AirAsia- Marketing Management
AirAsia began as a Malaysian government controlled and full-service regional airline. After its establishment, the company charged customers favorable fares that were slightly lower than the one charged by its main competitor, Malaysia Airlines. Due to airline layoff of employees, experienced and competent staffs were readily available to AirAsia (AirAsia.com 2008). The company hired competent and experienced employees and this enhanced its competitiveness in the industry. Also, the leasing costs had sharply dropped and a great potential for no-frills was unleashed. The company was restructured. Fully ticketless travel and free sitting policy were introduced. Also, value added services such as online check in and check outs were introduced (AirAsia.com 2008). The company further partnered with various companies that offered online booking services for hostels, cruises, hotels, car rentals and medical care. As a result, AirAsia becomes Malaysia airline market leader.
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Becoming a market leader by AirAsia was not easy. This competitiveness is attributed to various marketing concepts that the management used, and these include:
Use of company website: AirAsia updated its web to offer regular fare promotional campaigns to customers at different booking times. Travelers could easily purchase their air tickets on its website, and this encouraged early booking by the customers.
Use of social media: While AirAsia’s key competitors wanted to stay corporate and wrongfully use social media with no marketing purpose, AirAsia did it differently (Azleen, 2015). Chatting with the customer with customer support was encouraged and this made the company directly stay in touch with its clients via online marketing.
Other marketing concepts used by the company were email marketing, tagline, and easy branding.
Based on the latest development in AirAsia (from information beyond the case write-ups), can AirAsia soar higher? If so, how?
AirAsia continues to be one of the leading Airline company in Malaysia and in the world at large. Given its unique success history since 2001 when a private entrepreneur (Tony Fernandes) took over, the company can still soar higher.
Reasonable pricing: AirAsia fare is favorable than those of other operators. The company targets travelers who travel without the frills of meals and frequent flyer miles (Shuk-Ching Poon & Waring, 2010). The recent development of low fare, no frills significantly provides the company with a perfect opportunity to issue more tickets to customers than the competitors hence enlarging market base in future.
Internet booking: Another recent development as depicted in the case is internet booking, where the customer purchases their own tickets directly from the company’s website. As a result, most travelers prefer its online booking and consider it more convenient for buying seats and logging into the company’s website. With this in mind, AirAsia will grow higher in the market. ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW
Value-added services: Recently, AirAsia launched an internet check-in service, a service that no other airline in Malaysia had used before. These services allow guests to enjoy online check-in as well as printing out their own airplane passes. Customers have shifted from other companies to AirAsia for it is offering the best services in the country (Jiang, 2013). With this increased creativity and innovativeness, the company will obviously soar higher and gain a position in the market that competitors will find it difficult to overturn.
References
AirAsia.com ., (2008). “Promotion of the Month”, http://www.airasia.com/nl/nl08506-en.htm
(accessed 25 May 2008).
Azleen, Abdul, R., (2015). AirAsia: Their 6 Marketing Secrets Revealed. Retrieved from:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/airasia-6-marketing-secrets-revealed-azleen-abdul-rahim (Accessed 16 April 2018).
Jiang, H. (2013). Service quality of low-cost long-haul airlines–The case of Jetstar Airways and
AirAsia X. Journal of Air Transport Management, 26, 20-24. Retrieved from; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0969699712001160
Shuk-Ching Poon, T., & Waring, P. (2010). The lowest of low-cost carriers: the case of
AirAsia. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 21(2), 197-213. Retrieved from: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09585190903509480