Overview of Singapore Airlines
Singapore was founded in the year 1947 initially called the Malayan Airways. It started operating in October 1972. Since the start of the business, it has risen to be among the top world airlines, it among the favourites brands in Singapore now among the top 20 carriers globally when it comes revenue passenger distance and it has been ranked the 10th worldwide in capacity of passengers it carried. It has a good reputation and rich heritage which has helped it to build a long term corporation with agencies. This report is going to analyse current digital marketing environment for Singapore Airlines, Marketing Strategies and the analysis of digital marketing communications (Wirtz & Heracleous, 2016).
Singapore Airlines Limited (SIA) main purpose is air transportation of cargo, passengers and other related business. Together with SilkAir and Scoot which are its subsidiaries, the SIA passenger route linkage extent to over 150 destinations across the 6 continents and it operates in over 30 countries. (Heracleous & Wirtz, 2014).
Technology
Singapore Airlines strongly believes adopting the use of information Technology, the company is now using new innovations for instance, electronic ticketing, sell of tickets over the internet, use of smart cards for check-in self-service, automated check-in and other management software. SIA was the first industry to install productivity suit to assist clients use their personal computers even after boarding the plane. It also have business class and first class seats advance with technology which makes it gain competitive advantage to Singapore Airlines.
Economic
Singapore Airlines is plagued by economic factors and many macro factors for instance, Oil pricing, eruption of flu, Asian tsunami, rise in terrorism. This has actually affected profitability advancement. In the year 2006 the SIA suffered a loss of $500M that is 0.1 of the net revenues which accumulated a loss $ 42 billion in 2001/2006.
Political
The SIA was attacked by terrorist on September 2006 in the United States which led to a massive implications. The industry profitability was affected some much because losses, the domestic and international Journeys declines. Nevertheless SIA was able to pick up after the attack and it has revealed to be enhanced over its rivals. It is not a surprise to note that the industry has realised high profit and better revenues.
Social
SIA is known worldwide as a brand that emphasises on customer oriented and professional service this has given the industry a strong competitive advantage. The company uses differentiation market approach which is based on building a robust brand image that reflects quality services to customers and good flying experiences full off comforts and luxuries.
Factors Affecting Singapore Airlines
Target market
Singapore Airlines target the following class people: upper class medium class and corporate as their target clients who desire for comfort and reality with extra benefits and willingness to shedding extra bucks. The premium brand offers impeccable services and spotless products to their esteemed customers. SIA has implemented premium appraisal policy which is guarantee of customer’s loyalty (Halpern, 2016).
Positioning
Singapore Airlines has premium carriage containing high level of innovation, developments and excellence customer service level. Many customers has been referring the airline to having an affordable luxury because it provides high quality service.
Branding
Singapore airlines has a robust brand image according to the customers view. A recent research that was conducted in the year 2016 by YouGov an independent research based on Hong Kong. The brand image survey according to YouGov reports has the largest net optimistic image based on the responds they get from customers (Warren, 2017)
Singapore Airlines strengths
- Robust brand image
- It has a premium brand and product
- Market strength
- Constant profit through the operation
Singapore Airlines weaknesses
- The growth opportunity for Mainline is limited
- Weak joint ventures
- The strategy for china still remain incomplete and it is hard to engineer
Singapore Airlines has been using several types of digital marketing tools now and in the recent years. The industry is now focusing on improving the marketing strategies. The consumer behaviour would be analysed based on the respond by the following tools
- The corporate websiteSIA App
- YouTube
Singapore Airlines holds a Facebook account which it uses to share the industry photos globally, it’s offers, promotions and customers updates are shared via this tool. The page contain a link ‘’book now’’ where the customers would directed to the booking site which is the company’s website.
Singapore Airlines Facebook page has over 2, 500,000 followers, the average likes per post is between 350-1000 likes and 100- 200 comments. The customer involvement in this page is very high (Zhang, Kotkov, Veijalainen & Semenov, 2016).
The SIA page was created in February 2011. The industry uses the twitter account to update customers on the latest promotion offers and interesting facts about the services. The tool is also used to share photos of SIA. The company replies to any query that is raised by the customers.
Currently SIA twitter account has over 445,000 followers with average likes per post ranging from 50- 200 and about 30-50 retweets. The customer involvement in this tool is medium (Alghamdi, Xu & Watson, 2017).
The corporate website
The SIA website has a good layout and it easy for the customers to navigate. The SIA customers perform variety of actions like checking on flights, booking flights, choosing preferences, commenting on certain issues and posting questions amongst other functions. The website also contain feature belonging to members of Krisflyer. A bar at the lower part of the page enable visitors to view new promotions easily. The customer involvement in this case is very high.
SIA App
SIA have created an application known as ‘’ Singapore Airlines’’ the app has bring convenience to passengers because they are able to decide about their travel schedule bookings and asking questions to the admin concerning flights. It has also reduce the burden of long queues of customers in the airport because they can access service via the mobile application. The app is compatible to android and apple operating system. Apple has an average of downloads of 100,000- 500,000 downloads and a ranging of 80 percent. Android downloads ranges from 500,000- 1000,000 and has a ranging of over 80 percent (Sengupta & Sengupta, 2014).
YouTube
Singapore Airlines YouTube channel shows various industry advertisement videos. The SIA customers are in a position to view and give their remarks and various videos that are uploaded in the channel. Some of the videos that are uploaded include ‘’perfection service and ‘’ the journey of a single girl (Wirtz & Heracleous, 2016).
Conclusion
Digital marketing communication has assisted the Singapore Airlines in many ways. It has given the company to access market in the most affordable price. The SIA has been able to reach their target market in a measurable and core-effective way. The channels has also enhance interactive relationship between the company and its clients in ensuring an interaction which is result driven.
References
Alghamdi, B., Xu, Y., & Watson, J. (2017, August). Malicious Behaviour Analysis on Twitter through the Lens of User Interest. In Australasian Conference on Data Mining (pp. 233-249). Springer, Singapore.
Halpern, N. (2016). Air transport marketing. Air Transport Management: An international perspective, 321.
Heracleous, L., & Wirtz, J. (2014). Singapore Airlines: Achieving sustainable advantage through mastering paradox. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 50(2), 150-170.
Sengupta, N., & Sengupta, M. (2014). Singapore Airlines: Gliding with People Excellence.
Warren, A. (2017). Sensory marketing, consumer psychology and the future of branding within the Airline industry: Singapore Airlines (Doctoral dissertation, The IIE).
Wirtz, J., & Heracleous, L. (2016). Singapore Airlines: Managing human resources for cost-effective service excellence. In SERVICES MARKETING: People Technology Strategy (pp. 695-703)
Wirtz, J., & Heracleous, L. (2016). Singapore Airlines: Managing human resources for cost-effective service excellence. In SERVICES MARKETING: People Technology Strategy (pp. 695-703).
Zhang, B., Kotkov, D., Veijalainen, J., & Semenov, A. (2016, September). Online stakeholder interaction of some airlines in the light of situational crisis communication theory. In Conference on e-Business, e-Services and e-Society (pp. 183-192). Springer, Cham.