Marketing challenges and corporate culture at Classic Airlines

Classic Airlines Marketing

Classic Airlines is in a highly competitive market with little flexibility in terms of price flexibility, due to cost impositions in the industry. It is also faced with the complicating factor of having a highly split customer base: most business fliers travelling more frequently as individuals and willing to pay higher fares while demanding more locations, more frequent flight, fewer connections, and a higher quality of service for this premium; leisure travelers, which tend to purchase multiple tickets for a single trips (for families travelling together, etc.), are most primarily concerned about cost, and are more willing to endure connections, inconvenient flight schedules, lower levels of service and amenities, and other perks if it represents a cost savings. Ultimately, the company (like all airliners) is marketing two separate products to two different sets of people, and its marketing strategy should take this into account.

Marketing alone cannot effectively address the current situation Classic Airlines finds itself facing, but rather it must be accompanied by real changes if it is to follow the successful models of differentiation and multivariate marketing strategies in the airline industry (Scribd 2011). Providing distinct sections of the cabin with varying levels of amenities and service provision will allow Classic Airlines to effectively market many flights to both business and leisure travel customers, and allow the company to provide cost-effective ways of rewarding its frequent fliers (Scribd 2011). Similarly, this will provide a tangible means of differentiating the price of business and leisure fares without actually increasing the costs of Classic Airlines in the provision of these differences to business travelers to the same magnitude (Scribd 2011). This will not address the differences sought in flight and destination availability, however, nor the costs associated with providing more convenient flight schedules and routes.

In order to better tap the potentials in both areas of the targeted customer populations, Classic Airlines should reach out through distributors and travel coordinators for both companies and leisure travelers, focusing its marketing efforts on third-party coordinators that are themselves already highly focused (Global Media 2010). Tapping into these distributors and their own extensive customer networks can help bolster enrollment in the frequent flyer program offered by the airline, while at the same time offering a focused and efficient manner to differentiate marketing according to the company's needs (Global Media 2010). Achieving cost efficiency in its marketing efforts is essential for Classic Airlines at this period of its development and given the overall competition in this industry, and by allowing other groups -- travel agents, corporate symposium coordinators, and a variety of other planners and travel advertisers -- to shoulder some of this burden, Classic Airlines will be in a much better position in this regard.

Low-cost marketing for the periods that Classic Airlines operates at a loss could help to boost leisure travel during these periods, and due to the relatively low level of variable costs leisure passengers present this could greatly help to offset the burdens of operation (Landsbaum 2004). Techniques for low-cost marketing must in many industries avoid appearances of sacrificed quality or diminished service potentials, but airlines are in a unique position to take advantage of certain low-cost marketing techniques with relative impunity, as the basic commodity they provide -- namely travel -- is the only expectation many leisure travelers have (Landsbaum 2004).