Classic Airlines and Marketing

Classic Airlines and Marketing

Tisha Milette

MKT571

February 3, 2011

Dr. James W. Fraser

Classic Airlines and Marketing

In this scenario Classic Airlines has some marketing problems. This paper will focus just on one area, the frequent flyer rewards program, the service that Classic is looking to market more extensively. We will see some of the marketing challenges that Classic faces, and some suggestions that may help, like focusing on the customers wants and desires. We will also talk a bit about the corporate culture and how the culture has created a dysfunctional customer service department.

Classic Airlines would like to market their frequent flyer rewards program to hopefully grow their customer base without lowering airfares. Marketing deals with human and social needs, Classic needs to meet the desires of the customer and still be profitable. They need to be able to deliver value not only to their customer, but also their stakeholders. They can do this by creating processes for managing customer relationships (Kotler & Keller, Marketing Management, 2006). Classic Airlines has a marketing intelligence system, but they do not seem to utilize the customer database like they could. The customer database could not only provide the customer’s name and address, but past transactions, demographics and even psychographics. Classic needs to make this information more easily accessible to decision makers so they can better plan, target, and track a marketing program like the Classic rewards program (Kotler & Keller, A Framework for Marketing Management, 2007). Classic should ask themselves, does our rewards program provide real value to our customers, if so how, and if not why not. We can tell by some of the situations given in the scenario between the customer service representatives and the frequent flyer customers calling to redeem their rewards for flights, that the customers do not express an attitude like they are receiving something of...