Marketing Plan of Virgin Australia

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Company formation, Business Plans, University of New England, course: Marketing Management, language: English, abstract: The purpose of the report is to develop a marketing plan for Virgin Australia based on the business analysis report prepared before by creating ideas for how the company can best conduct their marketing activities.

Virgin can undertake market penetration strategy by a combination of competitive pricing strategies, advertising, promotion and perhaps more resources dedicated to personal selling. It can also expand its destinations to tap Qantas market share and can introduce new service dedicated to business travellers.

To achieve its objective Virgin could improve in-flight services, introduce frequent flyer miles programme and tailor packages for young families, adventurers and students. Peak and off-peak pricing, student discounts, stand-by fares, early booking discounts could also be introduced as part of its pricing strategy. Advertising activity could include direct mail, TV, press, magazines, outdoor posters etc. A customer connection database can be used to information to send birthday greetings or information about the quality of customer service. Virgin has to extend its operations two fold if it wants to compete with Qantas. High quality first class private lounges with premium class private suite could be introduced for business customers. To position itself in the mind of business customers, it has to develop a two-brand strategy, targeting both the segments of leisure and business customer market. Attributes which may not be so important for leisure travellers have to given top priority to attract business customers.

In order to facilitate an integrated approach for managing marketing resources different softwares could be used organization-wide such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Material Requirements Planning (MRP), and Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) systems etc. Integrated marketing communications (IMC) approach can be used to estimate the value of marketing mix executions based on the changes in customer behaviour these executions generate.

The marketing strategy has to be divided into bits and pieces so that it could be handled easily. Communication channels have to be open to discuss new ideas, issues, challenges and opportunities. Additionally, any achievement has to be rewarded while repetitive failures have to be penalized.