Project Description

“Reveal the experiences, options and motivations of Business Class passengers”

THE CONTEXT OF THE RESEARCH

A European country’s national airline commissioned UniqueView to conduct some focus groups in Shanghai to help understand and reveal the experiences, options and motivations of the Business Class passengers and to bring out the reasons of people who don’t choose to fly with our clients airline. The purpose of the study was, also, to explore the happiness and unhappiness causes, expectations from the brand, the areas that need upgrades, perception of prestige of Business Class passengers who have the airlines frequent flyers program membership and well as those being members of competitor airlines, including why they chose competitors.

OVERVIEW

To meet these objectives UniqueView proposed to conduct 4 focus groups in Shanghai with groups made of respondents who had flown business class with the client airline and groups made of competitor airline flyers. 

PHASE 1 – Focus Groups

To help gain deeper insight into the key drivers and experiences of Business Class passengers, UniqueView conducted focus groups in Shanghai. Our recruiters invited eligible, regular airline business class travelers, who had both previously used the airline and others who had not but had used competitor airlines to key destinations covered by our clients airline, to take part in the discussions. Recruitment sources came from a mixture of our own internal databases and networking through travel agents. The moderators explored:

  • respondents spontaneous associations with the airline
  • brand positioning
  • business class expectations
  • preferred airlines brands for business class travel and why
  • explored in detail the various aspects of their experience with business class travel such as catering, entertainment, lounge, seating, etc
  • describe their ‘ideal’ airline
  • explore in-depth the brand image of the clients airline
  • finally, exploring their perceptions of ‘prestige’.

CONCLUSION – Analysis and Reporting

Finally, our researchers synthesized all the information gathered from the group discussions to produce a full and detailed report that that laid out the experiences and motivations of the business class travelers that participated in the groups including recommendations to help our client with the strategic decisions they are likely to face in the near future. UniqueView helped our client understand their customers’, and potential customers, perceptions and expectations towards their airline and their perceptions of what ‘prestige’ means to them.