Marketing Assignment Case Study Analysis on MakeMyTrips Marketing Campaigns

Question

Task:

Marketing Assignment Instructions:

Case: Makemytrip`S Marketing Campaigns
Introduction
In April 2019, India based travel-booking portal MakeMyTrip (MMT) stepped into the corporate travel booking segment with the acquisition of a company Quest2Travel.com (Quest2Travel). Through this acquisition, the company aimed to extend its service offerings to large corporates and fulfill their travel requirements. The same month, the company launched an innovative travel game show series called MMT Knock-Knock on its App with the aim of driving customer engagement through incredible travel bids, deals, rewards, and games. To make the series engaging and fun, the live show was anchored by well-known television celebrities Gauhar Khan and Purab Kohli. The 30-minute in-app show comprised segments like live bidding for delightful travel deals, quizzing for attractive prizes, original travel entertainment content, and a jackpot prize offering exquisite international holidays. As part of this campaign, the company offered some exciting prizes including a luxurious five star retreat stay in the Maldives, return air tickets to Istanbul for two, an all-inclusive holiday deal for Bhutan, Business Class return air tickets for two to Paris, holiday package for Austria, Business Class air tickets to St. Petersburg, holidays in the Andamans, Ladakh, etc..

ABOUT THE COMPANY
In the year 2000, Deep Kalra (Kalra), an alumnus of IIM, Ahmedabad, and a former employee of GE Money , came up with the idea of catering to the US to India travel needs of the overseas Indian community. In October 2000, Kalra founded a small start-up company in India with early-stage funding focused on the non-resident Indian (NRI) market – specifically people seeking an economical ticket to visit home. The company started its operations by launching its website Makemytrip.com. But in mid-2001, Kalra faced issues like the dotcom meltdown and the 9/11 attacks. As a result, the company suffered a huge loss and could not find any investor.

MMT GOES DIGITAL
In January 2011, MMT launched its new ‘MMT Mobile’ app for BlackBerry smartphones users in India with the aim of making travel hassle free by allowing users to book their travel on the go. This app enabled users to cancel their bookings, track the status of their refunds, send e-tickets and vouchers, check flight status, and also look for alternate arrangements in case of last minute delays The app also provided geo-targeted search results, allowing users to easily find dining options that were near their current location, and provided attractive last minute deals for same day hotel bookings.

MARKETING CAMPAIGNS- In April 2011, MMT launched its ‘Memories Unlimited’ campaign that underlined its promise of creating memorable experiences for its customers apart from offering the best holiday packages and deals.

More campaigns

• Creative Team of ‘Memories Unlimited’ Campaign
• Creative Team of ‘Plan Jab, Booking Tab’, ‘Uncancel’ Campaigns
• Creative Team of ‘Dil Toh Roaming Hai’ Campaign
• Creative Team of ‘Assured Hotel-24*7 Helpline’ Campaign
• eewwwCreative Team of ‘MMT 24x7 Hotline for International Flights and Hotels’ Campaign
• Creative Team of ‘Hotels Best Suited for Family Trips, Business Trips’ Campaign

COMPANY PERFORMANCE AND FUTURE PLANS

As a result of the launch of ‘The Great Indian Getaway’ app-only travel sales, MMT’s mobile app crossed 12 million downloads by the end of 2015. Its app-only sale contributed 25% to domestic flights and nearly 50% to total online domestic hotel transactions. As of May 2018, the ‘BefikarBookKar’ campaign had received over 10 million views on YouTube.

[Cited from: www.icmrindia.org. Case Code: MKTG397, Publication date: 2019]

MakeMyTrip`s Marketing Campaigns Additional Information (Source: makemytrip.com, 2020) Makemytrip Limited Announces Fiscal 2020 Fourth Quarter And Full Year Results

Financial Highlights for Fiscal 2020 Fourth Quarter and Full Year (Year over Year (YoY) growth % are based on constant currency

• Gross Bookings in 4Q20 reached $1.2 billion and $6.1 billion in FY20.
• Revenue was $104.9 million for 4Q20 and $511.5 million for FY20.
• Adjusted Revenue reached $137.2 million in 4Q20 and $723.4 million in FY20.
• Operating Loss increased in 4Q20 and FY20 mainly due to non-cash one-off items, although it continued in trajectory of narrowing down Adjusted Operating Loss in QoQ and YoY.
• 4Q20 was partially marked by weak consumer travel demand due to a challenging macroeconomic environment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic

Learning Outcomes

· Evaluate digital marketing strategies and impact on their customer connect for the understanding design of effective campaigns

· of a given company to design effective marketing campaigns

· Identify and describe the segmentation and targeting of customer group/s of a given company

· Conduct competitor’s analysis and marketing mix strategy of a given company.

· Examine branding strategies and value proposition of a given company

· Conduct analysis of marketing challenges faced by a given company and provide recommendations to achieve a competitive advantage based on insight, critical and reflective abilities.

· Develop well-structured report with adherence to academic writing, word count and Harvard referencing

The EMA requires you to prepare a 2500-word report:

EMA relates to your understanding of Unit 1 to establish nuances of marketing, the way it operates and its critical perspectives, Unit 5 to evaluate the motivations customer has to purchase certain products and not others, Unit 6 to examine how to segregate and target market segments based on the identified needs, similarities and differences, Unit 7 to understand how to achieve a competitive advantage, Unit 8 to understand and apply the branding principles to ensure that carefully selected messages are conveyed to the market about the organization and its products, Unit 9 to understand and apply how to use marketing communications to enhance brands while increasing sales and market share and Unit 10 to be informed of the existing challenges and need for control while conducting marketing activities.

Task (Word limit- 2500)

Part A

Read and analyze the case study on MakeMyTrip`s Marketing Campaigns. Then write a well-formulated essay in response to these questions:

1. Examine use of social media for digital marketing strategy by MMT and its impact on their customer connect for understanding design of effective campaigns.

2. What is the market segmentation and targeting strategy of MMT?

3. Conduct competitor’s analysis and marketing mix strategy of MMT.

4. Examine MMT’s branding strategy and value proposition to customers

5. Analyse the marketing challenges faced by MMT and provide your recommendation how they can overcome them to achieve competitive advantage?

Answer

Introduction to marketing assignment
In the current and developing world, the needs of different tools and equipment and business have become mandatory. A different advertising strategy that helps the business in elevating their demand and the need for digital marketing techniques is the chief priority. The creation of a developing strategy for make my trip would support in recognizing how and what makes a business identical and how to procure messages out to the customers with the help of various digital mediums. Different online marketing techniques, segmentation, and competitive analysis have become the utmost need to develop brand recognition and expansion at the customer level. The thorough and in-depth way of depicting advertising and marketing strategy may divulge new opportunities and reaching the expansion of customers. With the help of such marketing strategy, it can gather a huge audience in is both measurable and cost-effective ways. Make My Trip can save funds as well as acquire more customers in fewer funds as per advertising strategy.

Importance of Marketing Strategy
Digital Marketing is considered as one of the exciting components a marketer may utilize for enhancing an online presence. It helps in understanding the Mission statements that are insights or the intent company wants and makes the fundamental reason for the company to incorporate their existence. The company needs to create values by the regular strengthening of its products and services by enhancing the competitive strategy and financial performance with the help of a digital marketing strategy. In today's world, the inexistence of an online occupancy may be considered a bad deal to the organizations. For instance, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and social media are revered as efficient marketing tool and per name it suggests both as science and art. This helps in getting the brand recognized higher in the page of search results in the marketing strategy. It consists of several attributes of what is done outside the website, entailing linking segments, and also done on the website to win customers comprising of, enacting a useful content and authoring on-point (Goryushkina, et al. 2016).

Value proposition and branding strategy
The Service and value propositions offered by MMT anticipated the results as enabling tourist with rich data Redefining distribution network for travel products and offering superstore for buying multiple products across places. This creates effectives sales and distribution to pass benefits of multiple brands to consumer.

Make my trip conducts a campaign of targeting the half-made and never-successful plans that are made by several travellers looking as more dynamic and youthful. Make My Trip focus on acute market segmentation and the target audience selected belongs generally to the youth stages who want to create memories with traveling and destinations. The company mainly focuses on social media as their branding strategy mainly on YouTube and Facebook as majorly the target audience flocks there.

Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is consideration of social media channels for connecting with the audience and developing a brand and it is widely utilized by Make My Trip (MMT).

Several social media are trending these days and these businesses promote their brand on media channels to gain a huge customer following. Sponsored/paid ads on social media act as a strong option for most acquired demographic as per target and run as per duration set. Make My Trip conducts an integral social media strategy on various platforms. The Content Bucket comprises a blend of engaged and high definition posts covering a list of services it provides and launches content and campaigns tailored as per occasions and offers.

In Facebook, the company conducts a multi-faceted technique entailing posts as per offerings like exotic destinations, special offers and packages, and themes and occasions (Husain, et al. 2016). It follows a strategy of providing content not restricted to a particular targeted audience and objectives. The content mix is expanded as interest, awareness, and action cycle and desire ideal approach for MMT. It helps in knowing the audience as well allows knowing them personally helping to generate brand loyalty.

MMT's official YouTube channel has 1.1 million plus views and 842 subscribers registered and 516 videos posted by MMT (Gascón, et al. 2016). The YouTube channel comprises all the TV adbertismenst provided by the company, as well as videos comprising hotels, travel destinations. The Brand has not utilized YouTube properly and serves as a second screen for the TV Commercials released by the brand.

Make My Trip follows same strategy content on Twitter; the content copy is tweaked as per platform. However, the brand procures a lesser follower on Twitter but the execution and efforts are the same. The posted content is widely dispersed again into awareness posts concerning, offering specific offers, travel destinations, and specific campaign content.

The Social media channel chose to be deployed by MMT; has provided it a prospective customer base and generates the presence of social media a standout and welcoming one for them.

The chief objective of social media marketing is to enhance the number of audiences on social media as per different campaigns created to raise impulsive decisions in the mind of customers. Adding this, it is a fact that social media campaigns are considered one of an optimum marketing technique and also yields sustainable and great long-term results one cannot afford to miss.

Market Segmentation
In the world of the use of the internet and a large number of internet users, the travel company, make my trip has confined itself to many customers. The travel company targets the markets as per the internet users for online transactions and is positioned as one of the trusted online booking portals. The company is now looking to partner with the goibibo and has initiated many executions for acquiring the insights of the customer. The companies based on such insights have decided to conduct this positioning. The overlap among both the brands is nearly 25 percent as per customer level. The company customer segment is relatively younger and also very much value-conscious (Goryushkina, et al. 2019). For instance, they purchase a hotel room at the price of rupees 3000. Make My Trip has a sweet spot of premium segment and mid-segment as well as the demographic profile is also a little older in the 30s. There will be a different advertisement for Goibibo and make my trip and the company has Go Contacts' considered as a very good property that has been generated and getting promoted and trying to be promoted. This can be referred to the friends, synchronized with the phone book initiated to get incentives.

There is a 360-degree change in the supply segment, a segment of the product interface as well as service campaigning segment. There are nearly four or five segments considered that have been considered by the company and are provided for all the value-conscious customers. The company will be considering the segments for traders, pilgrimage, and traders as one who travel for work, backpackers, students, and domestic medical travel tourism. Make My Trip, insights, and eyes and focus on the hotels of a premium category of hotels. Make My Trip is going, to sum up, more inventories in the segment of luxury. Therefore, the company aims for a particularly high-end customer segment aiming at hotels and luxury villas. Make my Trip is considered as a leader in the market share of the business-to-consumer travel segment. Make my trip is one of the largest online players in the country and has been stepping up widely generating its market share for many few years. Considering and looking at the customer side, and one of the main coverage areas is its corporate travel segment. According to the estimate, the company has a $30-billion market alone in India and is a bifurcated market along with some TMCs [travel management companies) a top covering organizations (Khare, and Bhagwat, 2019). A sumptuous art of SMEs that do consider travel for their business have an option of an online component that supports them in providing the same advantages as large companies acquire for their business travels.

Competitive Analysis
Threat of New Entrants
The economy is nearly impossible to attain in the market where the MakeMyTrip Limited performs. This makes very simpler for such procuring large capacitates for having a cost advantage. Additionally, it creates production heavy for fresh entrants resulting s the threats of fresh entrants a weaker force. Several economic factors are analyzed by making my trip in its operations such as different type of economic system in different nations, economy level education. It also includes stability and exchange rates in host nation currency, discretionary income, productivity and labor cost, etc.

Bargaining Power of Suppliers
In make my trip limited the industry operates with a number of suppliers considered much in comparison to buyers. It depicts that the supplier’s procure less control on prices resulting in the bargaining power of suppliers into a weak force.

The product provided by the suppliers are optimum standardized, procure low switching costs and less differentiated. This creates easier for buyers such as Make My Trip Limited to shift suppliers and makes weaker force in the bargaining power of suppliers. It includes bureaucracy and intervention of the entertainment industry, trade regulations and services related to tariffs, intellectual property protection, taxation, and incentives.

Bargaining Power of Buyers
In Make My Trip Limited, number of suppliers in the industry it functions is excess than number of firms generating the products. This depicts that that the buyers will consider lesser firms to select from, and so, do not procure excess control on prices. This creates the bargaining power of buyers as a weaker force in Industry.

The differentiation of products among the realm is high, and means buyers cannot get another firm procuring a particular product. The problem of shifting creates a weaker force of bargaining power of buyers among the industry. The leadership of making my trip views social factors as education standard as per company, skill level and demographics, leisure interests, broader nature of society, and entrepreneurial spirit (Dash, and Sharma, 2019).

Threat of Substitute Products or Services
There are so fewer substitutes accessible for the products procured in the industry of make my trip limited. The fewer substitutes that are accessible are generally procured by lesser profit generating companies. This again depicts that that there is no end to the maximum profit a company can earn in the realm where Make My Trip Limited functions. Considering all the factors, this procures weaker force for threat of substitute products a weaker force in industry. The impacts can be analyzed as an impact of technology on product offering, influence on value chain sector, recent technological developments, etc. The company should analyze environmental pollution laws, waste management, and a climate shift, and attitudes towards greener products.

Rivalry among Existing Firms
In make my trip limited there are very less number of competitors in the industry. Many of the companies are bigger in dimensions are also large in size and means that companies in same realm cannot make moves without being unnoticed. This creates a weaker force in the rivalry in the existing firms among the industry. The decrease in the cost of transportation due to lesser shipping prices would help in decrementing the make my trip limited products providing an opportunity to enhance its profitability or shifting the benefits to customers (Smagina, et al. 2017).

Marketing Mix
Product: The product in the marketing mix involves bus, rail, and airline tickets as per various places provided by several vendors. Make My Trip depicts as a medium that enacts the users along with several providers of transportation service. The online platforms provide a single point connection for various hotels based on their reviews availability and description of the users. The chief business model of the company is to provide customers with several types of packages with features and varied rates along with providing optimum offerings according to requirements (KÁdÁr, 2018).

Pricing: The main model used by making my trip is providing its users availed with an option and offers granted by several service facilitators and tour operators. This grants the customers a broad range of options choosing as per budget and preference. The motive of making my trip is to gain a huge customer base and therefore increasing the revenues by economies of scale. The customers were also provided discounts in early bookings of their destinations.

Place: Make my trip is generally known to an individual by its online presence in the way of mobile application medium or internet website. . The applications and the features are users’ friendly helping customers avail services and several broad offers. The customers are provided with 24*7 services enabling them to access anywhere anytime throughout the globe.

Promotion: Make my trip provides a powerful brand presence due to its heavy marketing exercises in the field. The greater fractional share of promotion as conducted through online digital marketing utilizes the medium and by social media channels as other travel mediums. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have been conveying the brand to huge masses online. TV commercials and newspapers are also used to reach wider individuals. Make my trip make use of its promotional campaigns in particular services and discounts for better brand awareness and recognition.

Challenges and Recommendations
Make my Trip has depicted a significantly major role for the users to enjoy several traveling facilities. Initially, Make My Trip has provided much value composition to the customers and many business corporations but lacks in many segments too. Make My Trip Company has been doing good business in recent times, but the internet system of India is still flaky. The CEO of Make MY trip has observed that the Indians customers want and look for good travels but do not want to be habituated online. It procured being very expensive to catalyze the change of habit in the online segments. In the year of mid-2000s, several things started changing. Indian Railways, the centralized railway service started online reservations and created many Indians suitable with its internet engagement but several bookings went fail even after the payments were done fully (Pal, et al. 2018, April).

Another challenge in online travel is, Make My Trip observed that shrinking commissions created airline ticketing an unviable approach in India. The firm requites to move quickly into the profitable market for holiday and hotel packages. But a business requires certain years to build is considered out as a lengthier struggle.

Another hardship faced by Make my trip to India has hardly any hotel chains. The largest, one is the Tata conglomerate-owned Taj Hotels, having exactly 100 locations in India. But even Barely 5 percent of hotels in India are online in today’s world (Gupta, et al. 2019. This is the main reason Make my trip have been deprived of immense coverage in India. Make my trip should implement many more digital strategies and making more users connecting online so that huge coverage can be attained. The internet facilities should be also well developed to make more online presence in the field. The company has decided to conduct plug-on marketing in India and along with internet medium platforms should well link. There should powerful software recognition so that one-way disruption in booking should be avoided so that the process is easily conducted from both the end of transactions.

Conclusion
An Organization may lose or may not avail of numerous opportunities that are only available or possess in the online segments. Several marketing techniques conducted by different companies embark on longevity, trust, competition, and brand loyalty with high-quality products. This provides the company providing them the spirit to acquire confidence in the mind of customers positively getting benefitted. The marketing is an action plan component for an organization and a combination of every segment considered as in the digital ecosphere that can make every company successful. By this, it means that all the online presence of the company makes sure it acquires the target point

Several efforts and attributes such as interactive marketing, inbound marketing as well as online consumer Relationships are considered by make my trip as its strategy. The internet has helped many marketers with hands tools like email, podcasts, and video and social media campaigns, affiliate marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), etc. to reach and meet more customers. The make my trip, and its enormous segments focus on mediums such as website, affiliate marketing, and social media marketing, competitive analysis etc. To acquire and gather more customers, and attaining brand recognition, a detailed understanding will make reasonable importance of all factors as a business strategy.

Reference List
Dash, M. and Sharma, K., 2019. Competitive Analysis of the Indian Star Hotels using the Analytic Hierarchy Process. JOHAR, 14(1), p.1.

Khare, A. and Bhagwat, J., 2019. The Relevance and Utility of Market Segmentation for the International Hospitality Industry. ATITHYA: A Journal of Hospitality, 5(1), pp.4-7.

Goryushkina, N.Y., Shkurkin, D.V., Petrenko, A.S., Demin, S.Y. and Yarovaya, N.S., 2016. Marketing management in the sphere of hotel and tourist services. International Review of Management and Marketing, 6(6S).

Husain, S., Ghufran, A. and Chaubey, D.S., 2016. Relevance of social media in marketing and advertising. Marketing assignment Splint International Journal of Professionals, 3(7), pp.21-28.

KÁdÁr, K., 2018. PROMOTION OF TOURIST ATTRACTIONS AND IDENTIFICATION OF THE PROMOTIONAL MARKETING MIX APPLIED BY TRAVEL AGENCIES IN THE CENTRE REGION OF ROMANIA. Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Economic Sciences. Series V, 11(1), pp.55-62.

Smagina, N.N., Magomedov, M.G. and Buklanov, D.A., 2017. Sustainable competitive advantage of the international business tourism on the regional level. In Overcoming Uncertainty of Institutional Environment as a Tool of Global Crisis Management (pp. 541-548). Springer, Cham..

Gascón, J.F.F., Mir-Bernal, P., Muñoz, M. and Berbel, G., 2016. Social media and tourism: case study in Catalonia. Revista Científica Hermes, 16, pp.115-131.

Pal, J., Chandra, P., Kameswaran, V., Parameshwar, A., Joshi, S. and Johri, A., 2018, April. Digital payment and its discontents: Street shops and the Indian government's push for cashless transactions. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-13).

Gupta, S.K., Bhatt, V.P. and Vaishnava, A., 2019. Online travel trade in India: challenges and opportunities. In Handbook of Research on International Travel Agency and Tour Operation Management (pp. 116-132). IGI Global.