Classic Airlines and Marketing
MKT/571
August 6, 2012
Dr. Isaac Owolabi

Classic Airlines and Marketing
Classic Airlines is the fifth largest airline in the world and faces the same challenges that continue to plague the airline industry. These challenges are the rising costs of labor and fuel, a decrease in consumer confidence, and fierce competitive pricing. Although Classic remains profitable their share price in the past year has decreased by 10% and customer confidence has also declined resulting in a 19% decrease in Classic Rewards members (University of Phoenix, 2010). The board of directors of Classic Airlines in an effort to prevent further financial crisis have mandated a 15% cost reduction across all departments within the next 18 months. Classic’s CEO, Amanda Miller, has requested Kevin Boyle, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) to develop a marketing plan to lure back Classic’s frequent fliers. Although there are a number of marketing concepts found in this week’s readings that could be applied to address the challenges faced by Classic Airlines the two concepts that will be covered in the following paragraphs are the marketing concept and the holistic marketing concept.
Marketing Concept.
Unlike earlier marketing concepts such as production, product, and selling that focuses on the product or service the marketing concept focuses on the demands, wants, and needs of the customer (Kotler & Keller, 2006). The purpose of this concept is to find the right product or service for your customer, and not the right customer for your product or service (Kotler & Keller, 2006). This marketing concept relates to the Classic Airline scenario because it is obvious that the organization needs to align with the wants and needs of the customers to improve customer confidence and increase frequent flyer and rewards club membership numbers. This