Lufthansa´s business strategy on the Internet

Adrian Almeida Diez.

 

Abstract:
With this post our aim is expand a little bit more the idea of one business strategy on the Internet. Here we have analysed the strategy of Lufthansa, especially showing its web page, and the different social networks accounts. Furthermore, we have considered connect theses aspects with the importance of have a good Digital Identity and Reputation.

Introduction

What about a business strategy on the Internet of a very important company? For this post we choose Lufthansa GmbH.  as a good example of one business strategy on the Internet and in Social Media World.  Here, as we made with our previous post, it´s necessary as well to focus on the same aspects, so in Social Media, specially Twitter, DI, Reputation and objectives.

History

Lufthansa is one the most important airlines around the world. It moves every year 45M passengers and it was founded in 1926 when the two most important airlines of Germany: Deutshe Aero Llyod and Luftverkehr Junkers, combine their efforts to carry out policies to help the development in air traffic sector. After this event, the planes transport system in Germany took off. In 1926, Lufthansa was in 57 different International Airports. In 1927 Spain and Germany created a connection between two countries and the Spanish company: Iberia.
In thirties the company was controlled by the Nazi´s Third Reich State. Lufthansa had to make flights in war times but it provided different services in neutral countries. Nevertheless, Lufthansa use forced workers and it contributed to keep the Nazi´s period. After the II World War, Lufthansa began again. It was a very different period of time, above everything because the world was divided in two blocks, Communist and Capitalist, and in the same way Germany was also divided. In this epoch, German airline was called Lufttag, more or less since 1954, when it changed again to the original name.
In sixties Lufthansa introduced the new Jet, which substituted the traditional propeller planes. In these ages, the German company expanded its volumes of flights and started the construction of new Booing 747.  The next decade the petrol crisis affected the company, but not a lot.  It suffer, as well, others threats, such as the army group hijackers problems.
Since 1980, Lufthansa lived a big re-foundation. The government of Germany took the control of the company, and the corporative image of it was turned into modern and more appropriate to the new era. At the same time, Lufthansa could return to the capital city and reunify city of Berlin; the city where the airline was born.
In nineties, the company suffered big changes because of the privatization. The competition with other companies was hard, and in general all of companies had to drop their prices. In this dramatic situation, Lufthansa formed alliances with other European companies and at the end; they founded “Star Alliance”. The success comes back again to the airline.
Nowadays, it is a modern company which have a lot of different business. Apart from “Star Alliance” (where there are 27 members), it has affiliate or subsidiary  airlines such as: Swiss International Air Lines, Lufthansa Italia, Germanwings and so on.

After we have already spoken about the history of the company, is time to start giving ideas of what business strategy has Lufthansa in web 2.0.

Web Page and Social Networks Accounts

Web Page

Firstly, we have to say that the company is in fact a big group of different companies, even so the normal Lufthansa that is the normal Lufthansa that we imagine, so the civil airline is the main view of webpage of German airline. Here, we are in a real comfortable place which is coloured by colours of the company: gold and blue; a small but really identifiable logo and name. Describing a little bit the web: it has big mobile photos section which show offers and on the right, there is a square where you can select flights in a personal way. The other parts, are not as important as the first one, but we have to say that here, there are second importance elements such as flights offers to visit cities with Christmas markets. This is a temporary offer, so it can´t have the same importance in webpage. More because they are not real offers, is only as a reminder because the company know that a lot of people, and especially in Spain, like going to Christmas Market of centre Europe and obviously Germany.
Now, thinking about social networks we have to say that Lufthansa has two different accounts, one in Facebook and the other one in Twitter. So we can compare it with for example British and Air Berlin Other companies which are in the same market, European and German market. Two of them have Twitter and Facebook accounts. What it´s more British Airways has account in Google + and Youtube and all of links are in its Twitter (British)account. On the contrary, this company don´t consider putting in her webpage links.  Air Berlin does the same in this matter. They don´t have links of their sites in social networks. Lufthansa has in her web pages sites, maybe in a small place, the two links of the social networks accounts where it is.
Otherwise, the company, or better the group has another webpage whose content is related with details of the group. In other words, this webpage give more complete information about what is Lufthansa. Very clearly, the group show different kind of sections (home, Company, Press Room, Investors Relations, Responsibility and Jobs and Careers). In addition to that, they have another and very emphatic sections to book flights. The other parts of the Group Web-Page are “Press Release” so the secondary points. Other more relevant parts are on the right of the webpage. Here we can see information about the company, and link with other groups companies such as Austrian Airlines.

Social Networks

On the other hand, if we enter to Lufthansa Twitter account  through the web page, we discover that there is an only account, and it is in German, so we haven´t the opportunity to carry out conversation with German Airline if we aren´t fluent in German. Even so, it is true that the company has different Twitter accounts to their different parts of the world customers. Comparing with Air Berlin, suffer a disadvantage because this last one, has a personal account in Spanish language. In this way, we can conclude that Air Berlin give us by Twitter more personal and also more efficiently information about the flight to people who speak Spanish. Thinking about microblogging, Twitter account can help a lot to airlines in general, because the customers of the company can put their impressions of the service very quickly on Twitter. Lufthansa in this case, can see the opinion of followers to improve their services or to have a real contact with customers and future customers. As we now, the promotion is important, but Lufthansa make other kind of comments which are more friendly and close with followers. At the same time, they encourage people to take photos of their planes. Clearly, microblogging can be a good option to answer questions directly to the customers and to inform in this case about the situation of flights. Specially, an airline can have with Twitter a fantastic tool to look throw comments and change elements that followers consider bad. Other aspect that in my opinion is very useful to the company and to can help it to come off, is that it has a Lufthansa group Twitter account, in the same way that it has a Group´s web page.

Digital Identity and Reputation

Giving information about Digital Identity, we have to cross out a very important idea: the DI is the personality that, in this case, a company shows. This personality is created, according with INTECO, thanks to the pieces of information that a firm gives, pictures, news, comments that it does, or which are related to with the company. Lufthansa and other companies have to keep in mind that if they are in social-networks and if they are trying to build an interaction with potential followers, they have to come on policies which boost the creation of a good Reputation around the Brand; that can be an important step to make up DI.
We have to remember that Reputation is only a part of DI. This part is related with the idea of what is the opinion that the others have about me or my brand. Thinking about Germany Airline, people make good and fluent comments, which really don´t pick on hardly the company. On the contrary, customers are generally speaking happy and they enjoy flying   with Lufthansa.
The comments that customers do are related with doubts, reservations, but also there are complains: “Complained to Lufthansa almost a month ago and no reply. Are there any airlines that offer a decent customer service anymore?” and the experience of travel. There, we really consider that Lufthansa have fluent and personal conversations, which helps it to have a good reputation on the Internet.
But, what about other aspects that beef up and make up the DI? Obviously, we are talking about the brand, about the image that Lufthansa shows in different places. Lufthansa use this name in all of its web pages or Social Media accounts. At the same time, the firm use always two colours that are very representative of the company: blue and gold. Gold represents fortitude, warmth and fascination but blue is in this case the perfect counter weight to it, because it represents the stability and deep, and it´s perfect to one airline, because  is the colour of the sky. If we have to give more information about the logo, we say that it is created by Otto Firle in 1918 with the image of a crane, which represents safety and the flights; the typography of the name is Helvetic Bond.  The renovations in logo and in the typography were done by Otl Aicher. Generally speaking we can say that the logo is a powerful one.

DI, Reputation and Marketing

Having a good logo and of course a good and of course a good corporative image in Social Networks, can help a lot in the idea of build DI and in the aim of having a good reputation. Lufthansa, as we said use in all of their Social Net accounts the same colours and the same logo. In this way they are carrying out a perfect politic in order to manage branding not only because they put clearly the logo as well because they make an efficient strategy to related the brand with quality, reliability… To do this is very important a marketing strategy which can be off-line (newspapers, brochures) or on-line (Twitter, Blogs). I f we read newspapers, we discover that Lufthansa has normally advertisements in it. At the same time, the company use the nationality (German) to sell us the idea of efficiency and punctuality. These examples show us a very specifically one marketing strategy off-line.
On the other hand, on-line marketing links to the ideas which we have already commented. Nevertheless we have to say that to make a good reputation and speaking more generally to build a DI, are vital to create webs, blogs (the German company don´t have one), and Social Networks accounts and at the same time they have to be linked between them. Lufthansa more or less has an appropriate strategy; it isn´t very complex but can be enough.

More about Twitter and Microbbloging – Groups and collective intelligent .

As we have already commented in this writing and to expand a little bit more the idea of Twitter and Microblogging, we think over what are the main issues connecting with the German Airline.
Firstly, we can say that one company strategy on Twitter can´t be an ordinary publicity strategy; it is, but companies can´t do in the same way. Lufthansa in this case and as we have said, give personal and fluent answers, and share not only links related with the company webpage and promotions. They put videos, images and give customers and potential customers (which are the most important opinion-sector to the company) the opportunity to make their own promotion of the firm. Furthermore, with Twitter and with its microblogging tool, Lufthansa can be connected with 100.000 followers, and with those 100.000 followers, followers. These big group of people, which can we call collective intelligent, it´s very vital in today´s world to big companies, because they (the companies) are giving the possibility to make branding and brand building to the customers and followers of the brand. At the same time, the customers have a perfect platform to be in contact with the company; to have a better and more direct relationship. These communities of customers are not only an opinion canal, they are setting out a company on the net since they make suggestions, give ideas to the company to improve and create different groups of people, for instance in this case the parts of the world where the customers are from.

Conclusion

As a conclusion we have to say, that generally speaking Lufthansa has a suitable strategy on the net. At least, it is in two very important Social Networks, such as Twitter and Facebook. On the hand, and thinking about DI and Reputation we say that the German company has done an efficient work with these two concepts, creating fluent feed backs with followers on Twitter, a really representative image which is very familiar to general public, giving relevant information and answering questions. At the same time, we have to remember that the company has a lack of Social Media service in Spanish language, so the presence to the Spanish people or speaker  non-exist, and at the same way it fails in local-reputation.

References:

-Anon, 2012. Lufthansa un Logotipo Aleman. Delyarte. Available at: http://www.delyrarte.com.ar/lufthansa-un-logotipo-aleman/.

-Anon, Lufthansa – History. SeatMaestro. Available at: http://www.seatmaestro.com/airlines-seating-maps/lufthansa-airlines/history.html.

-Redacción, ¿Cuáles son los beneficios del Social Media como estrategia de marketing para las empresas? PuroMarketing. Available at: http://www.puromarketing.com/42/14567/cuales-beneficios-social-media-como-estrategia-marketing-para.html.

-Cerezo, J. et al., 2011. 5.Identidad Digital y reputación online. , p.50. Available at: http://www.evocaimagen.com/cuadernos/cuadernos5.pdf.

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-Jesus, L.F.P., 2012. Twitter, 20 estrategias para tener éxito en Twitter como empresa. Univesidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes. Available at: http://www.slideshare.net/pjlopezflores/20-estrategias-para-tener-xito-en-twitter-como-empresa-11953349