The Impact of PR as a Communication Tool of U.K. Budget Airlines (PDF)

Master's Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 1,0, Edinburgh Napier University, language: English, abstract: The main purpose of this dissertation is to investigate how Public Relations
are currently used as a communication tool within the UK budget airline industry, and how the student segment in the UK corresponds to these measures. To gain a holistic understanding of the topic, facts on the UK air transport market are introduced briefly, with a special regard to the two leading budget airlines, Ryanair and EasyJet. Furthermore, the importance of PR for the airline industry is addressed and the research aims defined.

To provide the theoretical background for the conducted research, chapter two focuses on scientific theory, highlighting the areas of Public Relations, Consumer Behaviour and Budget Airlines in particular. By choosing the deductive research approach, nine hypotheses could be developed to contribute to the overall aims and build a basis for the primary research. The latter is an online survey, using the convenient sampling method among the student body of Edinburgh Napier University. Results of the primary research are analysed using SPSS statistical software, conducting frequency distributions, descriptive statistics and chi-square tests.

With regards to the main findings it may be said that price is the most crucial decision factor and thus the strongest communication tool. In addition, there is a shift of recognized communication efforts, away from classic channels as TV or direct mail and towards the corporate homepage and E-Mails, which may be used in a low frequency as to not be perceived as disturbing. All in all, price seems to be more important than service, at least within the student segment. Beside that, the reputation of an airline seems to be important to the respondents, which underlines the need for proper communication efforts. In respect of the limitations and options for further research, there is room to repeat the study with a larger group of participants who are all born and raised in the UK to gain more detailed results. The use of E-Mail in terms of content and frequency might be the most interesting field for future research, as the Internet will be the communication tool of the future.