Introduction
Delta Air Lines is one of the longest-running US airline carriers and world leaders in air travel. Customer satisfaction is an essential component of the company’s success. Thus, consumer behavior research plays a vital role in defining Delta’s strategic orientations. For this reason, this paper will focus on the overview of Crimson Hexagon’s marketing research report, analyzing industry-related social media conversations.
The report allows answering a number of customer- and consumer-related questions. What do consumers in the airline industry value most? What are their most frequent concerns and dissatisfactions? To which demographic group do they belong? Overall, it helps generate insight into such consumer and company variables as needs, preferences, costs of purchase, convenience, and communication effectiveness, as well as other data units that can be used by the company for designing a consumer-based strategy and improving its supply chain processes (Hamilton, 2016).
Crimson Hexagon approached these questions through a large-scale, comparative analysis of major competitors in the U.S. airline market. They used the principles of database marketing to identify major behavioral patterns and their fluctuations over time. Additionally, they implemented automated descriptive statistics tools to categorize and present numerical data along with the qualitative pieces of information, such as consumers’ posts from various social media platforms, which allow comprehending their brand-associated sentiments better.
Main Body
The data on consumer attitudes to the company’s competitors can be especially interesting for marketers. It gives a chance to conduct a comprehensive environmental analysis and identify major industry trends combined with related risks, opportunities, organizational weaknesses, and strengths. Overall, the Crimson Hexagon findings did not differ from my initial intuitions about the values that drive consumer behaviors in the airline industry.
The report just formally records the tacit knowledge about the importance of pricing and flight experiences for customers. It is possible to say that marketers use this type of information to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty to brands on a day-to-day basis. However, compared to traditional marketing research instruments, social data analysis gives a more detailed and deep picture of the issue.
For instance, Crimson Hexagon’s data library contains over a trillion public social posts, which one can process with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to develop nuanced insights and detect new meanings (Crimson Hexagon, 2018a). Such an analysis capacity is far beyond the reach of regular organizational database marketing activities that focus primarily on internal sources of information: surveys, sales records, consumer files, and others.
The report includes the Methodology section, which clearly explains data collection methods. Crimson Hexagon explored the data retrieved them from major English-language social media platforms and forums, including Twitter, Instagram, TripAdvisor, Reddit, and so forth. Some particular data analysis categories included consumer sentiments (both positive and negative), a brand-linked volume of social media conversation, and different customer preference and satisfaction variables (namely, perks, prices, destinations, and others). The analysis timeframe ranged from 2010 to 2016, whereas some performance and consumer behavior variables were studied by utilizing only the 2016 data (Crimson Hexagon, n.d.).
Although it is not mentioned in the report which particular instruments are administered to analyze these data, the statement on Crimson Hexagon’s website makes it clear that they implemented the automated AI, which is capable of natural language processing, image analytics, and neural networking (Crimson Hexagon, 2018b). The advantage of this technology is in rapid processing of big data sets and the ability to categorize information both statistically and thematically. In this way, AI combines the best aspects of quantitative and qualitative methods and minimizes the need for human involvement in the analysis process.
As for ethical implications of data collection and processing, Crimson Hexagon’s approach does not raise any significant concerns. The information used in the report is gathered only from public social media posts, and it is implied that, by posting something on public domains, users acknowledge all possible consequences associated with open sharing of information online. Just like in any other kind of research involving human subjects, marketers conducting an analysis should respect human rights and minimize any possibility for harming one’s identity, dignity, and integrity. However, it is valid to say that the use of publicly available information does not pose any of such risks.
Data in the reviewed report is not representative of all population groups. Although the female-male split was almost even in brand-associated social media conversations, the involvement of different age groups was disproportionate. One can see that consumers of 35 years old and above were by far the most active with at least 64% engagement, while the combined percentage of younger population groups equated slightly over 30% of the total number of respondents (Crimson Hexagon, n.d.).
Dissimilarities in age-defined social media behaviors may be a reason for such a disproportionate representation. Considering that different generations may have distinct values, the overrepresentation of one age group increases the risks of biasing the analysis findings.
Conclusion
Overall, Crimson Hexagon’s report helps generate a profound insight into consumer behaviors and current airline industry trends. However, it may fail to address some topics relevant to Delta Air Lines consumers. Notably, the company realizes a premium pricing strategy and, thus, it primarily targets a wealthier group of consumers. The reviewed report does not give information regarding such an important socio-demographic variable as the level of income, as well as a possible variance in values held by higher- and lower-income consumers.
To explore the interest and preferences of customers within the premium segment specifically, Delta may administer secondary research along with direct customer surveying. The latter method will allow obtaining a more precise answer although data processing, in this case, may require a longer time.
References
Crimson Hexagon. (2018a). Data library. Web.
Crimson Hexagon. (2018b). Artificial intelligence. Web.
Crimson Hexagon. (n.d.). Who owns the sky on social? Analyzing the social media conversation around America’s five major airlines. Web.
Hamilton, R. (2016). Consumer-based strategy: Using multiple methods to generate consumer insights that inform strategy. Journal- Academy of Marketing Science, 44(3), 281-285.