Qantas Consumer Brand Loyalty - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages The paper "Qantas Consumer Brand Loyalty " is a perfect example of a marketing research paper. In recent times, Qantas, Australia’s largest airline, has witnessed a significant drop in its market share. There has been an increase in competition from other airlines such as Air Australia and Virgin Australia locally, and internationally, Emirates and Etihad have come up as major players that Qantas has to content with (Dorman, 2009). The situation has been worsened by the recent recession, which saw the prices of jet fuel skyrocket. For instance, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce noted that prices of jet fuel were at their highest between 2008 and the second half of 2011. Notably, the price of Singapore Jet Fuel rose from an average of US$ 88 per barrel in September 2010 to US$ 110 per barrel in January 2011. Further, as of February 2011, the price had risen to US$ 117 a barrel (McNamara, 2011). The high prices of fuel mean high operating costs for Qantas, necessitating higher fares to be charged from passengers. Yet with the increasing competition, this means that unsatisfied travellers are likely to use the other options available – that is the other airlines that have been mentioned. This greatly affects the brand loyalty of consumers using Qantas services. The problem is further exacerbated by the recent misfortunes that have surrounded the airline. On 4 November 2010, a Qantas Airbus A380 aircraft experienced an engine failure (Australian Transport Safety Bureau, 2011) and this greatly impacted customer perceptions safety aboard Qantas aircraft. Further, Qantas experienced another misfortune when it's Boeing 747-400 returned to a Singapore airport after reporting an engine malfunction (Milmo & Webb, 2010). The airline also faced a hitch when its system to interact with customers through the social platform Twitter failed (Kennedy, 2011).

All the problems mentioned above compound Qantas’s already delicate situation. Overall, although the direct aviation capacity to Australia rose by 39 percent between 2003 and 2009, total inbound passenger increase was only 10 percent (McNamara, 2011). This means that airlines are merely taking the existing demand.

...Download file to see next pages Read More