QANTAS MARKETING STRATEGY

Qantas Marketing Strategy

Qantas Marketing Strategy

Marketing Plan of Qantas

Qantas should undertake formal marketing auditing because it helps in the creation of more precise marketing plan. Qantas would undertake formal marketing auditing so as to align itself according to the competition more accurately. It is clear that their marketing strategy has some loopholes because of which it is suffering from decreased profits and registering losses. With the airline servicing people across 182 destinations spanning 44 countries, they need to conduct marketing audit to find out the efficiency of their marketing strategy. Qantas does not effectively employs Hub and Spoke Model which is of vital importance for airlines involved in international flights. After the launch of their brand Jetstar, their profitability declined sharply as their market shifted towards the use of Jetstar for it is economical with lower rates as compared to the standard rate of Qantas. Qantas cost base is higher than competitor airlines by around 20%, mainly because they do not have airline hubs especially in Asian and European countries, which became a cue for its loss making. The launch of Jetstar resulted in the 8% traffic shift from Qantas to Jetstar resulting in the drop of Qantas market share from around 34% to approximately 18%.

In the light of this scenario, the effectiveness of formal marketing audit cannot be emphasized anymore. Thus Qantas would aid its effective marketing strategy development through initially undertaking marketing audit which would highlight its major strategic indicators as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of Qantas. On the basis of this marketing audit, marketing plan would be redone so as to fill the loopholes. The link can be understood between the marketing audit, marketing planning and corporate strategy as marketing audit would be done by Qantas to determine if their marketing strategy is effective and delivering intended value. The information extracted as a result will indicate the parts where their marketing strategy is not being successful and thus Qantas will modify the strategy under the framework of the missions and objectives laid forth by the corporate strategy of Qantas. The application will further be cleared in the subsequent answer.

Marketing Auditing

The tools for marketing auditing basically involve the tools for the strategic analysis. The tools that Qantas may use are SWOT, PEST analysis. For instance, Qantas would undertake detailed SWOT analysis which would highlight its weakness as its cost structure since its cost is 20% greater than that of its competitors. Now, the marketing audit tool as SWOT Analysis would highlight the opportunities as well with which Qantas is presented so that they can utilize those opportunities so as to offset the weaknesses. They are presented with the opportunity to cut down costs by implementing and developing further electronic commerce (e-commerce) infrastructure. Thus, with the help of SWOT Analysis; which also is used as a tool for marketing audit, Qantas modifies their strategy so as to include the development and implementation of e-commerce infrastructure so as to reduce their cost, which is their main concern ...