British Airways

Dissertation Title: How do Airlines face the new challenges from the Internet World: Case Study of British Airways.

 

Introduction

Internet is a powerful resource which still leads the field in fostering understanding of telecommunication networks in society. As the number of Internet user is growing up, online advertising is a trend for the advertiser. Brands are realizing the potential afforded by the Internet to reach consumers in an innovative and highly targeted manner. As broadband penetration grows, more innovative use of Internet for advertising purposes is inevitable, as evidence in the success of some forms of viral marketing.

 

Hypothesis

Media affects the airlines brand positioning.

 

Aim and Objective

The overall objectives of this dissertation are to investigate the challenges brought by Internet advertising to traditional airlines and how they turns challenges into business opportunities, with a particular focusing in British Airways as a case study example.

 

It seems obvious that putting advertisement on the Internet should bring in new business opportunities such as setting up a new media of service promotion. However, it may not be true if we apply this model into traditional airlines. Recently, there are a number of low-cost airlines established around the world. are two successful examples in UK. Different from traditional airlines, these low-cost airlines use Internet as the only one channel of selling ticket while traditional airlines such as British Airways is still relying on travel agents. As a consequence, customers easily get the impression of “low-cost” or “cheap service” when they think of buying ticket from the Internet. This is good to  but bad to British Airways. The reason is simple. The market positioning of British Airways is the quality of service instead of price-cutting. It is understandable for people to mark it equivalent between “cheap” and “low quality service”. Nowadays low-cost airlines put one more equal sign to it, “The Internet”. Thus customers will make an assumption that those tickets selling in the Internet should be cheap and with low-quality service, which is evidently contradicts to the positioning of British Airways. On the other side, if British Airways does not put any advertisement on the Internet, they may loss a certain portion of customers who like to purchase service online. This situation puts British Airways into a bay.

Research Methodology

This dissertation will mainly focus on the solutions that British Airways is employing to solve this dilemma. Qualitative research, questionnaire and focus group will be used in the investigation.

 

Literature searches and Review

Several marketing models and theories of consumer behavior and brand positioning will be applied in the research, such as: ABE model by . They describe the ABE mode, which is referring to Attributes, Benefits and Emotions. According to this model, a market needs time to mature in order to make it possible for brand-related communication to focus solely on emotion. More models and theories will be refined to suit the online advertising area.

 

Problems and Solutions

There are several problems may likely to occur. For example, an accurate quantitative research cannot be achieved solely by one person. This maybe overcame by running mainly qualitative research or start any quantitative research as early as possible and narrow down the research target group, such as LACK students and online travel discussion forum participants.

 

Preliminary Study

(1998) Online Marketing Handbook. New York: Wiley.

(1997) Marketing on the Internet. New York: Wiley.

(2000) Brand building on the Internet. London: Cogan Page.

(2000) Internet Marketing. Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall.

(2002) Online Branding. London: Laurence King.

(2002) The online copywriter’s handbook. London: McGraw-Hill.

(2003) Brand Management. London: Pearson Education Limited.

(1998) The Relationship between advertising and content provision on the Internet. European Journal of Marketing. [Internet] vol.32(7/8) pp.677-687. Available from: <http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0263-4503.htm> [Accessed 27 Sept, 2005]

(2002) Consumer response to Web sites and their influence on advertising effectiveness. Internet Research. [Internet] vol.12(4) pp.318-328. Available from: <http://www.emeraldinsight.com/1066-2243.htm> [Accessed 27 Sept, 2005]

(2003) Web advertising vs. other media: young consumers’ view. Internet Research. [Internet] vol.13(5) pp.356-363. Available from: <http://www.emeraldinsight.com/1066-2243.htm> [Accessed 27 Sept, 2005]

(1998) World Wide Web banner advertising copy testing. European Journal of Marketing. [Internet] Vol.32(7/8) pp. 703-712. Available from: <http://www.emeraldinsight.com/1066-2243.htm> [Accessed 27 Sept, 2005]

(2003) The relationship between consumer characteristics and attitude toward online shopping. Marketing Intelligence & Planning. [Internet] vol.21(1) pp.37-44. Available from: <http://www.emeraldinsight.com/1066-2243.htm> [Accessed 27 Sept, 2005]

 

Action Plan

W/C

Date

Task

Week 3

24-Oct-2005

 

-confirm proposal topic and content with tutor

-complete dissertation proposal

26-10-2005

-check validity of dissertation in POD seminar

28-10-2005

-dissertation proposal hand in

Week 4

31-Oct-2005

to

Week 6

14-Nov-2005

 

-literature review started

-establish research objective and hypotheses

-progress review by Tutor and dissertation proposal returned (week 6)

 

Week 7

21-Nov-2005

 

-complete presentation material

-progress review by Tutor

Week 8

28-Nov-2005

to

Week 10

12-Dec-2005

 

-work-in-progress presentation (date to be confirmed)

Week 10

12-Dec-2005

and

Christmas

 

-progress review by Tutor (week 10)

-complete write up of literature review

-establish research methodology

-secondary data collection

Week 11

16-Jan-2006

to

Week 17

27-Feb-2006

 

-progress review by Tutor after Christmas (week 11)

-Work-in-progress Presentation feedback by tutor (week 13)

-primary data collection

-data analysis and write up

Week 18

06-Mar-2006

 

-overall write up completed

-final progress review by Tutor

Week 19

13-Mar-2006

 

-final grammar check by professionals

-2 final copies printed and CD produced

Week 20

20-Mar-2006

24-3-2006

-dissertation Hand in (2 copies + CD)

 

*The dates written in red signified a deadline of a task. Task will be complete approximately 1 week before these dead lines to allow any incidents happens

*The week number shown above can be referred to the academic calendar provided in the BAMA3 course hand book

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