Strategic Marketing Report - Virgin Trains

5. Market Research

Market Research can be done by primary, secondary, internal or

External research;

Internal - Is when the data is collected from within the business, from previous records (e.g. sales records)

External - Is when the data is collected from outside the organisation (e.g. Questionnaire.

Primary- when the data is collected by the user for the user (e.g. Questionnaire done by the Market research team)

Secondary- when another party and that data collect the data is then used for another organisation. (E.g. Data from a Market Research company)

4. Secondary Research

A lot of the stories I found about Virgin are situated in the separate leaflet at the back, which was used with my Marketing Presentation. I wrote to Virgin Trains off their website they replied with the letter which seemed to be a mail merge of the internet and I’ve received no further correspondence from them whatsoever a total of 5 months.

1. Business Mission

A popular quote for marketing is:

“’Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ Asked Alice. ’That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the cat ‘I don’t much care where---.’ ‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.’ Said the cat. (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)

This shows just how important it is to plan. Not just to know where you’re going but to show others where your heading to which they might be of some assistance. Remember ‘Columbus didn’t just sail he sailed West’ another saying is ‘Reach for the stars! You may not get many, but you are less likely to end up with a hand full of mud.’ A lot of people have realised you need objectives just to start with a structure. Objectives are the centre of the S-Objective-S formulae!

From my secondary research this information was deciphered from various sources. That Virgin trains a public service industry has 5 Objectives:

1. To offer a High Quality service at low cost
2. Profitability
3. Growth in Earnings per Share
4. To obtain a larger segment of the market (Expand to other areas of the country)
5. To be No1 where the trains travel

These are not quantitative so not Measurable so they can’t see how they are doing compared with their objectives. Which is wrong all objectives should me measurable because they need to see how good they are doing and how far they have to go till they get to where they want to be. All businesses  should use the Management By objective way of thought to allow a good structure and a easy way of discipline.

They also have a customer charter, which states what customers must receive on the service: 

5. The Charter

This is the Passenger's Charter for West Coast Trains Ltd and CrossCountry Trains Ltd, which together operate under the name of ‘Virgin Trains'. It sets out our commitment to give you the safe, high quality service you have the right to expect. Any customer purchasing a ticket for use on services operated by Virgin Trains should enjoy:

- A reliable and punctual journey

- Clean and safe trains and stations

- A Customer Service team member on board each train to be available to provide help if required

- A refreshment service on most trains

- A seat if reserved in advance

Copies of this Passenger's Charter will be available at all major stations used by Virgin Trains

6. Questionnaire

To get all the information I need to formulate a strategy I need to collect the following information:

Age Range

Male/Female Divide?

Time of main usage

Areas of main usage

Number of customers using competitors

I carried out a questionnaire for primary research over the week beginning 11/02/02; this was half term so I was sure to get a range of people from the young going out to the business commuters going to work. This would also include mothers at home with young children taking them out. I carried out the questionnaire only within Flintshire; the results shown are only of the people associated with the Trains of Flintshire bound services or those that they have travelled previously. There was only a sample size of 50 people, which, I don’t feel this was adequate for Virgin Trains so if I had the time and money to do a nation-wide survey I would. The questionnaire was conducted professionally and accurately to the best of my ability and Knowledge. Although the answers could have been lies most could be checked apart from those personal opinion questions.

The Train Company: I had a list of all train companies servicing the area.

Places: I had a list of all places where these services existed.

There was only one person who answered these questions incorrectly with an inaccurate name either purposely lying or a honest mistake, I couldn’t be sure so I done a retake of that questionnaire with a different person.

I can’t be sure whether or not the people were honest. I must just trust them the only thing which could help is that the first thing I said was ‘Do you have time to answer a short questionnaire?’ which means they were willing and not in a rush, so have no reason to lie. The questions I asked were not adequate to receive a reliable analysis to provide the Company, much more thought would need to go into the questions being asked and the number of people and questions being asked. The questions were all closed and they could not lead onto non-quantitative results.

6. Internal Analysis

1. Marketing Objective

Virgins’ objective will be:

An improvement must be shown with timing figures and by field research with a vast majority of virgin train users (70% Must state an increase in timing and efficiency <times when there are difficulties with the train or Rail track will be excluded>)

2. Product life cycle

The product life cycle is what is used to show the financial whereabouts of the product. This is used to show when sales are predicted to fall since all products have a life cycle also due to Physics laws ‘What goes up must come down’ the amount of time it takes to fall however is changeable so the product life cycle will show this. I’ve used the product life cycle as a company whole, because each company has a life cycle e.g. Marks & Spencer where the famous high quality store and they proceeded to have a big decline of ‘new’ users in the last century because of its age association. Another example is C&A who closed its entire chain of stores in Britain. This shows that Virgin must expect a down turn in service users in the far future. The life cycle will also show all fluctuations along the years these can be identified as to what happened or what other product/company was launch.

3. Financial Capabilities

Virgin is obviously a part of the Virgin Group and has great financial stability since it has a foot hold in many markets including banking

4. Technical Competence

Virgin itself is very high tech and is in no need of improvement however trains as a whole could do with a rethink, speeds are increasing and peoples lives are going quicker and so trains have increased their speed but this has decreased their safety. Modern Technology allows GPS; if this were situated within all trains it would increase their efficiency dramatically. Which Virgin is currently working on.

5. Personnel

Virgin Employees are well looked after and have a good working environment, which Virgin strives to keep.

6. Customer Relationships

Virgin Brand has a good reputation providing value to its customers it’s the image of trains themselves, which is in need of serious repair.

7. Competition

        Virgin Trains Operates in the Public sectors offering a service for travel. It has many competitors but each normally sticks to a separate area (e.g. Northern Trains operates in the north of England and Scotland) but where Demand is high there are services that overlap in territory borders like ‘First Great Eastern’ & ‘Silver Link Trains’ both operate in the London area.  Virgins service however, operate all over and are in competition with nearly all rail organisations, so Competition research is vital for the guaranteed survival of Virgin Trains.

Virgins Main competitors are Cars since its cheap and affordable and can be used anywhere and basically better than Trains because they are stuck to where the track takes them and a time table where as cars you make your own timetable and can be dropped outside the door. (Taxi firms, Car producers / manufacturers and busses) Busses are also competition because it’s also a public service been privatised and transports people from place to place on a smaller scale because they can use the roads and also go anywhere although they do have to keep to a strict route.

7. External Analysis

1. SLEPT Analysis

Social, Legal, Economic, Political, Technological an analysis of these will give a clear view of all external influences.

Social – Peoples view of trains have decreased over the past few years since cars have become more popular and more affordable, the recent train disasters have been devastating on the industry. The most popular type of person to use trains is the commuter to big cities like London, Liverpool and Manchester. The idea of Eco-friendly systems is becoming ever more popular and a train is a good transport method because it releases little gases. The way views change are directly associated with certain factors in the surrounding community, in each community there will be different views and beliefs. The factors including other advertising on large scale, Famous people factor (i.e. what their idols have said, done, wore, where they’ve been etc), Discoveries (E.g. the find about the Titanic caused an increase in the popularity of the Tragedy), Calendar days, Large-scale tragedies. But of all these the one that will probably cause the most hassle will be the Advertising campaigns of the competitors because they can either discourage people from using virgin trains by making them look better or make virgin seem worse which will make them look better. Either way if the campaign goes well then the public will be influenced.

Legal – Virgin is affected by all the standard laws;

                Trade Descriptions Act

                Weights and measures Act

                Fair Trade Act

                Restrictive Trade & Practices Act

                Competition Act

                Trading Standards

Health and Safety

All these laws are obviously going to effect any business not just Virgin Trains since the government needs to keep a close eye on business to make sure no harm comes to the People of Britain.

Since the rail incident law hasn’t had too much of an effect upon Virgin by now Law is being revised and could be implemented. This could be an advantage to the company if they can put all the new laws in place before others it would show they are very proud of their safety conscious attitudes. Or if the law asks too much of the company then it could be a bad move that would ruin the Industry because if Virgin cannot incorporate the new Laws then its doubtful any of the other companies can. Laws are mainly going to be safety laws regarding speeds and seating. But its doubtful they will be put forward to the houses of Parliament because they seem to be too difficult to implement to the service and will give no manoeuvrability.

Political –The law for the trains is not in fact law but rules set by Railtrack who are meant to be the governing body for the Rail industry they are also responsible for the upkeep of the Tracks themselves. Railtrack has had a lot of bad publicity, because of the rail incidents; they had a lot of research into their goings on, by the newspapers. Newspapers ran many stories of complaints and held a long running campaign to get the transport secretary Steven Byres to quit, this did succeed during June 2002. The new transport secretary is as yet undecided, but whoever gets the job will have a lot of work sorting out the public transport industry. The government has pledged to sort the rail system out, this means they have set targets, which they will strive to meet because they do not want to loose face. They know that theres no way Railtrack are going to sort the industry so they must know they’ll need to give money to help. This would be a big help to Virgin since they won’t be spending any. Politically If they do spend on Rail they’ll be criticised and famed since there are more industries that are more vital in need of repair, but they will be famed with helping. Since the targets set by the government need to be met then the companies will receive funding from the government.

Economic – This is a worry for Virgin Trains since if the economy goes into recession then the amount of spending that people can do is decreased but if the economy succeeds then people will get more spending and are likely to want to go out more. In all countries the economy fluctuates Britain has had a streak with the Base interest rate being held at 4%. The taxation rates have also been held at a low rate a while. This has caused the public to have spare money with which they can spend on the extras like Night outs and day trips on which they may use the train to reach.

Technological – Important for Virgin since any advance can cause a great increase in use of their trains since any commodity that can be catered for on the journey will increase how enjoyable it will be. Currently it is advancing on GPS technology aboard trains, which is a safety feature where, all trains are fitted with satellite hardware & software that will allow a close check on the situations of the trains. Then there will be a chance of updating times of arrival and departure by text message or Email that will create less stress at the stations. Any extra technology will give a competitive advantage to the company and place them ahead of their competitors.

The fruits of Virgin Trains £2 billion investment are being borne out as their new Voyager trains are being rolled out on their Cross Country network. By the summer of 2002, over half of all the trains on this network will be Voyagers, with a full service of 75 Voyager trains scheduled for January 2003.

In the meantime the fleet of 55 new tilting electric trains called Pendolinos will be introduced. The Pendolino will bring massive improvements in the travel environment, coupled with innovations in on-board entertainment and service.

 

The much documented investment programme into the 550-mile West Coast main line is well underway. The route will be transformed to one of the best in the country, with new track and new signalling which will support the operation of Virgin's new fleet of tilting trains at 125mph.

8. SWOT Analysis

This term means Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.  It is used to access the general state of the business.  It shows all the strengths of a business the weaknesses it may have, all the opportunities from the possibility of an expansion to merging also it studies the threats the organisation has.

Strengths; Virgin Group has the advantage of being a ‘Named label’ everyone knows Virgin so the extent of publicity from other chains (e.g. Virgin records) has boosted the smaller newer chains and also given them the appearance of value and quality associated with the Virgin label.

Weaknesses; The service is unreliable and of a poor standard so its poor quality means the price is high for what the service gives so it’s a rip-off. Virgin Trains is bringing down the good image of other Virgin Brands

Opportunity; being first to increase the publics image of the rail network would be an advantage because they would see Virgin Trains as the ‘saviour’ and it would probably increase its market share while the news publicity would also increase the awareness off the company. Road tolls are being discussed on the M6, which is the main commuter route from Birmingham to London. If these are put into place then the likeliness is that people will stop using the car to cut out these tolls, which means the Train will be the most viable route to work. Then also a rise in Fuel tax would also decrease the use of the roads because people would see they’d save money in using the service. Also in if the government decided to invest more into the rail industry.

Threats; The poor image of the rail industry is the main weakness of Virgin Trains since people are now scared of train seeing them as unfit for purpose because of the recent rail incidents. They have to timetable the use of the rail lines with other companies so are reliant on the rail infrastructure. Cars are the main threat since they offer a cheap quality y service, which you decide on where you go how fast, and when you stop also the road surface extends outside peoples houses so they aren’t fixed to a track. (See 6.7 Competition)

The point of this is to match the weakness to convert them to strengths and match the opportunities to threats.

9. Formulating a Market Strategy

1. Ansoff’s Matrix

The Ansoff Matrix is a matrix is to decide the growth strategy. This is used in unison with the Product life Cycle and the Boston Matrix to show where you are in the Market and how you product is etc. With all these factors the future of the business can be decided to achieve the maximum needs. The easiest way to put it is:

The diagram above shows the Matrix, a company needing a larger profit needs to do one of the 4 at the top. To decide this they see where they are. Virgin as a group are at an existing Market and Existing Products which shows they are either new to the market, are happy where they are or are in need of expansion. Virgin records sold records, they’d flooded the market with the same product and there was no other market to find. Virgin used the diagram.

Need More income>Product-new>Market-Old=DONE

        Product-old>Market-newNE

        Product-new>Market New=Diversification

Virgin then Made Virgin Records which manufactured the records. They kept doing this and eventually bought Virgin Trains. Virgin Trains have now fully exploited all possible products for the trains but has not yet used all markets (non-Physical)

2. Porters Competitive forces and generic strategies

Michael Porter argues that business must respond to five competitive forces:

1.The Threat of New Entrants into the market

2.The Bargaining power of suppliers

3.Threats from substitute product services

4.The Bargaining power of Buyers

5.Rivalry amongst Existing Firms

He then states that there are three generic strategies to overcome the forces;

A. Produce the same quality service at a lower cost-

Enjoy greater profits or in a price war stay in the market, profitably with, reduced prices

B. Differentiation of their products-

Quality imperatives demand a strategy equating the product with ‘desirable’ quality standards. Which can be related to virgin because they could offer different services; which they used to Business class for example. And the virgin Brands have all got that unique quality. Differentiation is essential like the Virgin Cola brand having Diet type.

C. Market Niche/ Segmentation-

Focus on:

1. A section of the buying public

2. A segment of a product line

3. An area of geographic market

This will be easier to target more efficiently but differentiation will still be required for the large profits

3. Boston Matrix

This is a chart used too show where about the service is upon the product life cycle;

Once in the Dog State a company needs to re-market drastically while most companies don’t let them even enter the dog phase. Virgin was hit with drastic circumstances because of the rail industry. This is very good model for marketing strategies because it can be used on all types of market And contain the main information of where they are at the moment and where they want to be. Although the information in this can be replaced with, the product life cycles.

10. Assembling the Marketing Mix

The reasons for having a marketing mix are basically to place order on the way the results of all research and results are analysed. The analysis of the results is vital to the succession of the service if the results are incorrectly analysed then the service has no chance of succeeding, this is why the results have to be of good quality and correct while being well presented. The four Ps are the four main sections affecting the service (Product, Price, Place, and Promotion). To analyse the results a quality analyst is employed by the company. They would go through all results finding out ‘what people want’. This process is a difficult and time-consuming one. It starts by firstly organising the results and then the questions that are needed to be answered are organised and the two are merged (i.e. the results that could be associated with the question are placed together e.g. Q: What price should the product be placed at? In this section there would be information about:

• Old price of service
• Competitors price
• Income of consumers
• Acceptable limit from consumers
• Cost of production
• Variability’s that may affect
• Areas of selling Socio-demographic/geographic etc
• Average wage for that segment
• Average leisure spending

There may be many more fields of research involved, all must be analysed.

There are two types of company;

1. Product orientated

This is where the company strives to increase the quality of the product WITHOUT asking the public what they want. They automatically decide what they think is a better product. This company is more likely to fail since they have no idea as to what will sell to the public. A good example of this is a person who sets up a bar with their favourite type of music playing. Music tastes chance so quickly that what was popular then would not be now. If their music is Jazz then there is not a big demand for the service so this would fail. If they had of asked the public what they waned then they would know that the popular music would be e.g. Rock.

2. Marketing orientated

This is where the company asks the public what they want then designs the product specification to suit. With this it is almost guaranteed to succeed since they know how much demand there is for the service.

4. Product

Virgin needs to be able to keep a SUSTAINABLE competitive advantage to allow the long-term success of the Company it will cost an awful lot to continue renewing the Marketing strategies, so a long term one would be more beneficial. Virgin Trains service has many features, which will appeal to different audiences.

From the SWOT ananalysis I conclude the Product should contain the following features:

• The Virgin Logo because it’s an established and well-known brand, which is, considered to be cheap.
• It should have a technological advantage like the GPS systems and electronic order systems involving the electronic payment system.
• Be known that it not be associated with the running of the ruined Railtrack
• The time tabling with the other companies should be more efficient to allow a more rigid timing. Which would increase the whole image of Rail and Virgin would be well respected for it and this would probably be reflected in its profit margin.

Their standard service always includes the availability of snacks and drinks at the bar on the train.

Then their season passes allow a free newspaper because the season passes are usually for business commuters which is very useful this service also includes a light breakfast and the availability of snacks and drinks at the bar. This appeals to the commuter, who uses the service every day.

There is also an evening pass that includes an evening meal at certain times. For the commuters or long distance commuters

So far this service is fine most full time commuters are happy with the service and the mothers are happy with the Kidz service offered by virgin, which includes an activity book and the availability of a drink and snack like a packet of crisps.

Although the quality of the trains is not good but Virgin is developing its new train service like the European trains which tilt when turning corners (See SLEPT analysis 6.8)

There should be an extra train straight after the main commuter time. To allow the other to get where they want early. This train should be cheap and should be of good quality comparing the service with the price. This will attract the early shoppers who want to get the ‘Early Bargains’ in the local town centres which includes OAPs and Parents. There is also a big use by students at the large universities that all require a transport at the end of terms that could be catered for and advertised at the end of term locally around all the universities. The times that they move would stereotypically not be until the afternoon once their awake but more research into this would be beneficial. A good way of getting to students would be by text messages since most own a mobile and they use the SMS a lot. Where as commuters are 89% equipped with Email so a deal with the larger companies for multiple Emails sent to employees would be useful if they’d allow it.

I suggest that Virgin Trains plans on the usual marketing saying ‘Don’t sell the product sell the feeling you get from it’ I think Virgin should sell the fun that the teenagers will get from the journey and the commuters should be influenced by a change in timing.

5. Price

Pricing is important to the company and is the influence of the profit margins. If Virgin Trains sets its price too high they will loose potential custom because they will not pay the extra and if they price it to low they will miss out on potential custom.

2. Internal

Virgin must take the objectives into consideration because they must know where they want their product to be (e.g. Gucci would need to price their products high to give the image of quality and ‘Designer’. Where as Matalan would need to keep their prices low to show there affordable.) Virgin needs to keep its price low to allow the Virgin Brand to carry on with the cheap image. The cost of promotion must be taken into account especially if they are giving a big nation-wide multi-medium strategy. Obviously the price must cover costs.

Virgin’s prices are adequate to cover all costs and still make a profit. Virgin has the image of value and so the public will perceive the price as value and compare competitors price with it knowing virgin is cheap.

3. External

Demands will influence the price. If no one wants it who’s going to buy it at whatever price, if there is a low demand they can’t have a high price but with a high demand and there are only certain numbers of seats then he price can be high. The prices of the competition will also affect the price.They won’t use Virgin Trains if they can get a cheaper service elsewhere so the price can’t vary much from these.

They do accept Student cards and have a discount card themselves for commuters, so these, who use it most, are praised for their custom.

Deals in the paper should be made like on days where few people travel like Tuesdays there should be an extra discount for non-commuter hours. To encourage the non-commuters to use another time because the service is saturated and the condition of the Carriages is diminished in the morning, after, the commuters have used the train. They have no time to clean the train before the train has to leave for the next journey.

6. Place

Place isn’t so important to Virgin because they are stuck onto the track, stations are situated along it. A chain of link computer boxes would cost an awful lot, but the number of users may be outstanding (more research will need to be done to find the number of users compared with the initial cost). Although they have boxes situated within the stations to allow easy buying straight when you enter or to pick up reserved tickets. I think that the link boxes would be suited to be in Supermarkets where lots of people pass them and the people will be inclined to use them. They do sell tickets virtually, on the Internet, which provides a good proportion of the total revenue. They also supply a service to Travel Agents allowing the train journeys to be booked the same time as the holiday in a all-in-one package which is the most bought service in the holiday business.

Although, the places that they are, advertised in, does. Advertisements should be placed in the larger papers for commuters and the non-commuters should have adverts in magazines.

I think Virgin trains should take advantage of the many more places that could possibly sell ticket a good and new example would be the new Electronic pay service which has been brought out and is being used mainly by Mobile phone companies but had long been used by the post office and the Electronic bill paying by Manweb. If they targeted a young audience with these cards and mention discounts they will be paid for immediately and will get the ticket. This means because young people legally cannot get credit cards that are accepted over the Internet young people will be able to order their tickets in advance and this will increase market share as long as it is advertised and the software is efficient and easy.

7. Promotion

Promotion is used throughout the world and it is used to:

• Make consumers aware of the availability of their services
• Inform consumers of the benefits of their service over another (Theirs or a competitors)
• Stimulate demand for their service
• Provide incentive to purchase and use the service
• Remind consumers of the existence of a product

To do this a variety of methods can be used sometimes referred to as ‘the promotional mix’.

• Advertisement - Most obvious of all techniques. There is no way of escaping ads in the modern world since they are plastered everywhere from billboards to T-shirt Branding, Busses, TV, Radio. But within this there are stages in the Advertising campaign:

1. Identify the Target Market - Straightforward segmentation –Sex, Age, Socio-economic, Class. If the wrong market is chosen then the incorrect media might be used.

2. Identify the right media - How best to target the market-its useless having a target market of 60-70yrs and placing adds in the teen magazine.

3. Create the right message - so it appeals to the segmentation. A knitting firm couldn’t have a modern slang word in it because it wouldn’t appeal to them.

4. Identify the right time - this is crucial. Too soon before the launch of the service means the people will forget about the ads while too long afterwards means they would of bought a different product.

5. Calculate the cost of the campaign - This is where the marketing team and the accountants disagree, because with all campaigns the costs must be covered by the sales. When the sales start to fall the marketing team want a big increase in the amount of money placed into advertising, whereas the accountants want a decrease. I feel with a good marketing team the money should always be increased.

• Direct marketing – The best-known way is Direct Mail. Whereas a TV advert cannot be directed to just males without female watching. So the previous records of companies are sold borrowed or used themselves to discover their buying habits and thus advertise to their suspected needs. (E.g. If a person orders a lot of plants from a mail order catalogue then you’d expect the person to be into gardening. So then another company would ask for all the records of people buying plants <At a Price> they’d be given them in strict confidence and with security because personal details are in them. The company now has the records so can send them a leaflet about the new horticultural book.) They can also use Fax, Telephone, SMS Text Messages and Email to contact you.

• Public Relations (PR) – this is when a company invites a newspaper to interview about their product and if they like it the paper will give them ‘free’ advertising in the form of a story. Another way is to provide a ‘Face’ for the company and then to allow the person to do a lot a TV programs and Magazine articles, which is Virgin with the owner Richard Branson.

• Personal selling – Not used by Virgin Trains – where the company employs salesmen to help people with purchasing. These people have been stereotyped as pushy liars and are associated with Double-Glazing.

• Sales Promotion – there are many different ways of sales promotion and nearly every company uses it:

1. Discount Vouchers (often in newspapers)
2. Brochures and leaflets
3. Price Cuts and ‘Sale’ offers
4. Extra product (Buy one get one free)
5. Free Gifts – Toys in Cereal
6. Prize draws
7. Competitions
8. ‘Give-aways’ free pens, stickers, Hats, etc
9. Free Membership
10. Displays and Exhibitions

• Sponsorship – By sponsoring something the company obtains a better social status because they are seen as goo people looking after the sponsored item. But they are just getting free advertisement. Seen in Football and in Motor Racing and in most other sports.

Publicity is the most important for Virgin because this will affect the company in the largest way. The better their promotion and the more fuss it causes the more advertising it will receive, like Budweiser’s WASSSSSSUPPPPP adds which were plastered over the papers and the news as well as public impersonations. They do not want bad publicity like all the train fiasco and like the SmithKlineBeechams Ribena case which created a large image of distrust.  So if Virgin created an add to appeal to the kids which would be show along a commuter advert at prime time viewing it would create a good image for virgin. If they appealed to the young with celebrities (Who are seen a fit for the purpose e.g. singers) and humour they’d appeal to the Business men/women with either a famous business person like Richard Branson or by having a cleaver add which shows how good virgin is to Commuters.

Having Richard Branson entering a train at least once a month will give customers the chance of meeting him and gaining an autograph or some business advice. Which should bring some more commuters in from smaller businesses wanting advice.

Public adverts could also be used to increase the image of the rail industry. An American study shows a simple thing like playing ‘I’m honest’ and ‘I will not steel’ on the shop radio, at strategic intervals, where there are many people on the shop floor, decreased the average theft by almost 25%. Which I was shocked to find a wider study wasn’t put into motion. Although advertising of this fact would make this idea conscious and so ruin the results.

If Virgin strategically placed simple things like ‘Rail is good’’ with red font because red is immediately associated with Virgin since all communications are in red. It could also use the ‘I’m honest’/’I will not steel’ in the rail carriages so that theft on the trains is reduced.

Along with the current services like the free Financial times to the Commuters because there more likely to read the larger papers. Also with the Virgin Radio at the after commuter hours (Morning and Afternoon) playing in the cabins for the customers if they played it at commuter times then the Phone calls and conversations would be disrupted.

I feel the Virgin Trains logo is out of date. It seems to give an image of happiness and somewhat fairy tale magic because of the ‘Rainbow’, which I don’t feel, would sell a Service of any kind but child minding in the modern society. Commuters wouldn’t mind the logo being recreated to attract more out of hour’s custom. As long as, its not created too young or with too much detail so that you strain to see it. A plain original logo is needed with a slogan, which will appeal to all. ‘Not so hard!’ But I still feel more research should go into this.

All the above publicity methods should be used except the personal selling because this isn’t cost effective and would not be like among users. The number of users are varied and not centralised to certain areas or types that can be identified. With double-glazing everyone has windows, but for Virgin Trains if they were to personally sell then their best bet would be to try to sell to people without cars who are more likely to use the train. All others will need to be ‘seduced’ into buying the service since driving is easier and cheaper. Direct marketing would be best to use since the target audience would be easy to find by previous questionnaires that have been done and are up for sale along with the address list, which would have to be correct and up-to-date. High Schools, Colleges and universities should have plenty of promotional material sent to them since many will drink alcohol on nights out and will not be able to drive.

Not many companies have the ability to appeal to a whole audience thus the Heart of modern Marketing Strategies will be used STP Marketing (Segmenting, Targeting and Positioning) using certain characteristics like:

• Geographic
• Socio-demographic
• Psychological
• Behavioural
• Operative
• Purchasing
• Situational
• Personal

Virgin could segment the market to make it easier because the market is too numerous, widely scattered and varied in their buying requirements and needs. Once segmented decide on the area that will be targeted and then the Positioning is where you aim the attack and decide what weapon to use to attain their purchase. My questionnaire shown the main users were young students and commuters, so this is the audience that Virgin should target. But Virgin are renowned for their niche market sections. So if Virgin targeted the other sections like OAPs or Parents then the chances are they would get a large sales because that market doesn’t use trains so they are susceptible to a new area to which they are not familiar. E.g. A mother of two doesn’t use the trains, who then sees an advert for child services on trains. No other adverts are seen for this so they will use that service. This would give a large monopoly for a short period of time to the service.

I feel Virgin should also target:

For most revenue - Commuters and Students

For a large amount of extra revenue - Parents, Schools (For trips), OAPs.

Positioning for these would be difficult because the areas are diverse although it can be done and should be since there is a lot of potential income from these sources.

11. Contingency Planning

This is the part that asks ‘What If…’ the company must strive to be able to deal with any situation that may arise in the coming future. Where they’ll be able to get over any problems that may be caused, all they have to do is look at the Contingency plan.

For Virgin Trains the biggest problem would be a difficulty on the track, which would be a separate companies fault so they can’t take control of it or see that the task is done sufficient enough to suffice.

During this work there was another train incident;

Potters bar in Hertfordshire in this accident once again it was Railtrack who failed to spot the fatal section of track. This was an Arriva North-western rail and in this 7 people were killed. This is the 6th accident in as many years, people will now have even less confidence in the rail and there will be a decrease I the number of users of that track. For if this were to happen to a Virgin Rail service they should have a regularly updated plan on the procedures to go through should a drastic thing like this happen.

The plan should include:

1.Publicity ‘stunts’ e.g. The way they would give their grievances be there any losses and the ways they would show that it was a ‘unique’ accident on any public news programs.

2. The way they’d gently move all bad images to Railtrack since it was they who control the track. By simple suggestions to news Broadcasters

3.The replies to comments made by public or newspapers that ‘insult’ Virgin Trains.

4.The amount of time they would wait to display adverts to allow the public to ‘cool down’ before trying once more to get beck their image.

All these once again associated to psychology.

12. Conclusion

I feel Virgin Trains has a lot of stay within its market, its current strategy involves nearly no advertising what so ever, which in this susceptible age is not a clever move. If Virgin Trains done some more advertising then I feel they would gain a bigger proportion of the market and get back custom that left after the train incidents. A bit of thought as to what type of advertising and what adverts to place would be great a new slogan for the company would also do no harm.

The different theories I’ve used are as far as myself is concerned not as useful as they sound they have a lot of detail placed into them but very little useable output. The main use of them was to give a visible image of where the company or product was. The product life cycle was the most useful for the company since from this they could discover the fluctuations in the purchasing of the service from this they could see trends and predict when and where the booms would be. The Boston Matrix however was useful to an extent since the information given related to the product life cycle and could tell you where you are, where you’re going and what to do. This information would be useful to the company so they could be prepared for the decline in sales and place themselves with other products and services to compare them. Ansoffs matrix I felt wasn’t useful on a large scale and since Virgin is a very large company this wouldn’t help because they’ve expanded into all areas already. I think that virgin probably used the Ansoffs matrix when they started and then followed the information derived from it to expand into the company they are. If they did use it and it’s responsible for the current size and success of virgin then it is a very good theory.

13. Power Point Presentation Slide Print Out

This is the Presentation that was made on the 20th of April 2002

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14. Questionnaire

15. Leaflet of Secondary Research and Primary Results

Take This Sheet Out