Southwest Airlines Case Analysis

Brand Management

Southwest airline realizes true encouragement begins just once you get to the centre of the customer of yours. The heart has long been core to Southwest. One could point to the point that commercial airline was created at Love Field in Dallas or even that the stock ticker symbol of it is actually NYSE:LUV. Southwest's way of life is traced to its founder.

"Herb Kelleher motivated informality and also wanted staff members to have a great time at the jobs of theirs. Employees have been highly valued, with Kelleher acknowledging births, deaths and marriages by cards and notes. Staff members had been urged to pitch in and help out, particularly at check in, giving Southwest turnaround times much less than 50 % the market average."

Geographic Segmentation:

Southwest Airline has entered new markets with a recently acquired terminals in New York-la Guardia and Washington DC- Reagan while have an existing markets in DFW Houston. While in existing markets they do focus on customer loyalty and in order to make that happen they do promotions and advertising to maintain the brand loyalty. Thus this will make south west airline different than others through the heart campaign.

Demographic Segmentation: Southwest needs to provide a friendlier and flexible service to families while they should focus on single travellers being or arriving on time. AS mentioned earlier, elastic and inelastic demand for business travellers and normal travellers. At the same time airline lacks the luxury class for high income travellers while the airline most focus on upper-middle class families.

Physiographic Segmentation:

Followed a concept that represent heart life style and that is the logo of the airline where they look for enthusiastic people to be a part of the family and who are environmentally

In January 1995, Southwest evolved into the very first major air carrier to expose a Ticketless Travel choice, eliminating the importance to print as well as process a paper ticket altogether (Harrison, 1999). This particular development came into this world out of necessity after it had been tossed from 3 laptop reservation methods (United, Continental along with Delta's, as the airlines felt threatened by Southwest's competitiveness). Customers are allowed by this innovation to completely avoid the computer reservation devices of major airlines by acquiring a confirmation number and appearing for the flight (Freiberg and Freiberg, 1997). The idea was loved by customers as well as the paperwork was reduced tremendously thus, saving money. This training has become pervasive in the market, thanks to its price savings ability. Presently, if a person desires a printed ticket, there's often a surcharge of twenty dollars; and if a passenger works on a travel agent, there's an additional twenty five dollars service