Airbnb: Week 2 Writing Assignment
Marcus Ferguson
University of Maryland University College
Abstract
This paper explores the company Airbnb. It is separated into two parts: Part 1 and Part 2. The first part goes over their strategic marketing; which is broken down into four main categories: creating value for customers, role of the customer in the company’s strategic plan, SWOT analysis, and competitive analysis. The second part focuses on their customer satisfaction, loyalty, management, and empowerment. Keywords: Strengths; Weakness; Opportunities; Threats
Airbnb: Week 2 Writing Assignment
Part 1: Strategic Marketing
1. Creating Value for Customers
Airbnb is a lodging resource for customers throughout the world.
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If anything were to happen, such as hot water not running or Wi-Fi not working, there wouldn’t be an immediate fix like there would be at a hotel. This could hurt Airbnb hosts, customers, and the company as a whole because the host could get bad ratings, the customer may decide to stay at a hotel instead, and Airbnb would lose business.
Opportunity: I believe Airbnb has many opportunities, but I will only name two. First, it gives explorers that are looking to travel in alternate ways the ability to explore cultures and societies of their choosing. Second, they could possibly expand their operations in related industries such as travel guides, partnering with airlines or car rentals, house cleaning, and travel insurance(). This could increase the number of customers using Airbnb, as well as intruding new demographics to the company.
Threat: Airbnb has a simple business structure, they are a community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique accommodations around the world (). Because their idea is so simple, companies such as Wimdu, VayStays, and HouseTrip have easily copied their ideas. Customers may decide to use a company other than Airbnb because there are so many companies similar to it. Also, with technology advancing at the rate it is, a new alternate concept may arise that could replace