INTRODUCTION
as the man who started it all and behind the continuing success of the Virgin Company in Britain that caters to the different industry such as travel, entertainment, mobile, lifestyle and the finance industry offering a whole new experience for every people not only in Britain but globally. The creation of 200 companies with a total revenues amounting to 7.2 billion U.S dollars or more than 4 billion sterling pounds in 2002, it is undeniably a very gigantic company that continues to grow. Behind the tremendous success of Virgin Company is it interesting to examine the marketing principles they embraced, specifically the business travel segment of Virgin Trains and Virgin Atlantic. In Virgin, they believe that Virgin stands for value for money, quality, innovation, fun and sense of competitive challenges by delivering quality service through empowerment of the men and women behind the success of Virgin and the facilitation and monitoring of customer feedback for them to improve the customer’s experience through innovations of their products and services.
The thirst for looking new innovative means that they may serve their customers better and fresher, allows them to have the reputation as a well-known brand or trade mark all over the world.
MAIN PART
This report contains a review and analysis of one of the industry being ventured by Virgin Company, that is the travel industry particularly Virgin Trains. The review and analysis focuses on the Virgin Trains marketing mix and the buyer behaviour being manifested by the people in terms of the purchase of their products. In was in the year 2001, Virgin Trains delivers is first Pendolino 140 mph tilting train to the public. With that much of an impact, the recognition of Virgin Trains in the train business was being unfolded.
To begin with let us examine the marketing mix of Virgin Trains that includes the 5P’s namely: products, price, place, promotion, people and process. The products being catered by the business travel comprises the Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains. Both Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains provide products and services that meet the needs and demands of its customers, that if it is likely possible to exceed into those expectations in order to give customers the sense of worth of the money they have been paying. The convenience and style being into their trains and planes is something to look forward into and the excitement it brings in every travel is truly something only Virgin can make it possible. An add on service of seat reservation at no extra cost gives customer’s very personalized treatment that is why customer’s tends to be a repurchase costumer. Aside from the comfort and convenience, Virgin sees the need that travel does not only ends in the airport and terminals, they also make sure that you have the additional service in the like of an express coach service to make it even more convenient for the customers to board from the train to the airport.
Pricing strategy being employed in Virgin Trains and Atlantic offers flexibility to its customers. With prices ranging to six varieties to choose from in Virgin Atlantic enables customers to get the feel of the Virgin experience that would be affordable. Virgin Trains also gives its customers special value of their money by providing options as to how to avail the best deal. Regardless of the price of Virgin being cheaper or expensive compare with prices being offered by the competitors, it is worth noting that customers will spend money as long as they feel that they get back their money’s worth. More so, customers are even more inclined to spend additional money if their level of satisfaction is gratified by the services being offered to them especially in countries that have a high standard of living such as Britain where they spend more on the desires and need rather on the basic needs. Moreover, Virgin Trains and Atlantic offers booking and advice services to assist the customers in the course of their travel and Virgin as being fair, they also assist in the booking for any railway journey.
With Virgin Company as being global, the business travel sector distribution channel is surely very vast and provides great accessibility to its customers. The place proved to be strategic such that in every Virgin Company they always make it a point to reach out for its customers in the best way they can.
The promotion of Virgin Trains and Virgin Atlantic provides a great deal of advantages to its customers. The advance booking scheme will give customers discounts and in the case for group travel they also offered the best deal that can save up to 70% from its usual rate. Their website accessibility and promotion has been made to meet the level 2 recommendations made by Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and has achieved a combination of an "A" and "AA" rating. Therefore, their promotion strategy works well in creating exposure to the products and services they are offering and it instils awareness to the people.
Behind every companies success are the people who made it possible. The workforce of Virgin as a whole, contributes to a large extent such that talents are being empowered and constantly being challenged by the demands of the changing trend of consumer behaviour. The Virgin due to the absence of bureaucracy allows the people to be empowered to run their own affairs developing a sense of community that binds them as having shared ideas, values, interest and goals enabling their work to be fun.
Consumer behaviour is complicated to analyze such that people have different preferences and taste. The analysis of consumer behaviour is deemed vital for it is a predictor of future retention leading to customer loyalty. Virgin Trains and Virgin Atlantic have an intelligent team of consumer relationship management wherein they ensure that they can find the touch points of its customers’. The need to look into the influences on consumer purchasing is very crucial and they have to come in terms of the whole essence of the underlying factors that would more likely predict consumer behaviour. There are three things that influences consumer purchasing, they are the marketing, external and the internal influences. The assessment of their marketing mix is conceived to be on the right track and it has been effective for them. In the internal influence on one hand, poses not much of a problem for Virgin Trains and Atlantic since they are already being perceived to be reliable, customer friendly and provides superb customer service to their customer. The exposure of Virgin as seen in the promotion campaigns, the catching attention leading to the awareness and the possible retention is evident to its customers’. Virgin has been successful in penetrating the internal factors of consumer purchasing so they likely succeed in the external factors as well. Virgin also employs the feedback service in which it had helped Virgin to come in terms with the customers’ behaviour and providing them insights as to where they would need improvement on and in lieu to these Virgin has been responsive.
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