Airlines experiential marketing: gaining and retaining customers : Case studies of British Airways, SAS, Air France, Easy jet and KLM

Sammanfattning: Title: Airlines experiential marketing: gaining and retaining customers Research Question: How do airlines use the experiential marketing to gain and retain consumers? Supervisor: Venilton Reinert Course: Strategic Marketing with Independent Project Keywords: Airlines, experiential marketing, experience, loyalty, sense, emotions, feelings Purpose: The aim of this research is to understand how airlines’ users can be acquired and kept thanks to experiential marketing. This study allows analysing the news consumers’ expectations and how companies adapt their strategies to meet customers’ needs thanks to experiential marketing. All airlines mentioned in this study are European. Methodology: A qualitative research has been used for this paper. The authors of the thesis proceed choosing five European airlines: British Airways, Air France, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Easy Jet and Scandinavian Airlines System. The case studies have been used to describe, thanks to a number of Internet tools, how companies use the experience and feelings in marketing to urge consumers to purchase and be loyal. Then, authors used Schmitt theory to collect data. Finally, a number of frameworks have been used to analyse data. Conclusion: Airlines want to carry the customer to think and act through the experience. A successful experiential marketing occurs when the customer behaves thanks to his emotions. So, airlines’ marketers create competition, challenge, and game to remind customers. The interaction with public and internet users is necessary used in each experiential marketing event by airlines to promote the event and permeated to the customer share its experience, meet people and identify him in a group. If customers experience unique and perfectly experiential event, they will remember the service, and consequently the brand in the long-term as remarkable. In this way, the brand gain or retain customers.