- Advertising
(Off-line)
P&O Cruises has TV advertising displaying during summer time or the beginning of the year. Customers who haven’t seen the advertisement on TV could also enjoy the advertisement on P&O Cruises’ website; to the “Fun Stuff-Videos” to view the version of its “Sh-boom” advertisement. It’s an advertisement with affective (Fill, 2002). Besides TV advertising, P&O Cruises posts its advertising on newspaper as well.
(On-line)
There are many agencies selling P&O Cruises’ tickets on line; they help P&O Cruises build a perfect advertisement system. If someone who is interested in cruises, they will easily find out the name of P&O Cruises on many websites building by travel agencies. Customers are able to easily book a cruise through any ABTA travel agent; there are about 16 agent’s linking to P&O Cruises and helping customers to book tickets in different areas. Although many websites all connecting to the name of P&O Cruises, it is difficult for people who want to buy the ticket right through P&O Cruises’ website.
- Sales promotion
(Off-line) (On-line)
P&O Cruises’ is targeted. It divides into consumers and the sales forces of both P&O Cruises’ and its agents (Fill, 2002). The sales promotion P&O Cruises uses is by the timing when customer book for their tickets. The earlier they book for cruises, the more discount they will have. It uses the method of price reductions to motive its sales in the early stage (Fill, 2002).
P&O Cruises also sets up the Portunus Club for customers who re-join to the P&O Cruises. There are Ruby, Sapphire, and Gold tiers for different types of customers. Customers could get points for their discounts when they had joined the cruises and also discounts to any other consumption on the ship. The method builds customer royalty; it is referred to as a ‘points accrual programme’ that helps the company keep customers loyalty for preventing them from moving to P&O Cruises’ competitor (Fill, 2002). The Portunus Club has not only increased the amount of customers, but also maintained those current customers well (Raaij, 1998).
- personal selling
(Off-line)
P&O Cruises’ tickets are sold through personal selling or other travel agencies. Customers buying tickets can either from agencies or directly make a phone call to the P&O Cruises as the telemarketing. It is a good method for the company itself uses lots of personal selling on promotes their ticket, for it is a method always interactive to customer and company. And “Consumers may talk to and obtain answers from ‘real’ persons or from machine interaction” that helps P&O Cruises directly being aware of what customers wants and what they need (Raaij, 1998).
(On-line)
On the website, customers who are interested in any trip and willing to join the tour could book on line by leaving the messages to the reservation team. Besides, it’s very easy for customers to find the ticket selling on website from different agencies in different areas, and then buy the ticket based on customer needs.
- public relations
(Off-line)
The means of PR of P&O Cruises is announcing news on newspapers. It mostly tells people about its schedules, timetables and its new ship or company information on travel pages or events column. P&O Cruises owns a press center to run for its news.
(On-line)
Customers could also find out their news through news websites, travel agents or the websites connect to sailings, such as, “what you need to about” or “scoop agents” (two website names). Moreover, there are numbers of news P&O Cruises showed to the public and listed on its own website. It is “press centre” in “the company” section. For people who are interested in to P&O Cruises and want to know more about its reputation, besides company introduction, they could attain more information on this section.
- direct marketing
(Off-line) (On-line)
P&O Cruises uses direct marketing through ABTA agents and many other travel agencies where they sell cruises’ tickets. It connects to personal selling to use different types of tools to achieve the needs of customers. It uses e-mail (member confirm) and through post-mail (brochure sending) to directly send the information to customers.
P&O Cruises, the Britain’s leading cruise operator, customer aboard its shipping at Southampton, UK or fly on a scheduled or P&O Cruises’ charter flight to any of its 25 destinations all over the world. All ships cruise Europe in the summer, and in winter Aurora and Adonia embark on round the world cruises while Oceana and Oriana tour the Caribbean. Places are stabile in different places by annual schedules; depended on where customers plan to go abroad. The headquarters is in Southampton, but usually people usually book tickets at agencies instead of heading for P&O Cruises’ office.
If people who would like to book tickets online, they could go to or through links on any ABTA agents to buy tickets. Agents are viewed as the P&O Cruises’ retailers. This method helps P&O Cruises reach its sale targets by selling tickets to many other segments in different areas and places. The channel of its distribution is producer → retailers→ consumers (Blythe, 1998).
P&O Cruises sets its price at the moment when customers buy tickets. The company uses different brochures to attract customer to join its cruises business. Customers could save as much as money if they book earlier according to the timetable set up by P&O Cruises. Customers could save up to 5%~45% discounts for early booking, depending on availability, and its reward for those who book early. P&O Cruises named it as “pricebreakers”. Besides, price differs from different cabin type and grade that customers choose. It is very easy for customers to find the price on the website or by the brochure which customers could also easily get by request online.
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DRIP – P&O Cruises (model by Fill, 2002)
P&O Cruises’ communications have need to:
“Differentiates” itself by it is one of the oldest cruises company which
form of British to attract customers who enjoy in English style.
“Remind and reassure” its customers by telling them that the leisure cruising business was started by P&O in 1844. The step helps the company acquire trust from customers
Oldest = standard = traditional (British) ↑
“Inform” the consumers by educating them that P&O Cruises is the
company with offering high quality but middle-low price to customers
“Persuade” to the consumers that althouthg P&O Cruises is the oldest
company, it has most modern fleet of ships in the UK.
In order to know how a company created a website on line to present its own products through the internet, the company needs to define the level of commitment it wants to reach (Doren, 2000).
There are 4 possible scenarios for promoting on the internet. P&O Cruises is belonging to the highest level 4, because it offers on-line ordering of products and services. The product P&O Cruises supplies to customer is not the tangible things that customers could touch but services and facilities on cruises. So the company tries to present its product through the website. P&O Cruises uses web cam, lots of 360˚ panoramic tour and many of pictures on its website to interact with users. Moreover, there are images, screensavers and wallpapers of its 4 ships for customers to download. The usages of multimedia presentations also reach facilitation as a web promotion; it enables a more personal, one-on-one approach with the internet user (Doren, 2000). According to the four possible scenarios lists, P&O Cruises does make a high extensive interaction with its customers through its website. The web site of P&O Cruises may be high costs, but it could attract more customers order on line.
- Communication instruments
According to the classified list of marketing communication instruments and media, P&O Cruises is belonging to the one-to-one and interactive cells. It is one which with personal selling, telemarketing, e-mail to person, consultancy, and conversation. (Raaij, 1998)
Not only is a one-to-one communication website, the internet of P&O Cruises’ also a many-to-many communication one. For someone who clicks on “Focus on” and gets into “Cruise Connections” on the website of P&O Cruises, he/she will meet up many like-mined cruisers. It is an area for consumers to discuss, share information and experience, and provide problem solutions and give suggestions to each other (Raaij, 1998). The website of Cruise Connections are including My cruises (customer oriented), Messages (sharing information by customers themselves), On board Forum (comment and conversations to improve), Passengers (friends meeting), ships (links to ‘product’ again), Account (personalize), and Feedback (criticize and suggestion). This website offers the company information through these customers who join group and discuss on it. Its also helps P&O Cruises find out its drawbacks in order to improve (Raaij, 1998).
- Website Strength & Weakness - P&O Cruises
Strength
Graphics: P&O Cruises use “thumbnail” for visitor when they are going to download images and screensaver from its website. The use of thumbnail helps visitor to see the smaller version of a picture first before wasting time on open larger version of picture (Joergensen, 2003).
Speed: even P&O Cruises use lots of 360˚ panoramic tour on its website, the speed of them to show up are less than 10 second by 128KB. Ten seconds is a long time to wait for users according to Procknow (1998).
Interactivity: Gardner et al. (1999) found that more people would buy on-line if human interaction was possible. P&O Cruises not only sell on-line, it’s also a website with two-way communication. Through e-mail and mailing post, the company builds relationship with customer and makes their customer royal to the company. It’s also a website using FAQ and “Help” section to its customer. The use of FAQ and “Help” help the company reduce the personal costs on reply email to customers (Benzon, 1997 in Joergensen, 2003).
Links: P&O Cruises set a website with many useful links. Not only the links of agents help the company itself to sell tickets on-line, P&O Cruises finding needs for customers and to put on links what customers would love to know more. It might relate to weather, orchestra plays on cruises, agents’ information, and health advice and so on. Most importantly, these links are open destination in a new window to keep P&O Cruises’ home page in the back ground (Joergensen, 2003).
On line security and trust: P&O Cruises is the website under consumer protection. It using ATOL protected and is also a member of the Passenger Shipping association. It’s clearly states on the website under menu section, security for its customer and provides safe shopping condition (Fill, 2002).
Weakness
Update: The website of P&O Cruises is not up-to-date everyday. After Jan. 2004, customer still fined the 2003 brochure on its website. The page of news press is stop at 31,10,2003. For the marketing communication, it is important that the relevant information is available, up-to-date and accessible at the place and time consumers need it. That is because marketing communication obtains a more service-oriented rather than a persuasive role (Raaij, 1998).
Consistency and user-friendly design: A site map P&O Cruises has made the first-time users easy to find the information they want. As a search index provides help for the user, P&O Cruises needs to create a search index for user to get information they want easily (Joergensen, 2003). the using of roll-over to show the content on the menu list will make more user-friendly to visitor.
Visitor who would like to discuss and know more friends about P&O Cruises, they could go to “Cruise Connections”. When they are newcomers to this web page, they have to register first. Leaving personal information on the website is require; it helps P&O Cruise build customer details into database and understand more about its customers. When submission has done, P&O Cruises would send an auto-respond e-mail to confirm the user’s name and password. If someone who has register, he could sigh in as his/her homepage and with his preference cruises information in.
Conclusions:
The twenty-first century market-place will be dominated by interactivity brought about by IT which will drive electronic commerce. Now, we are moving from a market-place dominated by the marketer to one dominated by the consumers. (Schultz, 1998) it’s the age of “the end of the beginning” (Strauss, 2001). P&O Cruises owns a well-built website which is customer oriented and interactivity. Gardner et al. (1999) found that more and more people tend to shop on-line if human interaction is possible. P&O Cruises is the one whose customers not only could buy tickets through websites, but also its system and creation of links help the company get free advertising from other websites and sell its P&O Cruises tickets. It’s marvelous for the website comprises various communication tools and targeted to its customers.
Although the website is functional and interactive to visitors, it should broaden its website by strengthening the design of consistency and user-friendly. At last, it’s not simple for consumers to differentiate that P&O Cruises is not belonging to Peninsula and Oriental steam Navigation Company. Even though it was demerged into Carnival public limited company, the actual product of it is not clear. P&O Cruises should not just concern about its brand, but needs to be clarified to the public.
P&O Cruises is entering the mass market (Kotler, 2002). It makes the company not just “cruises” business (sea business), it’s a business which including “navigation” in the air. P&O Cruise has created a maturity website to promote itself successful, and it helps them sailing into a new journey.
Bibliography:
Blythe, J. (1998). Essentials of Marketing. London: Pitman publishing
Chaffey, D., Mayer, R., Johnston, K. and Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2002). Internet Marketing (2nd ed.). Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd.
Chernatony, L., & Riley, F. D., (1998). Expert practitioners’ views on roles of brands: implications for marketing communications. Journal of Marketing Communications, 4(2), 87-100
Doren, D. C., Fechner, D. L., & Green-Adelsberger K., (2000) Promotional strategies on the World Wide Web. Journal of Marketing Communications, 6(1), 21-35
Fill, C. (2002). Marketing Communications: Context, Strategies and Application (third ed.). Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd.
Hartley, B., & Pickton. D. (1999). Integrated marketing communications requires a new way of thinking. Journal of Marketing Communications, 5(2), 97-106
Joergensen, J. L., & Blythe, J., (2003). A guide to a more effective World Wide Web presence. Journal of Marketing Communications, 9(1), 45-58
Kotler, P., Armstrong, G., Saunders, J., and Wong, V., (2002). Principles of Marketing (3rd European ed.). Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd. p.325
Raaij, W. F., (1998). Interactive communication: Consumer power and initiative. Journal of Marketing Communications, 4(1), 1-8
Schultz, D. E., & Schultz, H.F., (1998). Transitioning marketing communication into the twenty-first century, Journal of Marketing Communications, 4(1), 9-26
Strauss, J., & Frost, R. (2001). E-Marketing (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.
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