M2 Part 2 Analyse the challenges faced by EasyJet using internet marketing

M2

Part 2

The challenges that EasyJet must face using internet marketing are:

Ø      Disintermediation and channel conflict
EasyJet sell tickets directly to the customers; they don’t have intermediations (no travel agency where you can buy the tickets from). All the tickets are sold online or through telephone (customer services) or the in check desk at the airport. This will save EasyJet a lot of money and time. But also because when you buy a EasyJet ticket online you get a discount, no other EasyJet competitor offer this to their customers.
Through the disintermediation of EasyJet and introducing an internet sales channel on their website this will threat the relationship with other business that works in the existing channels. Also EasyJet have to make sure to meet the needs and wants of their customers and try to be able to reach the needs of their customers as best as they can. For example if a customer sends an e-mail to EasyJet they have to make sure to replay him within the next 48 hours and not after a week.

Ø      Payment security
EasyJet offers the client the opportunity to purchase tickets online and to pay online. It is very secure website and you can easily pay the tickets.
You can pay with your master/visa/America express and other cards sorts all these payment methods are safe.
Because EasyJet uses a save payment systems this will make the customer feel safely and purchase online. Nowadays most of the travel agencies offer payment online. So for this part EasyJet got competitors.

Ø      Meeting customer expectations
Focusing on competition through global website visibility, describe in detail, the challenges faced by EasyJet using internet marketing (P4)

Online customer expectations are higher than offline environment. Customers are expecting one-to-one online attentions, EasyJet is doing that through giving the customers the opportunity to ask questions through the customers services, but also through letting them have their own page (when they have to sign in and manage their travel).

Also they deliver what the customers expect from EasyJet, because in comparing to other low budget airlines EasyJet does charge for a whole travel, but for example Ryanair does charge for everything separate (for the bags you have to pay separate). That all the information I gathered from my own experience and also from what I found on their website. But after doing research in other websites I found: Top travel websites including EasyJet and Lastminute.com are failing to meet customer expectations; according to a study by Global Reviews. Below you find a link for the article.

http://www.hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/uk_travel_sites_fail_to_meet_consumer_expectation/

Ø      Overload of market feedback
EasyJet is an online business that can successfully acquire a lot of market data. However, this has to be sorted and prioritized before being acted on. Also on the website of EasyJet you can contact the customer service and you read the FAQ. Because they have provide a lot of information to the customer, but they can’t put everything on their website, because it might get overloaded and no one can enter easyjet.com, and so the customers will go and book on competitors website. So it is important to sort out the important information and puts them on the website, this is what EasyJet does.

Ø      Keeping pace with technological change

Through the constantly changing of the technology gave EasyJet the opportunity to sell tickets online, because before that they did all that through calling customer services, but each customer can book online. Their website is accessible to everyone, and make a booking is very easy. So through this they are ahead of airline that don’t have website. EasyJet is busy with innovating new way to be ahead of the competitors and also providing better services to customers they do that through the knowledge-based economy.

They have a lot of competition like Ryan air and Transavia, but they have to make sure they stay ahead of their competitors, and not that their competitors are copying them or using same colours or text on their websites. For example what I found out is: everyone knows that EasyJet has the colour orange it’s a striking colours. After that Transavia come up with colour green! But still EasyJet is ahead.

Ø      Ensuring maximum exposure through ISP and search engines

ISP offers business and private household internet connections, their primary function to provide a link to the internet and mostly they also host websites on their own servers.  Through ISP makes it easy for the customers and EasyJet to find each other and make bookings, because it allows customer to have internet and from there the customer can visit EasyJet website and make a booking, but also EasyJet can through the internet send email/offers to their customers.

Search engines make it easy for EasyJet to be found on the internet. For example as mentioned in P3 if you write flight tickets London Gatwick in Google then you will get EasyJet.

Ø      security and payment system

EasyJet plans for security when customer booking online and paying online, because nowadays it is very easy to hack a website and steal all customers information. EasyJet uses the authentication methods for security and payment methods, before you want to enter anything or want to book you should have a password and username. Competitors might have used other security methods that are less secured than the one EasyJet uses.

Ø      legal complexity

They meet the legal requirement, because they have to sell tickets all over the world. So they have to make sure to cover all the legal requirements.

There are many rules and regulation EasyJet has to meet all the time when designing their website or when they update it. The most laws are sets to make things easy for the customers but also for EasyJet. This also make it secure for the customers to give their personal information to EasyJet.

In the UK on line businesses have to keep in mind when they are designing their website is to ensure they put certain information on their websites and in their emails. Minimum information is: name, registered office address, telephone number, email address, VAT number, prices must be clear and easy to understand (unambiguous), and delivery charges. This is an advantage for on line businesses because they will have to make sure all these little bits are included in their website, otherwise action can be taken against them. All these information are found on EasyJet website.

Ø      linguistic and cultural sensitivity

For sure EasyJet did look up for the meaning of their business before choosing it; I couldn’t find information about it and what it does mean in other languages. As mentioned before they did looked up for the meaning, because otherwise they won’t be popular like how they are now. No competitors has chosen a name that means a bad things if you translate it to other languages.

On easyjet.com you only can pay with visa/master/airplus/dinner club and American express, but other online travel website, does offers IDEAL/PayPal, so there competitors are ahead in this case, because not all the students have got visa/master card, but most of them are having IDEAL/PayPal.

The design of their website is standard like all other website. You also can choose other languages when you enter the website, but on Ryanair.com they provide more languages than EasyJet. When you enter EasyJet website it is easy to know where to go even if you don’t understand the language.

Also they have to make sure that their website doesn’t have any virus or sends virus to customers. So they have always to scan websites and prevent virus/Trojan or worms.

EasyJet is an e-business and e-business is expanding these days also customer’s needs are expanding. This is a challenge for EasyJet to meet their customer’s needs and customer satisfaction.

So above you read the challenge that EasyJet faced by using internet marketing. They do have a lot of competitors like Ryanair, because it is also low-cost airline, but still EasyJet is one of the famous low-cost airlines in Europe.

All the above mentioned challenges for EasyJet foe using internet marketing are related to each other. Because all of the above mentioned points are important for an e-business to stay in the market. Although they get a lot of complains (airline program on TV (net 5) shows that), but they are still ahead of the competitors, because they satisfying the majority of their customers’ and they know how to gain new customers.

sources:http://www.davechaffey.com/E-commerce-Internet-marketing-case-studies/easyJet-case-study

http://www.london-insider.co.uk/london-tips-for-tourists/idiots-guide-ryanair-vs-easyjet-which-airline-to-choose-better/
easyjet.com
google.com

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