Etihad Airlines Digital Marketing Strategy Assignment (Research Paper Sample)

Etihad airlines digital marketing strategy:
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The airline industries are facing a lot of changes due to the advancement in information and communication technologies that determines consumer behavior in terms of information availability and simplification of the booking process. Over the years, communication between customers has not been easy through the social networks. However, in the past one decade technological advancements through the internet and social media has brought relevant changes by providing organizations with unprecedented opportunities of maintaining firm customers relationships. Customer relationship management (CRM) is a traditional method that treats customers independently and can pose little relevance to the technological networked customers. Customer information awareness determines greatly on the success of airline industry and this paper will provide an in-depth understanding on how technology advancements influence the customer decision making process by focusing on one of the most advanced airlines company Etihad airways based in UAE. This paper will enlighten on how the company has reaped massive success by utilizing the internet and social media to keeps its customers connected and with up to date information. Passengers carry out extensive information search through social media and internet and therefore Etihad airways has utilized this opportunity by implementing an integrated marketing communication network that keeps both the customers and the staff connected.
Part one: situation analysis:
Etihad airlines digital marketing strategy:
Introduction:
Etihad airways is one of the largest and most famous airline located at Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The organization is famous worldwide for the quality cabin screw services it offers to its customers. The cabin screw comprise of highly skilled food and beverage managers, cabin seniors, cabin managers, and crew dedicated to provide clients with quality services worldwide. The airline has different operational destinations worldwide including Asia, America, Middle East, Europe and Africa (Kavoura and Kefallonitis, 2018) . Contacting an organization in search for help or to make a complaint or complement is always hard and a tedious task. Customers can wait for long hours for response after calling or texting a service center or even days or weeks waiting for a response to an email. Due to this drawback of traditional communication modes, customers opt to use social media presence of a company to post questions or make complaints and complements.
Etihad therefore utilizes this opportunities by offering their customer services through the social media, thereby improving customer relations. Etihad airlines is a leading airline company ranked position three in the middle east and position two in UAE in terms of density and service delivery. The company has implemented the Modern ICT that brings about useful alterations to the principles of delivering customer service by providing a new and revolutionary application that improve international competitiveness (Wiedmann et al, 2016) . Through the new digital space and virtual communication, customers have abundance of information at their disposal on the destinations, prices, reservations, airline companies, visitor posts and appraisals. They can also comfortably book, select, travel, buy and post comments on their experiences with Etihad airlines (Arabian Supply Chain, 2017). New technologies that include company websites, mobile applications and social media platforms have led to new advertising styles that have brought several alterations to Etihad airlines. Such trends include the filling of the communication breaks by utilizing new approaches of measuring customer satisfaction, provision of innovation and collection of customer’s complaints and comments (Wiedmann et al, 2016) . This paper will focus heavily on the digital marketing strategies of Etihad airways and its importance to social CRM and how the company has utilized the latest forms of communication frameworks to keeps its customers connected.
Etihad core values:
Etihad airlines comprise of five core corporate values; taking responsibility, acting positively, delivering best practice, inspiring the customers and caring about the detail. By sticking to these points, Etihad aims at succeeding in the airline business and the company believes in being honest, open and supportive in all their activities. They anticipate to consumer needs first and thrive to maintain consistency. They are passionate and provide maximum care to customers by encouraging staff members to be proactive, take initiatives and be consistent. The company takes it a priority delivering the best, safe and most efficient service (Businesstraveller, 2017).
Social media impacts on e- CRM:
E-CRM are the methodological technologies that aims at supporting a business processes and procedures for acquiring, targeting, retaining, understanding and collaborating socially with the customers (Wiedmann et al, 2016). Etihad airline has implemented techniques and technologies that serve as a basis between customer management and business that are proliferating rapidly. The company is facing the challenge on the share it should invest in social computing technologies that include wikis, blogs, forums, customer feedback tools, social networking websites and customer community platforms (Businesstraveller,2017) . Marketers therefore need to these advanced capabilities and modify the system in an integrated and structured way with their transitional CRM capabilities. Social networking is forcing companies to think beyond the target of optimizing a two way relationship between the companies and the customer by also synchronizing the customer interactions between themselves. CRM is changing from its traditional norms on optimizing customer-facing transactional operations to technology and strategies that evolve collaborative and social relations with customers, suppliers and even competitors.
Opportunities, threats and risks related to social networking:
Advertising becomes more influential if it is more of personalized in the sense that a company can organize custom messages that reach individual customers and also in the sense that recommendations for products, notes and tips comes direct from friends and for friends. Etihad airways has advertised its products and services using virtual marketing campaign’s like World Wide Web where the company leaks pictures, videos or specifications of a soon to be released product or service (Businesstraveller,2017) . Sharing of the first hand experiences by the previous customers also offers a boost to the marketing sector and therefore a need to modify platforms where customers freely interact to each other. Social networking websites work on this basis where instead of reviews and information’s from the third parties, it offers consumers a chance to receive similar information on the product like experience reports and purchase decisions from people the know like friends or family members.
Etihad airways utilized the Facebook beacon program that attempted to implement a word to mouth campaign tool in social networking (Evolutionary Marketing, 2018). As soon as a Face book customer purchase Etihad service online, all of his or her friends will get notified by a status message. This beacon service assured connection between consumers and their friends and therefore advertising the airline services. Research therefore shows the power of the social networking websites as marketing tools for consumers by acquisition, retention and employee recruitment. Customer relationship management focus mainly on data and information of consumer’s therefore providing social networking sites a diverse database (Evolutionary Marketing, 2018). . However, some risks associated with social networks is the information privacy and perceptions over the personal data, lack of interest by consumers on matters related to technology and the fake believe that internet is for young people. Inaccessibility of internet by some people, illiteracy on how to use it, perception on its value are all the related problems associated to digital marketing.
Traditional CRM will still hold its position of gathering consumer data, analyze that data and automate work flows to improve business processes (Kavoura and Kefallonitis, 2018) . Etihad therefore will have the responsibility of searching new and innovative solutions to deal with new and emerging social consumers, enhance their experience and knowledge through architect solutions and community interactions that are flexible, support and foster the strong intra-organizational and client collaboration.
Understanding Consumer behavior:
Consumer behavior is an integrated science that includes psychological, sociology, economics and marketing and forms the basis for development of any market (Evolutionary Marketing, 2018). It therefore provides an analysis on consumers as individuals and their psychological and sociological features. In airline industry, consumer behavior is considered to be more complex as it is directly linked to tradeoffs. According to research, there are four different types of consumer behaviors applicable in different situations. They include; habitual, variety seeking, complex buying and dissonance reducing (Thong, 2014). Basing on the case of Etihad airways, passengers will apply the complex buying behavior since it involves risky and expensive purchase and requires high consumer involvement. Customers will therefore invest much time and emphasis in analyzing the alternatives than customers in any other type of buying behavior.
Consumers decision making process:
Stimulus and response of consumers forms the basis of the decision making process.
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