1. INTRODUCTION

The airline industry is one of the fastest growing modes of travel and tourism. But this industry faces numerous challenges over the years. Increasing fuels costs, logistics cost, over-crowed airports and other issues have impacted air travel. Recently the airline industry reformed and repositioned itself on marketing to the consumer. Without marketing effort it is impossible to establish itself in market. . Nowadays, the airline industry is extremely competitive and has become essential to modernize marketing plans to target consumers in order to persuade them to fly and fly with their company. Utilizing the seven P’s of Marketing which are product, price, promotion place, people, process and physical evidence, the airline industry is trying to reclaim consumer confidence as well as present and future business1.

Aviation has been recognized as one of the fastest growing sectors in India. With the modernization, technological development and fleet expansion, the Indian Aviation Sector has experienced drastic changes in the recent past. Now, a large number of people prefer to travel by air transport due to the lack of time and rising disposable income. Consequently, the domestic and international air traffic in the aviation sector has been registering a phenomenal growth over the past few years. In FY 2010, the domestic air traffic stood at approximately 46 million against 40 million in FY 2009, an increase of about 15 per cent. Indian domestic market is dominated by Jet Airways. Jet Airway operated its services in domestic as well as internationally. Jet Airways provide world class service to their customer that is way people preferred to travel in Jet Airways.

2. JET AIRWAYS

Jet Airways Private Limited is the Indian’s fastest growing private airline. At present it captures a market share of 27%. Jet operates a relatively young fleet of Boeing 737 jets and ATR 72 turboprops. It transporting about 7 millions passengers to their destination in year. Its commitment for punctuality and excellent service attracts large proportion of travelers. The founder of Jet Airways, NareshGoyal, an Indian expatriate living in London. Jet airways started its first international flight in March 22, 2004. Now it operates many international flight including London and Brussels9.

2.1 Jet Airways Profile

Jet Airways started its operation on 5 May, 1993 and within a short period of 17 years established itself as a fastest growing market leader. It establishes its position as one of the fastest growing airlines in the world. Now-a-days it set to change the way you fly – for the better! Beside India’s ‘Best Domestic Airline’, Jet Airways has won several national and international awards.

Jet airways spread its business to 65 domestic and 20 international destinations span the length and breadth of India and beyond, including New York (both JFK and Newark), Toronto, Brussels, London (Heathrow), Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Colombo, Bangkok, Kathmandu, Dhaka, Kuwait, Bahrain, Muscat, Doha, Riyadh, Jeddah, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Jet Airways is the first choice of passengers in India. It sets those standards which other competing airlines will seek to match. Jet Airways achieve this position by providing a high quality of service and reliable, comfortable and efficient operations.

Jet Airways will achieve these goals together with consistent profitability, long-term returns for the investors and providing excellent environment for their employee to growth.

After the acquisition of Air Saharea in April 2007, it renamed as Jet Lite. Jet Lite is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Jet Airways. Currently Jet Lite operates a fleet size of 24 aircrafts flying to 31 destination in domestic market and around 127 flights operate daily. Jet Lite also flying to international destination Colombo (Sri Lanka) and Kathmandu (Nepal).

NareshGoyal, the founder chairman of Jet Airways. He has over 38 years of experience in the Civil Aviation sector. Many national and international awards are awarded to NareshGoyal. Under his leadership, Jet Airways has emerged as one of India’s most preferred airlines.

In 1991, as part of the ongoing diversification programme of his business activities, Mr. NareshGoyal took advantage of the opening of the Indian economy and the enunciation of the Open Skies Policy by the Government of India to set up Jet Airways for the operation of scheduled air services on domestic sectors in India. Jet Airways commenced commercial operations on May 05, 1993.

In these short period of 17 years, Jet Airways become one of largest private domestic airline and most preferred by frequent travelers due to its high quality of comfort, courtesy, high quality in-ground services as well as in-flight services9.

2.2 Jet Airways – Jet Airways Konnect

Jet airways launched other airline with no frills ‘JetKonnect’ airlines on 9 May, 2009 with eight aircraft on board. Jet airways Ltd launched Jet Airways Knonnect to cover two tier cities like Ahmadabad, Amritsar, Bengalur, Mubai, New Delhi etc. Jet Airways Konnect is mainly designed to attract middle class people as the fares they offer are 10-15 percent economic as compared to jet airways flights. Jet airways Konnect does not compromise to any aviation experience. The only difference between Jet Airways and Jet Airways Konnect is that in Jet Airways Konnect, passengers need to buying meal on board. However all other control of in flight services handle by jet airways and its employees.

On September 2009, Many Jet Airways pilots went to strike by reporting sick and failing to turn up for duty. By doing this pilots are protesting against the dismissal of two senior pilots last by the airline. Due to this strike Jet Airways had to cancel over 160 domestic flights. This pilots strikes ended after five days which led to cancellation of 800 flights. According to media due to this strike Jet Airways£4.79millions a day9.

2.3 Jet Airways – International

In March 2004, Jet Airways started its International operation after getting green signal from Indian Government to do so. Its first international flight operated between Chennai-Colombo (Sri Lanka).

In May 2005, Jet Airways started Mumbai-London service and on October 2005, it started New Delhi-London service. On August 2006, it started Amritsar-London service and on April 2007, Ahmadabad-London service began.

Jet Airways declared Brussels Airport as its European hub on 2 May, 2007. Jet Airways want to use this hub for its Trans Atlantic North American operations. It started its Mumbai-Brussels-Newark service on August 2007 and after that it began Delhi-Brussels-Toronto service and Chennai-Brussels-New York city service.

After that it started many international service and continue to adding services to new destination in the Middle East and connecting existing international destinations to additional cities in India.

2.3 Jet Airways – Market Analysis

Jet Airways operates both domestic and international flights therefore it has both domestic and international competitors.

International competitors: The international competitors are:

British Airways

South West Airlines

Domestic competitors: The domestic competitors are:

Kingfisher

Indian Airline

Go Air

Spice Jet

Indigo

Jet Airways is domestic market leader. The pi graph clearly shows that Jet Airways is hold around 27% market share.

2.4 Jet Airways – Milestones

1993 – Jet airways begin domestic operation flying Boeing 737 jet.

1997 – Kuwait airways and Gulf Air sell their stakes in Jet airways

1999 – A regional network is launched with turboprop aircraft

2004 – First international service are started

2.5 Awards and Achivements

Skytax gave 3 Star rating to Jet Airways.

  • Best First-Class Service in the World award at Business Traveller’s 20th annual ‘Best in Business Travel’ awards
  • Full Service Airline by 2006 Galileo Express Travelworld for the sixth year in a row
  • Nice Customer Service by Freddie Awards 2007
  • Indian Domestic Airline with Spectacular Growth at the SATTE 2006 Awards
  • Best Business ClassBest Economy Class at the Business Traveller Awards
  • Best Program of the Year by Freddie Awards 2007 & 2006
  • Best Elite Level for the second year in a row, at the 21st Annual presentation ceremony of the Freddie Awards 2008
  • Best Bonus Promotion by Freddie Mercury Awards 2005
  • Best Overall in Entertainment at the Avion Awards 2010
  • India's Popular Domestic Airline at the SATTE 2006 Awards
  • Best Single In-Flight Audio Program at the Avion Awards 2006
  • India’s Airline at the World Travel Awards, 2006
  • Best Technical Despatch Reliability by Beaver 2002
  • Customer and Brand Loyalty award in the Commercial Airlines Sector (Domestic), at the second Goyal Awards
  • Best Cargo Airline of North Asia by Cargo Airline of the Year Awards
  • Best Domestic Airline award for the 1st consecutive year and the 5th time in the past two years at the 18th TTG (Travel Trade Gazette) Travel Awards 2007
  • Service Excellence Award at Global Managers in Jurassic Park, Sudan.
  • India’s Most Respected Company in the Travel and Food Sector by Businessworld 2003
  • Runner up for Best Affinity Credit Card by Freddie Awards 2006
  • Runner up for Best Website by Freddie Awards 5

3.MARKETING MIX OF JET AIRWAYS

The term "marketing mix" became popularized after Neil H. Borden published his 1964 article, The Concept of the Marketing Mix. Borden began using the term in his teaching in the late 1940's after James Culliton had described the marketing manager as a "mixer of ingredients". The ingredients in Borden's marketing mix included product planning, pricing, branding, distribution channels, personal selling, advertising, promotions, packaging, display, servicing, physical handling, and fact finding and analysis. E. Jerome McCarthy later grouped these ingredients into the four categories that today are known as the 4 P's of marketing, depicted below:

1. Product

2. Price

3. Place

4. Promotion2

These four P's are the parameters that the marketing manager can control, subject to the internal and external constraints of the marketing environment. The goal is to make decisions that center the four P's on the customers in the target market in order to create perceived value and generate a positive response.

In addition to the traditional four Ps it is now customary to add some more Ps to the mix togive us Seven Ps.The additional Ps have been added because today marketing is far more customer oriented than ever before, and because the service sector of the economy has come to dominate economic activity in this country. These 3 extra Ps are particularly relevant to this new extended service mix.4

3.1Product

In airlines industry products are both tangible as well as intangible. ‘Transportation’ that is ‘From the point of departure to the point of arrival’ is the major product of this industry. For example London to Bombay is a product. The airlines industry product is quite complex from other products because it consists of a service of certain tangible products also. Airline industry comprises of two types of services: One is on ground services and other is in-flight services.Jet Airways consists of both tangible as well as intangible products.

3.1.1 On ground services

On ground services of jet airways consists of:

Check-In option: Jet Airways provide check-in for their flight from 48 hours to 2 hours prior to the scheduled departure time. Jet Airways offers various check-in options to choose from.

You can save time by checking in online or on your mobile phone or simply visit the airport and check-in using their new age Kiosk machine to avoid long queues at the check-in counter.

Airport lounges: Jet airways lounges are fully operational in 8 cities, including Brussels, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai.

  • Access to Jet Lounge at New Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Brussels
  • Airport with multiple lounges, guests service, staff assistance with the suitable lounge.
  • Passengers of first class or premiere class can access lounge with one accompanying guest.

Special services: Jet Airways understand the special needs of the some of the passengers. Jet Airways provide some of the special requirements so that all passengers can travel in comfort way. Some of the special services are: Infant and child care, expectant mothers, unaccompanied minors, guest with disabilities, medical case, extra seat, travelling with pets etc.

Infant and child care5:

3.1.2 In-flight services

The in-flight services of jet airway vary from the different level of class in the aircraft. Jet Airways consists of three level of classes, First Class, Business Class and Economy Class.

Seating options: Jet Airways provide three seating options for their passengers:

First Class: Under first class seating, jet airways provide private suites with fully closing doors, a lie-flat bed seat, mood lighting and a private wardrobe. For entertainment a 23 inch flat screen TV, complete with Bose noise cancelling headphone is provided.

BusinessClass: For business class also called premiere class, the seating on jet airways varies from flight to flight. For domestic flights, the seats are extra wide, with personal screen. For international flights, the seats are in a herringbone formation and become a lie-flat bed, with 10.6 inch touch screen TV and a reading light.

Economy Class: For economy class, the seats are ergonomically designed so that when you recline, the bottom automatically moves forward to give more comfortable seating position. Beside this international flight consists of 10.6 inch touch screen TV and a reading light.

Beverages, meals and entertainment: Jet Airways offers a wide variety of food, beverage and entertainment options depending on flights as given below:

First Class: Jet airways offers large range of movies, TV shows, audio and gaming options on TV. Food and beverage offers depend on the flight. But on international flight one can personalize a five-course meal from a selection of world-class cuisines, choose from a collection of award winning wines, explore the exclusive single malt library or cocktails, all in the privacy of your suite.

Business Class: For business class, jet airways offer a wide range of movies, TV shows, audio and gaming on LCD TV. The range of food and beverages depends of the flight but on international flights, fine dining and beverages are serve with snacks from the dry bar.

Economy Class: Jet airways offers a wide range of movies, TV shows, audio and gaming options on LCD TV. Food and beverage availability depends on the flight, but a range of hot meals and beverages are available to every Economy Class passenger5.

3.1.3 Jet Mobile

Jet Airways provide a real-time fully automatic service to their guests with instant information on their mobile phone. Using Jet Mobile service, one can access information related to flight status, schedules, set alerts or automatically receive flight delay message. Now-a-day, one can also request their Jet Privilege account information or search for the lowest fares on Jet Airways flights5.

3.1.4 QR Codes

Jet Airways is first Indian aviation industry that introducing Quick Response (QR) codes. Jet Airways constantly endeavor to use new and emerging digital technology. Recently it adopted latest “Quick Response (QR) mobile code access technology”. Using this technology passengers can access new and additional information about various offering using their smartphone6.

3.1.5 Mobile Site

Jet Airways now tailored its website to fit in mobile phone. Now there is no need to go and sit on computer to access jetairways.com. You can access it from your GPRS enable mobile phone5.

3.1.6 JetMall

Jet mail is whole new experience of shopping. Jet mail is collection of finest international poducts that have been put together by ELVY (a partner of Jet Airways). Passengers can find jet mail catalogue in all seat pockets. To orderan product jest fill in the order from and hand it over to the crew. You can also order online5.

3.1.7 Concession Fares

Since Jet Airways cannot completely cut down their fares, but it come out with an innovative idea to attract more customers. It offers different concessional fares to passengers which encourage them to fly with Jet Airways. Jet Airways offers concessional fares to:

Students

Senior citizen

Cancer patient

Armed forces

Youth fares

Apex fares

Super-apex fares5

3.2. Pricing

In airline industry pricing decision play a decisive role. The concept of fair price is very important for this industry because lot of competition. Pricing can be classified in three ways:

Cheap value pricing: This pricing decision is taken to undercut the competition and trigger immediate sale tickets. However under this pricing the profit level low.

Value of money pricing: Under this method, products are sale at average price and is emphasized that customers get excellent value for money at this price. Under this price airline able to achieve good profit.

Premium pricing: In this method, the prices are set above the market price either to reflect the image of quality or the unique status of the product.

Pricing of Jet Airways

There are three level of classes in Jet airways that is first class, business class and economy class. These classes influences the pricing strategy of jet airways. Higher the class means higher the pricing and lower the class mean lower pricing. For example the pricing of jet airways flight between Bombay-London varies as given below:

First Class: Rs. 3,21,628

Business Class: Rs. 1,13,184

Economy Class: Rs. 49,000

Beside these there are some other factors that affect the pricing of jet airways. One of the major factor is seasons. For instant the pricing of London flights in Christmas season is higher compare to other seasons.

3.3. Promotion

In airline service, there is intense price competition and the solution to this is to develop a differentiated offer, delivery and image. A company that innovates regularly may help to retain its customers. Services are intangible product and to be successfully promoted, they have to be personalized.