Southwest Airlines operations and business model

¶ … marketing service issues that I would like to discuss, as applied to Southwest Airlines. The first is the fact that the concept of "fun" seems to be focal in Southwest's marketing service. As Johnson and Hall showed (2009), the marketing strategy at Southwest was focused on the idea of fun, primarily because this was the way in which the decision makers at the company wanted to position Southwest.

The idea was, obviously, to differentiate the company from other competitors. In the airline industry, there are a couple of ways this can be done: better prices, more routes, better service etc. With Southwest, it seemed that it was all of these at the same time, with a notable focus on better prices and cost-efficiency. However, a strategy of cost-efficiency can be better sold to the customers, present and potential, if it is wrapped up in something other than a rigid message about cost efficiency.

This part of the paper would focus on some of the key components of the fun strategy at Southwest, including some of its advertisements and campaign where the company clearly shows why it is a better choice then some of its rivals. One of the interesting "fun" advertisements is one that shows the map of Texas and hearts for all the cities where Southwest flies. The message is "we're spreading love all over Texas." The paper will also look at how this "fun" approach is integrated into the company's comprehensive strategies and in the overall communication strategy.

The second issue of interest for the marketing services at Southwest Airlines is building brand loyalty. There are several reasons why this issue is interesting. The company started as a low-fares airline company and grew to represent much more than that. Overtime, its brand was transformed from the initial premise to what it has become today. It is thus very interesting to understand both how the brand developed and how the brand adapted over time to the needs of the business.

At the same time, this analysis will be done also monitoring how brand loyalty evolved. Brand loyalty is something very complicated in the airline industry. It is difficult to build, particularly because clients move around depending on price and available destinations, among other factors. Southwest has apparently done a good job of retaining customers and there are numerous factors that contribute to them: a simple fare scheme, low prices, point to point flights etc. So, the issue of building brand loyalty at Southwest will spread over several topics of interest and will look at different perspectives.