Andreas Klein & Kathrin Stiel: Marketing for services – theoretical aspects and practical examples from European low fare airlines [PDF]

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Business economics – Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 2, University of Applied Sciences Essen, course: International Management, language: English, abstract: Introduction
In recent years, a growing economic importance of services especially in western countries could be observed. This increasing importance of the service sector will continue. It is predicted that a positive balance of additional employment in the next years will only be reached in the service sector.

One practical example for the growing importance of services is the European aviation industry. Formerly exclusively dominated by a small number of state-aided airlines, the liberalisation of the industry during the 1990s’ was the starting point for a new era in the aviation industry. The airlines had to face competition and an innovative new sector developed itself to meet the customer needs by offering flights for affordable prices. In 2010 it is expected that the share of low fare air traffic in Europe will reach over 40%. The no-frills-concept of low fare airlines also generated new demand. In 2002 59% of the passengers of low fare airlines would not have travelled by air if the cheap tickets would not have been available.

Goals of this study and Approach
This study will describe the special characteristics of services and the requirements for marketing activities in the service sector compared to other areas. Thereby, special attention will be paid to low fare airlines, which have contributed to the increasing importance of the service sector in general and the aviation service sector in particular due to the reasons already mentioned.

Firstly, the required terms in the context of service marketing will be described and different theoretical approaches will be presented. Several possibilities to define the main terms in the context of this case study will be given. Secondly, the special requirements of service marketing will be shown and compared to the marketing of products. Thirdly, the history and current situation of the low fare airline business will be shown and explained. Afterwards, the special challenges in the marketing of low fare airlines will be discussed. Solutions and possible approaches for a successful marketing of low fare airlines will be presented. The main focus will be on the expansion of the classical marketing mix, i.e. the 3 P people, physical facilities and process management. Finally, a brief outlook will be given which describes possible future developments and highlights several important fields, to which companies should pay attention.