Marketing Strategy

Marketing Strategy

Company Overview

The paper is talk about Southwest Airline and its marketing plans and strategies. The airline industry has continuously been and is steadily the most intensely competitive business segment in all components of its operations. Southwest Airline is an American-based, economical Airline, which was established in 1967. Southwest Airline is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and most its passengers are those who travel within United States. The Airline provides point-to-point scheduled air transportation in United States. According to the estimates as of December 2011, Southwest Airline serves in 37 states and 72 cities all over United States (Anonymous 2013).

Southwest Airline also has a subsidiary, AirTran Airways. Like Southwest Airline, AirTran also offer low cost domestic air transportation and in addition to that, it also provides service to selected international destinations as well. As of December 2011, AirTran served overall 68 international and domestic destinations. Southwest has grown large in past decades and now it is operating, along with AirTran, with a total of 698 Boeing aircraft as of December 2011 (Anonymous 2013).

Southwest was formed on March 16, 1967 by Herb Kelleher and Rollin King with the objective of providing service inside the state of Texas. The reason for operating in Texas only was taken by Kelleher in order to avoid federal regulations, however other local Airlines; Continental Airlines, Braniff and Trans-Texas, launched a legal action against Southwest, which was eventually upheld in favor of Southwest later in 1970.

Previously, Southwest had its headquarters in Regal Row building, in Dallas, but in 1990, it was shifted to its current headquarters. In year 1992, Southwest acquired Morris Air, which it's competitor at that pint of time. It was acquired for US $134 million in stock. After the acquisition of Morris Air, all its routes and services were taken over by Southwest Airlines, which included some destination which were previously not there in the Southwest list. During 1990s, Southwest established its place as prominent airline in US Airlines industry. Southwest was awarded its first Triple Crown award in 1992; in fact Southwest won it for 3 consecutive years (Anonymous 2013).

Marketing Exchange relationship between Southwest Airlines and its Customers

All over the world airline businesses are using relationship marketing programs to strengthen their relationship with its customers and increased customer loyalty. For instance, the focus of Southwest Airline is to offer low ticket prices to those customers that are price conscious and will sacrifice meals and assigned seats for low prices (Cento, 2009).

Their alternative strategy was “Low Fares and Cost Cutting” per flight for their customers. Southwest cut down a lot of its cost, to provide customer with low-fare services and they did it very efficiently. Large Airline couldn't do as easily as they would have suffered losses. Southwest Airlines third strategy is devotion towards their employee and customers. They believe on the motto that happy employee delivers happy customers. They have emphasized on the creating an extended family like culture, so that each employee feels ease at work environment (Cento, ...