Fly to the end of the world: Air New Zealand

1. Current Background

Facing the increasing fierce competition, airlines make efforts to differentiate themselves from each other in order to obtain the maximum of market share. In some cases, Air New Zealand as a successful example has done a decent job with implementing some successful marketing strategies. Certainly, some potential opportunities and problems that company has ignored existing as well.

After years of often ferocious competition, Air New Zealand was forced to form an alliance, and then became a full member of the Star Alliance Group in 1999, which for the sake of extending network and offer better service to its customers, thereby obtained the competitive advantages. Additionally, the airline alliance, to some extend, has gradually changed the market environment.

Air New Zealand, as part of Star Alliance Group, provides a large number of worldwide destinations for its customers. For serving this large market, marketing managers cannot be satisfied with just planning present activities, because of dynamic markets and consumers' needs, competitors and the environment are continually changing (Quester, P, McGuiggan, R, Perreault, W, McCarthy, E, 2004).

A Star Alliance-branded Air New Zealand aircraft p...

English: Air New Zealand 747 at Los Angeles airpor...

ANZ 777 cabin

Significantly, Air New Zealand paid more attention on customer service as a competitive advantage, and searching further options to enhance it. They did not just improve the existing service but also provided a series of additional services to satisfy customers' needs. Furthermore, the implementation of a new telephone system developed by IBM and the 'RightNow Web eService Centre' in 2001 has played a significant role in the marketing communication. In terms of building a long-term relationship with customers, Air New Zealand introduced the ANZ Airpoint Programme to benefit their customers in order to generate the repeat business.

As for the promotion strategy, Air New Zealand through the partnership with New Line Cinema (the filmmakers of the The Lord of the Rings triology) to...