Southwest Airline is positioned, as an airline providing customers with low cost, no-thrill and short haul flights with quick turnaround.
Marketing Strategy
The positioning of Southwest Airlines is in essence a strategy in itself; the airline utilized the tactical perks to create differentiation of its services besides promoting the low cost aspect of the airline
Consumers who are willing to pay a premium get the benefits of early boarding that in essence given them the choice of seats and help them in exit quickly. In addition, it entails free drinks for business passengers.
The aforementioned however, is also available to normal passengers also, sans the free drinks; however, they can pick the remaining seats as per their arrival in the planes.
The marketing strategy focus is on efficiency with regards to maintaining the key positioning of Cost effectiveness and Short Haul duration of flights effectively, as stated on the website in the section Special Offers (2014), the best deals are also given on vacations, car rentals, hotels etc. to consumers to keep them engaged.
How do goods and services qualify in the marketplace? (Order Qualifiers and Order winners).
At Southwest the concept of order qualifiers and order winners, is based on the cost effective positioning, that has enabled the airline to have a competitive advantage in the marketplace (Nils Peters, 2009).
As mentioned above the operational team i.e. order qualifiers creates processes to support the low cost operations efficiency and order winners i.e. the marketing team comes up with strategies, like the perks mentioned above to draw the customer to the airline.
The cost effective tickets and short duration of the flights as qualifiers in essence supports the marketing team as order winners to create new segments of consumers by smartly strategizing in a tactical manner.
Southwest airline focus on their product, pricing, promotion and distribution strategies has enabled them to maintain and sustain the competitive advantage over their rivals in the marketplace.
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References
Southwest Airlines (2014). Special Offers. Retrieved from https://www.southwest.com/
Jeff. F, (2014). Is Southwest Airlines marketing strategy putting passengers in danger? The Business of Journals. Retrieved from http://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-to/marketing/2014/06/southwest-airlines-marketing-strategy-drinks.html?page=all
Nils. P, (2009). Operational Excellence - Identifying Qualifying and Order Winning Factors. Examining Dell, McDonalds, Zara and Easy Jet. Seminar Paper. Retrieved from http://books.google.com.bh/books?id=svnfG7hYjFoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Order+Qualifiers+and+Order+winners&hl=en&sa=X&ei=K1FzVJnuL5bZarGkgtAK&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Order%20Qualifiers%20and%20Order%20winners&f=false
