Introduction

According to Aggabao (2017), marketing and business analysis are the essential factors to making further improvement and progress in business activities. The pandemic outbreak of Covid-19 has negatively affected the business activities over the world. To overcome such negative impact, various business companies has adopted useful strategies to overcome such challenges. This assignment involves market analysis of Emirates Airlines in the UK during Covid-19.

Company Background

Emirate Airlines is considered as a reliable and comfortable source of air travel. It was founded in 1985. The company is governed by Dubai and have more than 157 destinations. The size of the fleet is around 260. The company has an annual revenue of around 25 billion US Dollars in the year 2020.

Situational Analysis

Situational analysis is a used to identify and analyze the internal and external factors of a company or an organization. These factors are helpful in understanding the internal and external environment of a company or an organization that strongly impacts their growth and development. Various tools are used to analyze the internal and external environment (Mulyantina2019). These tools include PESTEL analysis, SWOT analysis, Porter’s five forces and many others. These tools would also help to analyze internal and external environment of Emirates Airlines.

PESTEL Analysis of Emirates Airlines

PESTEL analysis helps to analyze six factors, which include political factors, economic factors, social factors, technological factors, environmental factors, and legal factors.

Political factors: Emirates Airline is one of the oldest international airline services of Dubai. It started its journey with the development phase of Dubai, which is now visited by most of tourists in the world. These international visits and tourism are supported mostly through Emirates airline services. The reason behind most of the visits is that of political stability in Dubai (Avram, 2019). United Arab Emirates (UAE) provides investment opportunities to several countries. UAE is one of the safest places in world and now has become international hub for investment. The annual revenue of Emirates Airlines shows as increasing but the profit margin is decreased due to pandemic outbreak of Covid-19 as shown:

Economic factors:

These factors are the significant factors for reflection of strength and stability of a company. In case of Emirates, the economic conditions of the airlines are not of expected level due to pandemic outbreak of Covid-19 due to lockdown conditions, but the Emirates airline has successfully managed to survive. The company has generated a revenue of around 25 billion US Dollars with a profit of around 288 million US Dollars (Qin, 2020). The economic factors are affected negatively from social factors of adverse conditions of pandemic outbreak of Covid-19 which has decreased international tourism flights to around 40 percent in Europe. 

Social factors: Emirates is one of the oldest airlines in Dubai and have strong social awareness among the local and international customers. The rate of population growth between the years 2010 to the year 2015 in Dubai was around 1.6% which was reported as around 1.3 % between the years 2016 to the year 2020 (Qin,, 2020). This reflects that there is a population growth in Dubai which is useful for its domestic sales and revenue. The geographical revenue of Emirates Airlines in 2019 is as follows: 

Environmental factors:

These factors are the major requirement from any company to avoid any environmental loss or degradation in world. Air pollution and weather changing are observed mostly due to environmental pollution (Dieguez, 2020). In this case, Emirates airlines fulfills their role in for environmental safety. They use advanced technologies that reduces the amount of smoke and air pollution due to emission of carbon dioxide gases and other hazardous gases to atmosphere. On the other hand, coronavirus has given rise to jobless people in aviation after its pandemic outbreak in 2019 as shown:

Legal factors: These factors help to analyze any legal threat to the company that can lead to any major loss. In case of Emirates Airline, lawsuits by NGO’s, passengers, and government could become problematic for the company. For instance, price fluctuation in Covid-19, could result into legal threat to the company.

Marketing Objectives and Marketing Strategies of Emirates Airlines

Al Saed (2020) states that marketing is considered as a strong and effective tool of communication between customers and service providers. It helps companies and organizations to introduce themselves, their respective products, mission and vision to entire world. Emirates also focuses on field of marketing and effectively attracts the passengers towards their unique and comfortable travel services. In case of pandemic outbreak of Coivd-19, the objective of the company is to provide complete safety and priority towards the safety of all their passengers.

Current marketing objective

The current objective of Emirates Airlines is to sustain its market share and stability in pandemic condition through introduction of attractive packages to attract people towards their services. Emirate Airlines has introduced attractive marketing strategies to achieve its marketing objective (Avram, 2019). These strategies include introduction of free Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test for Covid-19, free hotel stays, and free health insurance in Covid-19 pandemic situation. This serves as positive point towards the stability and growth of the company.

Segmentation Targeting and Positioning (STP) of Emirates Airlines

STP is a traditional tool for analysis of a company that helps to take effective and necessary changes in future. STP of Emirates Airlines are as follows:

Segmentation: A useful approach is to divide the customers into numerous groups helps in establishment and formation of effective strategies and polices for each segment. Emirates Airlines should make three segment of its entire customer bank (Mulyantina, 2019). The first segment should be of local customers, the second segment is European customers while the third segment should be of gulf country passengers. This would help the company to improve its performance on international level.

Targeting: The emergence of Covid-19 has changed the marketing strategies of most off the companies. Emirates Airlines has adopted a mixture and composition of four targeting strategies that includes multi-segment targeting, customized targeting, cost leadership and niche targeting (Ojo, 2019). The segmentation of customer would help to generate marketing strategies with respect to their segment. Most of the passengers have different type of requirement, so in such condition, formation of customize package of services improves employee retention. Cost leadership also attracts people and customers through their relatively low prices. While niche development or niche targeting is performed to attract customers.

Positioning: Emirate Airlines shares a good market position in international airline market. They have introduction various facilities to further improve its position in competitive market and help it to develop market niche (EKİNCİ, 2018). There are various international competitors of Emirates Airlines, which include Qatar Airways, Malaysia Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Lufthansa, PIA and Turkish Airlines. Saudi Arabia has comparatively greater customers than Emirate Airlines.

Marketing Programs of Emirates Airlines

Marketing mix is an effective tool to reflect the marketing programs of a company. Marketing mix is also known as 4 P’s of marketing which include product, place, price, and promotion. Marketing mix of Emirates Airlines is as follows:

Product: Emirates Airlines provides attractive airline service through their strong and effective staff (Dieguez, 2020). The company is engaged in introduction of new technologies to facilitate the passengers. The company uses advanced technology machines and are maintained properly to ensure maximum possible safety.

Place: Emirates Airlines is one of the oldest flights serve in Dubai. It has received a large number of popularity and fame through its dedicated and quality service for customers. It provides its service in more than 180 places or countries in the world (Ojo, 2019). The company operates estimated flights of around 3500 per week.

Price: The pricing strategy of Emirates Airline is highly attractive and reasonable in nature. The company also introduces seasonal packages to promote tourism and other international business activities (Avram, 2019). The company provides free Covid-test facilities, discount in hotel services, and free health insurance for Covid-19 working staff.

Promotion: Emirates Airlines makes effective promotion through social media and digital marketing platforms (Bose, 2019). The company is working on multi-segment marketing that allow it easily to promote and target their customers over the world.

Recommendation

Based on above analysis, it is recommended that Emirates Airlines should focus on expansion in more countries, introduce flexible strategies, and plan so that they can be easily changed with respect to time and requirement. Emirate Airlines should focus on low pricing strategy to facilitate people in pandemic conditions of Covid-19.

Conclusion

Based on above analysis, it is concluded that Emirates Airline is a famous name in international airlines that provides attractive facilities with reasonable prices. The company has also introduced attractive facilities in Covid-19 to facilitate their passengers. It enjoys a good annual revenue and hence successfully sustain its position in pandemic lockdown situations.