Chapter 5 Analyzing The Marketing Environment This chapters

Chapter 5: Analyzing The Marketing Environment
This chapters outlines how companies by paying attention to customer needs and monitoring the changes in the business environments that they operate in i.e. in both the immediate and macro environments can identify opportunities to develop marketing strategies and tactics that attempt to respond to multiple developments / changes in both these environments.

Assignment:
Looking at Southwest Airlines, identify how they did the following:

Outline how Southwest addressed their Immediate steps in the consumer buying process model we studied, environment (company, competition and corporate partners) to affect their marketing strategy.

Give atleast a minimum of two paragraphs covering all parts of the question

Solution

Southwest re-designed air travel as a product and made it affordable for the masses by implementing the below steps:

Information search and Evaluation of alternatives

Southwest attempts to do three things in their advertising: intrigue, entertain and persuade. Southwest encourages employees to dress casually at work. Southwest wants to portray their employees as professional but not too serious. Ad designers try to inject fun and personality in designing SWA ads, giving the target customers a taste for what the Southwest Airlines are going to give them when they get on the plane (cheap but fun!).

Southwest’s brand exudes an element of fun, a chilled out approach which it uses to present the consequences of low fares in a positive light. Once Southwest Airlines enters a certain market, air fares go down, tourist traffic increases and an economic mini-boom ensues (Meyer, 2000; Messina, 2001).

Purchase:

Southwest employs a relatively simple fare structure, featuring low, unrestricted, unlimited, everyday coach fares as well as even lower fares available on a restricted basis. In January 1995, Southwest became the first major airline to introduce a Ticketless Travel option, eliminating the need to print and process a paper ticket altogether (Harrison, 1999).

Post Purchase Evaluation:

Southwest Airlines’ approach to frequent flyer rewards is based on the number of trips taken rather than the miles flown, as followed by other airlines (Southwest Airlines Annual Report, 2002) – This keeps the customer involved and increase repeat purchase rates.

References:

Abenes, F, B. Marketing Study Of SOUTHWEST AIRLINES.