a competitive edge in the market by attracting more potential customers. This is primarily because of the fact that many customers access the internet daily.

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References Bruhn, M., & Schnebelen, S. (2017). Integrated marketing communication–from an instrumental to a customer-centric perspective. European Journal of Marketing.

Duralia, O. (2018). Integrated marketing communication and its impact on consumer behavior.

Studies in Business and Economics, 13(2), 92-102.

Finne, Å., & Grönroos, C. (2017). Communication-in-use: customer-integrated marketing communication. European Journal of Marketing.

Halpern, N., Graham, A., & Dennis, N. (2016). Low-cost carriers and the changing fortunes of airports in the UK. Research in transportation business & management, 21, 33-43.

Mason, K. J., & Alamdari, F. (2017). EU network carriers, low-cost carriers, and consumer behavior: A Delphi study of future trends. Journal of Air Transport Management, 13(5), 299-310.

Ullal, M. S., & Hawaldar, I. T. (2018). Influence of advertisement on customers based on AIDA model. Problems and Prospective in Management, 16(4), 285-298.