Abstract
This document seeks to focus some basic marketing considerations with regards to online commerce, with the common thread of airline sites being used among this writer and his colleagues. This author has chosen to focus on four air travel sites associated with another country (India) as an added twist.
Kotler, Keller
Many of the acronyms associated with this industry (e-tailing air travel) came out of the Kotler, Keller text. Small- and medium-sized business’ (SMBs, which some are), marketing information systems (MIS) and Customer relationship management (CRM, which applies to many industries), Frequency programs (FPs, initiated in this industry by American Airlines), direct to the consumer (DTC, the very nature of what we are speaking of) and temporary price reductions (TPRs, and the occasional reality usually instigated by one airline).
From their characteristics of business markets, an illustrated table revealed one applicable item: direct purchasing. This characteristic is fundamental to the charm of e-tailing air travel purchases. Kotler, Keller also speak of a straight rebuy (bulk reorders), which has occasional application at the level of corporate accounts.
The Kotler, Keller text also spoke briefly as regards marketing across cultures. This certainly has application, highlighted by this author's choices of e-tailer's (though nonetheless). And the text also brought up the notion of buying alliances (which is clearly in evidence across most of this writer's site choices).
Weitz, Wensley
The text reveals a somewhat dated incite, that business to consumer (B2C) markets had been over exuberant. This writing took place shortly after the dotcom bubble, in 2006. Nevertheless, despite an undeniable e-commerce shake out the online airline ticket commodity is now very established.
One of the bullet points early on has to do with allowing seamless communication over any distance, local or global. The global consideration is clearly applicable here, and is indeed often seamless.
In the Service Quality Fulfillment and Site Design section brings up the idea of e-fulfillment. With airline tickets there seem choices, including printing them oneself.
Back in 1998/9 there was consideration given the page download aspect of the web experience, which today seems antiquarian. There is, nonetheless, a related issue of wait time insofar as drilling down to where the pertinent information is. If the site is not self-communicative, frustration ensues.
A 2000 reference highlights process, experience and results. This is the core of the online experience, and while worth acknowledging, is generic to most all.
An acknowledgment of the frictionless market characteristic of fierce price competition has implication for the airline industry online. Price wars are now immediate and in real time. There’s little to nothing anyone can get away with to this end.
The text offers extra parameters that went un-weighed in the table. The “internet impacts market strategy, channel management, pricing, marketing communications, customer service, decision support systems, database marketing, global marketing and B2B marketing.”
1998/9 research found marketers becoming agents of the buyer (as opposed to the seller). That clearly has been a shift as evidenced in the airline ticket purchasing process.
24/7 ubiquity, clearly the case with IST (India Standard Time) being 10 hours different from EST (Eastern Standard Time).
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