SCM501 Social Media

The background of the paper lies against the global airline industry where social media is gaining increasing importance. It is no more sufficient for the airline companies to serve customers on board or at the airports. It has become equally important to interact with customers on the social media platforms and revamping the social media handles on regular basis.

Social media has evolved into a platform which enables the airline companies to spread awareness about diverse areas of business in the market like financial information, market information as well as new products. Even higher level officials can use social to interact with customers and stakeholders. Set against the background of encumbering importance of social media, the paper would explore the idea of launching of new social media releases by Singapore Airline.

Scope of the report:

            The scope of the project includes social media strategy, budgets and timeline.

Limitations and assumptions:

            The paper assumes that social media as the only important strategy to boost the business of Singapore Airline. It does not cover important areas like product strategy and customer satisfaction strategy, both crucial to maintain competitive advantage.

Purpose and objectives:

            The purpose of the paper is to explore role of social media in development of business. The two objectives of Singapore Airlines which the paper covers are its aim to retain its global position and enhance its revenue generation.

Findings: 

The Company:

            Singapore Airlines is a Singapore based flag carrier airline company which has its base at the Changi Airport. The company is listed on SGX and its stock are held by the Governmnt of Singapor and Temasek Holding, which is also owned by the Government of Singapore. The company is one of highest ranking airline companies in the world and has several subsidiaries both within Singapore as well as abroad. The airline company at present serve more than three score flights.  The company is currently functioning under the leadership of Peter Seah Lim Huat, the capacity of chairman and Goh Choon Phong, as its CEO.

Key Competitors:

            The key competitors of Singapore Airline are British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Etihad Airways. British Airways is the largest airline company in the United Kingdom having its hub in the Heathrow International Airport. London. The airline company is one of the largest premium airline brands in the world. The second competitors of Singapore Airline is Virgin Atlantic which has occupied the third position after the Virgin Australia. The airline company operates from its bases at London-Gatwick, London-Heathrow and Manchester, all the three being in the UK. The Etihad Airways based in Abu Dhabi and owned by the Government of Abu Dhabi. The airline company is based in Abu Dhabi and competes at the fourth position with Singapore Airlines.

Social media plan:

            Singapore Airlines requires to form a formidable social media strategy to maintain its top position as the best performing airline. This is due to the fact that the airline company in reality shares its home market as well as international markets with its competitors. Moreover, with the development of ecommerce and online booking systems, customers have the access to both domestic as well as foreign airline companies (Graham, 2016). This factors should be taken into consideration by the management of Singapore Airlines while forming the social media strategy.

Business objectives:

            The social media strategy should be aligned to achieve certain business objectives which Singapore Airline should strive to achieve and/or retain. The first business objective which Singapore Airline should seek to achieve by using its social media strategy is to retain its top global position. The second business objective which the airline company should seek to achieve is achieve high degree of differentiation from its competitors which would allow it to attract customers (Pearson, Pitfield & Ryley, 2015). The third business objective which the airline company seek to achieve using its social media portals is to build a perpetual relationship with customers so as to receive repeat from them. This means that here the actual objective which Singapore Airlines wants to achieve is repeat business based on continuous relationship with customers and receiving repeat orders.

The fourth objective which the airline company should achieve using its social media strategy is creating awareness about its services (Cline, 2016). The passengers viewing its videos and posts on the social media platforms like Youtube and Facebook would give their feedback in forms of ‘subscribing’ and ‘likes’. These positive feedbacks from customers would indicate the positive perception which the company has created among them. These perceptions would create more opportunities for Singapore Airline to acquire new customers. Thus, in short the social media strategy of Singapore Airline should aim to acquire new customers, retain its existing customers and hold on to its top global position (Dijkmans, Kerkhof, & Beukeboom, 2015).

Target market:

            The target market of Singapore Airline literally encompasses the entire world. As already mentioned the airline company operates from its base at the Changi Airport in as many as sixty four countries. The target market which Singapore Airline aims to dominate using its social media strategy can be divided on various categories of segmentation. The following are the segmentation of the target market of Singapore Airline:

Geographical segmentation:

            The markets of Singapore Airline consists of Europe, North America, Australia, Asia and Africa to a certain extent. These markets can be divided into developed and emerging markets. Europe, Australia and North America are the developed markets of the airline company. Asia is the emerging market which the social media strategy of the company should aim (He, Rui & Whinston, 2017). While in case of the developed market the social media strategy should aim to retain its existing customer bases, the social media strategy should aim to acquire new customers in the emerging Asian markets like China and India.

Demographic segmentation:

            The target market of Singapore Airline can be divided demographically into upper and middle class customers. The social media strategy should aim to attract upper class customers to prefer it over the other premium airline companies like Qantas. Similarly, the social media campaign should aim to attract the middle class customers with appropriate discounts to motivate them to book more flights on Singapore Airlines (Shaw, 2016). 

Psychographic:

            The target market Singapore Airlines can be categories psychographically into the customers making frequent trips and customers making occasional trips. The social media strategy should aim to use different types of product offers to attract these two categories of customers (Park & O'Kelly, 2016).

Mediums:

            The media which Singapore Airline should use to implement its social media strategy should consist of a combination of its own official website and social media websites like Facebook and Twitter using pictures captioned with hashtags. The official website should show offers which would attract customers to book flights on Singapore Airline. The social media portals like Youtube and Facebook should show the superior passenger services which the airline company provides.

Strategy:

            The social media strategy of Singapore Airline should be based on three main business objectives, retaining its global position in the airline market, acquiring new customers and retaining its existing customer base. The social media strategy should be divided into three categories, namely Facebook, Youtube and official website (Fu et al., 2015).

Facebook:

The Facebook strategy would consist of encouraging customers to share their flying experience with Singapore Airline as well as other airline. The customers would be prompted to share the expectations from airline companies. The gap between the experience and expectations would be treated as business opportunities which the airline company can use to develop new products.

Youtube:

            Youtube strategy should consist of streaming of videos showing flights of Singapore Airlines. The videos can contain interviews of customers, surveys, financial performance of Singapore Airline or any such feature which would enable the company to develop a strong perception in the mind of the viewers, thus indirectly encouraging them to book tickets on Singapore Airline.

Official website:

            The official website of Singapore Airline should give complete information about the product and services of the company. Similarly, the company must offer special discounts to new customers. Similarly the repeat customers can also be given offers of like cash back on purchase their next ticket from Singapore Airline within a year of their previous booking on the airline (Zhang & Hu, 2018). These offers would enable the company attract new customers and retain old customers.

Tactics:

            The company should use certain tactics to implement a formidable social media startegy. The company should announce its new social media plan launch well in advance and encourage the stakeholders like customers to participate in various contests. The contents of the contests would be designed in such a way that company gets opportunity to interact with customers. This would enable the company gain information about their expectations, life style and travel habits (Zhu & Gong, 2016). The company can also use the tactics of designing market specific social media campaigns to relate to the cultural perceptions of the customers from different cultural background.

Implementation timeline:

Analysis:

            It is evident from the discussion above that the social media strategy of Singapore Airline would be exhaustive and take a long time. Since Singapore Airline and its major competitors like British Airways and Etihad Airways are flagship carriers under control of respective government, the social media strategy would need approval of the governments as well. Secondly, the project would attract immense investment of technical experts, financial capital and technological resources. Singapore also requires interviewing customers to gain knowledge about the expectations from airline. The implementation plan shows that the entire plan needs incorporation of various markets like Asia and Europe.

Budget:

Particulars	Amount (SGD)
Sources of Funds	4,000,000.00
Capital investment by Singapore Airlines	2,000,000.00
Loan from banks	2,000,000.00
Expenditures	3,980,000.00
Macroeconomic analysis	1,000,000.00
Holding meetings with governments	1,000,000.00
Hiring of technical	10,000.00
Hiring of fund managers	10,000.00
Training of employees	100,000.00
Signing contracts with companies owning social media sites	100,000.00
Development of new social media portals	100,000.00
Software	100,000.00
Legal costs	100,000.00
Interest on loan	100,000.00
Marketing expenditures	100,000.00
Stationary	10,000.00
Arrangement of the launch event	100,000.00
Vehicles to escort guests and dignitaries	100,000.00
Launch of social media sites	100,000.00
Accommodation of dignitaries	200,000.00
Hiring of venue	100,000.00
Catering	100,000.00
Electricity	100,000.00
Telephone and internet connections	50,000.00
Employee salaries	300,000.00
Outsource support staff	100,000.00
Budget surplus	20,000.00

Recommendations:

            The detailed discussion can be closed with two recommendations for the management of the Singapore Airline. The company should incorporate the cultural and the social aspects of the different host markets to show relatedness to the culture of the customers. Secondly, the airline company should maintain its high quality services.

References:

Cline, H. E. (2016). Hijacking Open Skies: The Line Between Tough Competition And Unfair Advantage In The International Aviation Market. J. Air L. & Com., 81, 529.

Dijkmans, C., Kerkhof, P., & Beukeboom, C. J. (2015). A stage to engage: Social media use and corporate reputation. Tourism Management, 47, 58-67.

Fu, X., Lei, Z., Wang, K., & Yan, J. (2015). Low cost carrier competition and route entry in an emerging but regulated aviation market–The case of China. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 79, 3-16.

Graham, A. (2016). Airport strategies to gain competitive advantage. In Airport Competition (pp. 109-122). Routledge.

He, S., Rui, H., & Whinston, A. B. (2017). Social Media Strategies in Product-Harm Crises. Information Systems Research.

Park, Y., & O'Kelly, M. E. (2016). Origin–destination synthesis for aviation network data: examining hub operations in the domestic and international US markets. Journal of Advanced Transportation, 50(8), 2288-2305.

Pearson, J., Pitfield, D., & Ryley, T. (2015). Intangible resources of competitive advantage: Analysis of 49 Asian airlines across three business models. Journal of Air Transport Management, 47, 179-189.

Shaw, S. (2016). Airline marketing and management. Routledge.

Zhang, L., & Hu, C. (2018, July). Research on General Aviation Industry Policy Quality Evaluation Based on Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation. In IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science (Vol. 170, No. 3, p. 032069). IOP Publishing.

Zhu, S., & Gong, X. (2016). A SWOT Analysis of General Aviation Industry Development in Shandong Province.