A Digital Marketing Proposal for Hainan Airlines

LI JIE
LI LINGXIU
LI SHENGDA
WAN HAIQING

A Project
Submitted
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of
MSocSc in Media Management

Supervisor: Dr. Christy M. K. Cheung

School of Communication and School of Business

Hong Kong Baptist University
Hong Kong

May 2012
海南航空的数位行销方案

李潔

李靈修

李聖達

萬海晴

傳媒管理社會科學碩士

畢業報告

指導老師：張美君博士

香港浸會大學

傳理學院與商學院

香港 二 0 一二年五月
Acknowledgement

The authors would like to give our special thanks to Dr. Christy Cheung, who is our

supervisor of our group and participated in our project. Dr. Christy Cheung gave us

practical suggestions and encouragements during this project. It is a great privilege

and chance to obtain insight into digital marketing of Hainan Airlines, and her

instructions and guidance have made it a truly rewarding experience. All this project

and strategy recommendations are our own original work and was carried out by

ourselves under the supervision of Dr. Christy Cheung.

Student Name: LI JIE

LI LINGXIU
LI SHENGDA
WAN HAIQIN
Signatures: _________________
_________________
_________________
_________________

MSocSc in Media Management

School of Communication

Hong Kong Baptist University

Date: May, 2012

 Plagiarism Declaration Form

Student Name: LI JIE, LI LINGXIU, LI SHENGDA, WAN HAIQIN

Student Number: 11417099, 11417277, 11422289, 11417463

Title of Project: A Digital Marketing Proposal for Hainan Airlines

Submission Date: May 5, 2012

Declaration:

I have read the relevant sections on Plagiarism provided in the Handbook for

Graduation Project and observed the standards of conduct. I am fully aware of the

consequences in the event of plagiarism.

I declare that, to the best of my knowledge, this project represents my own work and

all sources have been properly acknowledged, and the Project contains no elements of

plagiarism.

I further declare that the Project has not been previously included in a thesis,

dissertation or report submitted to this University or to any other institution for a

degree, diploma or other qualification.

Students’ Signatures: ___________________________________________

Date: ________________________________________________________
 Authorization of Library Placement

Authorization
This is to authorize the School of Communication and School of Business at Hong

Kong Baptist University to place our project entitled “A Digital Marketing Proposal

for Hainan Airlines” in the HKBU library for general public reference and inspection.

Names in block letters: LI JIE

LI LINGXIU

LI SHENGDA

WAN HAIQIN

Students’ ID: 11417099

11417277

11422289

11417463

Signatures: ______________
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Date: ______________
 Abstract
The project aims to make a proposed digital marketing campaign for Hainan Airlines.
This is based on the analysis of the current status of the digital marketing

implementation of Hainan Airlines. With the release of the digital marketing

campaign, Hainan Airlines could expand its brand reputation and build up its own
digital marketing platform for customer relationship management.
Based on the PEST analysis and the SWOT analysis of Hainan Airlines, it does not
make good use of the internet as its promoting platform under current digital era when

compared with its international counterparts such as Lufthansa and Finnair. Hainan
Airlines is just a follower of its international counterparts like Lufthansa and Finnair
in the implementation of the digital marketing service. These weaknesses have
reduced the competitiveness of Hainan Airlines together with its efficiency in dealing
with various demands among customers. Furthermore, the number of loyal customers

of Hainan Airlines falls far behind from its domestic counterparts. Based on the
situations above, it is essential for Hainan Airlines to enhance its digital marketing
services as well as release a digital marketing campaign for promotion.
This proposal is going to put forward a specific photo campaign for Hainan Airlines.
Meanwhile, the detailed information about the measurement process of the campaign,

the election of the high-quality photos and the ways of rewarding are included in this
project. With the release of the photo campaign and the ways of rewarding, it is a
great opportunity for Hainan Airlines to establish its digital marketing platform and
cultivate its brand awareness.
Keywords: digital marketing, campaign, Hainan Airlines, brand awareness, potential

customers
 摘要

本文基於對海南航空數位行銷現狀的深入分析，力圖為海南航空策劃出完善的數
位行銷活動方案。並寄希望於本次活動方案的實施，能夠幫助海南航空達到提高
品牌聲譽，建立顧客溝通平臺的目的。

在通過運用 PEST 與 SWOT 方法對海南航空運營現狀進行分析後，發現在當前數位

化時代下，相比於國際上同行業競爭者，海航並未充分利用互聯網作為其與顧客
溝通平臺。其根本原因是在數位行銷領域內，海航只是作為的模仿者存在, 並未
有創新的意向。這種缺陷將極大地削弱海航的競爭力與無法滿足顧客多元化需求
的趨勢。因此在回顧海航現狀的基礎上,我們決定將本次數位行銷活動作為以上
這些問題的最終解決方案。

在本文中將會詳細表述此次數位行銷活動的計畫，實施，危機處理與評估過程。
並希望通過此次活動建立屬於海航自己的數位行銷平臺並增強其品牌影響力。

關鍵字：數位行銷；方案；海南航空；品牌意識；潛在客戶
CONTENTS
Brief Introduction and Environment Analysis of Hainan Airlines
Brief Introduction…………………………………………………………………1
Company Positioning…………………………………………………………….2
External Environment Analysis -- PEST Analysis……………………………3
Internal Environment Analysis -- SWOT Analysis…………………………..10
Analysis Implication……………………………………………………………..20
Digital Marketing Overview
Digital Marketing Assessing
Strength……………………………………………………………………….23
Weakness…………………………………………………………………….25

Current Digital Marketing Review of Hainan Airlines

Multiple Digital Marketing Channels……………………………………26
Consumption Life of Cycle………………………………………………...31
Interview Feedback…………………………………………………………34
Case Study
Lufthansa Airline…………………………………………………...............38
Finnair……………………………………………………………………….49

Conclusion of Contrast…………………………………………………………..55
Proposed Digital Marketing Campaign for Hainan Airline

Planning Process of Campaign

Objective and Description………………………………………………….57
Budget Constraint…………………………………………………………...57
Digital Marketing Method selected……………………………………….61
Risk Evaluation………………………………………………………………62

Implementation Process of Campaign

Pre-campaign Preparation…………………………………………………63
Reach Segment……………………………………………………………….64
Act and Convert Segment………………………………………................70
Engage Segment……………………………………………………………..74
Public Relationship and Crisis Management………………………………….78

Measurement of Campaign………………………………………………………79
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….......85
 List of Figures
Figure 1 Two Important Political Impacts…………………………………….3
Figure2 China GDP Tendency………………………………………………...6
Figure 3 Comparison between Digital Marketing and Traditional
Marketing……………………………………………………………………...26

Figure 4 Hainan Airlines' Own Website…………………………………........27

Figure 5 Hainan Airlines Instant Messaging…………………………………. 28
Figure 6 Hainan Airlines Mobile Application…………………........................29
Figure 7 Hainan Airlines Weibo Page…………………………........................30
Figure 8 Hainan Airlines Renren Page………………………………………...31

Figure 9 Hainan Airlines Mobile OA System…………………………………34

Figure 10 The Non-Stop Campaign of Lufthansa………………………… ….40
Figure 11 Facebook account of Lufthansa Airlines………………………........42
Figure 12 Renren Account of Lufthansa Airlines……………………………...42
Figure 13 Intergrated service package on the official website of Lufthansa…..43

Figure 14 Online ticket booking system of Lufthansa Airlines………………..44

Figure 15 Hotel Reservation…………………………………………………...45
Figure 16 Taxi Reservation……………………………………………………46
Figure 17 Check-in & Demonstration…………………………………………47
Figure 18 Destination demonstration………………………………………….47

Figure 19 Information and Services of Finnair………………………………..50

Figure 20 Information and Services of Finnair-How to check-in……………..51
Figure 21 Information and Services of Finnair-Baggage Drop……………….51
Figure 22 Social Network Link of Finnair ……………………………………51
Figure 23 Facebook Home Page of Finnair……………………………………51

Figure 24 Twitter Home Page of Finnair………………………………………52

Figure 25 eDM Service of Finnair …………………………………………….53
Figure 26 Campaign of Winning tickets to Chongqing………………………..53
Figure 27 Campaign of Happy Fly with Fin Air Angry Birds…………………55
Figure 28 Age Structure of Aviation Passengers………………………………58
Figure 29 Passenger Ratio on Purpose…………………………………………59
Figure 30 Various Display Channels…………………………………………...64
Figure 31 Major Search Engine Marketing Platform…………………………..65

Figure 32 Fortune Wings Club…………………………………………………67

Figure 33 Major SociaMeida Platform…………………………………………67
Figure 34 Andriod & iOS App Plaform………………………………………..68
Figure 35 QR Code…………………………………………………………….69
Figure 36 Engagement and Influence………………………………………….78
 Brief Introduction and Environment Analysis to Hainan Airlines

Brief Introduction

Hainan Airlines Limited Company was founded in 1993 in the Hainan

Special District. Invested by George Soros in 1995 with 25% of the company out

holding shares, Hainan Airlines began to boom in the stock market. Having merging

and rearranging Shanxi Airlines, Chang’an Airlines, China Xinhua Airlines, CR

Airways (renamed Hong Kong Airlines) and Heli Express (renamed Hong Kong

Express Airways) under the Hainan Airlines Group (HNA Group), Hainan Airlines

and its branch companies form one of the three core businesses in the HNA Group.

After the registration of Grand China Airlines co. Ltd., HNA Group combined the

above airlines together and shared flight code together with operational structure. To

retain the brand value of Hainan Airlines, together with Grand China Airlines, the two

have different names but under one system. Currently, Hainan Airlines is the fourth

largest airline company in mainland China. The SkyTrax assesses Hainan Airlines as a

five-star airline company. (“Brief Introduction”, 2012)

Hainan Airlines Co. Ltd. is the leading business enterprise in the air

transportation division of the HNA Group. It has a fleet mainly comprised of Boeing

737, Boeing 767, Airbus A330 and Airbus 340 which are utilized for passenger and

cargo transportation.
1
 The corporate objective is to maintain a world-class Chinese aviation

enterprise and aviation brand. The Corporate takes a motto of contributing to society

and helping others. (“Brief Introduction”, 2012)

The brand value of Hainan Airlines lies in three parts, convenience,

warmth and innovation. All of the brand value focuses on the customer satisfaction in

the service process, including flight operations, cabin crew management and product

developments.

Company Positioning

Hainan Airlines is a civil transportation company. Its core market targets the

tourism regions, such as Hainan Island, Shanxi Provinces, Yunan province, and

Northwestern region. Different from the economic airline companies, Hainan Airlines

focuses on its in- flight service including aircraft decoration, food and beverage supply

and in-flight entertainment services.

Hainan Airlines is aiming at providing the best service in civil

transportation industry. Taking Lufthansa as its benchmark, Hainan Airlines utilizes

its cross-industrial advantage and provides integrated service for travelers.

HNA Group owns Haikou and Sanya airports in its airport industrial

management sector, which provides Hainan Airlines a great advantage to improve its

check- in and boarding service. In January this year, passengers can check in with

2
ground service staff holding an iPad in the airport, saving times from waiting at the

long queue.

External Environment Analysis -- PEST Analysis

Political Segment

The two important political impacts that affect China Airline corporation

marketing strategy are as following:

Reforms of China aviation industry

• Influenced Domestic Market Operation

Impacts of China's accession to WTO

• Affect the International Business

Figure 1:Two Important Political Impacts

Aviation industry reform.

China’s aviation industry has experienced three structural reforms, and the

purpose of these reforms is to reduce government intervention on China’s airline

industry (Zheng, 2010).

As a result of these reforms, the CAAC (Civil Aviation Administration of

China) has regrouped domestic airline enterprises into three airline groups and relax

3
industrial regulation with regards to price control and entry restriction. These political

decisions provide Hainan Airline with suitable environment to grow up.

The three airline groups formed by CAAC are Air China, China Eastern

Airline, and China Southern Airlines. They are also regarded as the major competitors

of Hainan Airline in the domestic market. In order to compete with the three airlines

groups that possess large size of fleet and competitive ability, Hainan airline might

have to increase its flight frequency and adjust price level.

Releasing price regulation.

Based on “Price Regulations of China’s Aviation Industry Reformation”

formulated by National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in 2004,

Airlines are allowed to increase the ticket prices up 25 percent higher than public

prices as well as reduce fares 45 percent lower.

On the routes with high travel volume, fare level may be increased to

maximum profits. On the other hand, on the routes with low density, Airline

Company could launch price promotion activity to attract passengers.

Generally speaking, the price regulation policy results in the heat

competition in China market. Hainan Airline has to face a fierce challenge from both

the low-price Airlines and Airlines Groups.

China’s entry of WTO.

4
 Since China entered WTO in 2001, Chinese government was forced to

gradually open Airline industry, allowing foreign aviation corporation to enter its

market, and most of these Airline companies have long-term established management

experiences and advanced technologies that China’s airline group cannot compare

with. When competing with its international counterparts, this management and

technology gap lead to huge pressure for Hainan airlines.

Moreover, in 2003, CAAC accepted the approval that Hainan province can

open the third, fourth and fifth traffic privilege rights to the world (Anonymous, 2003).

This policy makes Hainan province becomes the transfer station to go abroad or enter

mainland China.

Economic Segment

Constant GDP growth.

As shown in Figure 2, the GDP was valued at $5.87 trillion in 2010,

surpassed Japan's $5.47 trillion (World Bank, 2010), and became the second largest

economy unit after the U.S.A. China could become the world's largest economy by

nominal GDP sometime as early as 2020 (China Economic Annual Report 2010)

5
 Figure 2:China GDP Tendency

Upgrading of China consumption level.

By 2010, China was poised to move from export dependency to

development of an internal market, wages were rapidly rising in all areas of the

country. It means that Chinese industries, especially servicing industry such as

airlines industry, will have a developing opportunity.

With the trend of upgrading in consumption, China aviation industry may

gradually become strong. In 2009, the flight number of China's per capita is only 0.17

times while it is 0.24 and 0.59 respectively in Japan and U.S. ( Worldwide Flights Per

Capita, Laura Jackson) There is one main reason to explain the big gap: China's per

capita disposable income is far lower than that of the United States and Japan.

However, with the rapid development of Chinese economy, the transformation of

consumption will be gradually achieved. The consumption of the aviation industry

will also gradually go up.

6
Sociocultural Segment

Increasing number of flight passengers.

With the increasing income and more long-distance domestic trip plan,

Chinese citizens tend to choose airplane as their main transportation when they go out

for traveling. A survey made by CAAC showed that in 2010 the number of China’s

domestic passengers is 271 million; the flight rate increased 9.20 percent in

comparison to 2009, according to CAAC website.

Western influence.

Nowadays, the consuming attitude of Chinese people has been dramatically

influenced by western culture. Chinese customers pay more attention to service

quality and enjoyable experience than ever before. Airplane can provide customers

with more convenient and comfortable service than other transportations. This is why

an increasing number of people are delighted to regard airplane as their major travel

vehicle.

Technological Segment

Modern technique of smart airport construction.

The development of most airport facilities in China is not comparable to

foreign airports. Smart baggage transportation system, smart staff management

7
system and smart ground service system had been highly launched in foreign airports.

For instance, San Diego Airport established its network and voice management

system, Dallas Airport set up its mobile technology installed by iPad and smart

phones (Ni, 2012), which enable them provide great ground service. As the airport

construction of second provincial level cities is undergoing fast, Hainan Airlines

could take its Group advantage to bid for the construction of those airports to enhance

its ground service to attract customers. Recently a new project of HNA Group is to

build smart baggage transportation system with research office of Qinghua University.

In no time, this new technique could be approved from the Civil Aviation

Administration and be planted in lots of airports.

Connection with China Railway High-speed (CRH) development to form

a seamless civil transportation network.

The highly developed network of the CRH in China should be taken into

consideration. Airline companies could lose their short distance customers with the

development of CRH. When the Wuhan-Guangzhou CRH started, China Southern

Airlines once hold a fierce competition of the CRH by providing continuous flight

every hour. The result is that the airline company has to cut the flight from 12 per day

to 4 per day within a year. The CRH took twice customers of airline companies. The

8
technology should be good to customers. Thus, there is no need to fight with CRH for

airline companies. They could cooperate with each other and form a seamless civil

transportation network for the large amount of Chinese people by integrating the

network and optimizing the energy and current facilities.

Large passenger aircraft and short distance aircraft made in China.

The newly designed Boeing-787 and Airbus 380 aircrafts are famous for its

high-tech in the light materials to save energy and its large room for passengers. The

carbon release of A380 is less than a sedan. This large passenger aircraft could be

more efficient in current China as the air route is narrow and short. The branch

company of Hainan Airlines, Hong Kong Airlines, had ordered 10 Airbus 380 for its

international flight. Moreover, the aircraft could be dispatched with the company.

According to the Long-term Science and Technology Development Plan

from State Council of the People's Republic of China (2006), China had designed and

manufactured its own made short distance aircraft. China is planning for it domestic

made large passenger aircraft as well. This is one of the Major projects of the National

Science and Technology.

Digital development in civil transportation.

9
 Digital technology is developing rapidly. Electronic ticket system has been

fully implemented across China. Airline companies should use this opportunity to

enhance their service procedure and shorten the time span in airport. Hainan Airline s

had experimented to use iPad for their check-in process, which had gained great

customer satisfaction.

Internal Environment Analysis -- SWOT Analysis

Strengths

Extensive flight route.

In Mainland China, Hainan Airline totally built seven airline bases

including Beijing, Dalian, Urumqi, Xi'an, Lanzhou, Taiyuan, Guangzhou, and

Shenzhen. The wide range network almost covers a majority of the area of People's

Republic of China. Hainan Airline can provide customers with nearly 500 domestic

and international routes and flies in more than 90 cities.

Besides, Hainan Airline has the code share agreements with Air Berlin,

American Airlines, Etihad Airlines, Korean Air and other major global aviation group.

Under the code sharing agreement, Hainan Airline can present the common flight for

the purpose of offering service to untapped market. This treaty points out the means

10
for Hainan Airline that does not operate their own aircraft on a given route to gain

exposure in the market through display of their flight numbers (Anonymous, 2012)

Benefits from HNA Group.

Hainan Airlines (HNA) Group is a modern integrated corporation, relying

on its strong comprehensive strengths, such as excellent corporate operation and

outstanding industrial structures. Hainan Airlines is one of the sectors from HNA

Group. Being a part of large group including industries like airports, hotels, travel

agencies, IT, medias and theatres, Hainan Airlines has been the best frontier in digital

marketing development for the benefit of whole HNA Group.

Outstanding corporate culture.

The corporate culture of Hainan Airline is so unique among the China

aviation industry, and the culture has been summarized as “Public recognition, public

participation, public achievements and public sharing”. Therefore, Hainan Airlines

not only tries its best to serve clients but also makes huge contribution to entire

community. In recent years, Hainan Airline raised nearly 7,300,000,000RMB mainly

from corporate and staff and invested it to public welfare, including:

- Disaster Relief Efforts

- Community Programs in impoverished areas in Hainan and other areas in

11
 China

- Disabled Persons' Federations

- Charities registered under the Ministry of Civil Affairs

- The Red Cross Society

- The China Youth Development Foundation

- China Women's Development Foundation

- China Association of Environmental Protection Industry

Rich of reputation.

Hainan Airline is the seventh five-star airline in the world and the first in

mainland China to earn the five-star airline certification of SkyTrax which is authority

award that airline can received in recognition of its first-line products and services

(Zhang, 2012).

Besides, Hainan Airlines also keeps an excellent service record of eighteen

years flight operation and it repeatedly hit the record that the rate of maintaining the

10000 hours safety. Hainan Airline won China’s civil aviation prize of safety

production in 2000 and 2003(Brief Introduction, 2012). The subsidiary of Hainan

Airline, Xinhua Airline also won the award of safety production in 2001. In 2006,

Hainan Airline won China aviation prize of safety aviation award and the best service

12
award. Its quality of service built a good reputation among the aviation industry and

customers. In January 2011, Hainan Airline has been awarded with the title of

SkyTrax 5-Star Airline. “In 2006, the brand image of Hainan Airline, Kunpeng mark,

has been identified as the famous Chinese trademark by the state administration for

industry and commerce and it is also the first aviation company that won this honor

praise.” (Xiang, 2008)

The attraction of BRICs.

As the external economy getting worse, the advantage of the BRICs draws

the attention of investors. The economic activities are getting more frequent in the

BRICs countries. The business travelers are important customer for airline companies.

When they take domestic airlines, they would notice the great service Hainan Airlines

provided for their reputation. Therefore, it would benefit Hainan Airlines international

flights.

Weaknesses

In the marketing process of the Hainan Airlines, there are six weaknesses

that Hainan Airlines should pay attention to. These weaknesses are as following:

Lack of uniqueness in product characteristics.

13
 The product of Hainan Airlines is service, which is common and easy to be

imitated. As it lacks of uniqueness in marketing, the company is not so competitive

compared with other Airlines in the domestic airline market. As a result, it is essential

for Hainan Airlines to put forward embedded and unique service as well as innovative

products.

Weak in digital selling channel.

As there is not enough selling channel for Hainan Airlines to sell its flight

ticket, the airlines has to pay a large amount of fee to those companies that help to sell

its products. “As a result, Hainan Airlines draws its attention to set up direct selling

channel together with enhance internet selling. Meanwhile, the company motivates

and evaluates its distributers and cultivates some agents with high credibility.”(Zhong,

2009) These measurements could help Hainan Airlines to build a complete selling

system.

Lack of loyal Customers.

Compared with the three biggest domestic Airlines, Hainan Airlines has less

loyal customers. “The number of loyal customers of Hainan Airlines is 1,900,000

while the three biggest domestic Airlines have over 3 million.” (Xiang, 2008) The

14
scale of the loyal customers affects the revenue of an Airline company. The more

loyal customers an airline owns, the larger amount of revenue will the airlines earn.

Therefore, it is vital for Hainan Airlines to gather its loyal customers and make the

scale become larger.

Ambiguous marketing positioning.

Hainan Airlines puts forward the “379” plan in 2000. It aims to make the

company an excellent domestic brand in three years. Meanwhile, the company plan to

become an excellent brand in Asia in seven years. In addition, Hainan Airlines hopes

to become a famous brand in the world in nine years. However, the target mentions

above is still a blueprint at present. Hainan Airlines does not do a detailed analysis

about its positioning, target customers and unique creatures. Meanwhile, Hainan

Airlines also lacks of competitiveness compared with the three biggest domestic

Airlines that can define the status of a company. In addition, Hainan Airlines is not so

clear about its core competitiveness. Meanwhile, the class of Hainan Airlines has not

been clearly defined to customers.

Falling behind in the pace of internationalization.

15
 The financial situation of the Hainan Airlines has become an obstacle

towards its pace of internationalization. Though the company has a strong sense of

internationalization, it still need to make a huge improvement in various aspects such

as company scale, the amount of fund, target customers, competition strategy,

operational management and quality of its staffs. Although Hainan Airlines has

opened 11 international Airlines, it still has a big gap compared with China Air as it

has 124 international Airlines and 50 percent market shares

Blur brand symbol.

Though Hainan Airlines has become the fourth biggest domestic Airlines,

the airline does not have its own uniqueness in its products or services to show its

brand image to the customer Hainan Airlines does not have its own creature on its

digital marketing service that makes deep impression on the mind of its customers.

To obtain loyal customers, it is necessary for Hainan Airlines to form its

own creature and build its own brand image. Hainan Airlines is just a follower in its

digital marketing services. The airlines solely try to imitate the digital marketing

services that have already been implemented by other international or domestic

counterpart.

Opportunities

16
 Fast economy growth of China.

With the rapid development of Chinese economy, the civil living standard

has been greatly improved; the consumption capability has become the important

power to drive economic growth. Firstly, the rapid growth of economy will result in

high logistics and frequent business travel. These factors will directly enlarge the

demand of domestic and international transportation. On the other hand, the increase

of globalization will affect airline industry, because the freedom of movement of

people and goods will increase the demands of transportation. It can provide

opportunities for Hainan Airlines to develop its market.

“Golden Week” policy.

Chinese have more leisure time. In order to stimulate the travel volume,

Chinese government introduces the “Golden Week” policy, which provides people

with more holidays.

Due to the development of education, economy and rich experiences of air

travel, the traveling taste of Chinese have already been differed from the past. In

1990s, people preferred to spend holidays with their family at home. Nowadays,

people tend to travel to other cities in China or foreign countries during holidays.

17
 The opening of fifth privilege for Hainan.

The opening of Fifth Privilege for Hainan will create advantages for the

tourism development of Hainan Island. Hainan Province had received International

Tourism Island privilege from central government in the beginning of 2009. Foreign

tourists, especially for those from Russia, Korea, and Japan will contribute to the

development of Hainan flights.

Threats

Open policy from WTO regulation.

China has entered WTO since 2001.However, the civil transportation in

China have been under winged for so long. If the civil transportation industry is fully

opened to the world, with a development history no more than 30 years, Chinese

airlines will meet a bare handed fight with companies from Asia, America and

European countries (Ren, n.d.).

Airspace constraints.

China is a communism country. Air force is one of its important military

defense departments. The airspace is under the control of China Air Force Department

(Cheng, 2010). Therefore, airlines traffic is tight in large cities and delay is a common

complaint for domestic travelers.

18
 Economic flights divert customers.

With the booming of China economy, it becomes easy for a certain

companies built up airline business by renting aircrafts or even purchase aircrafts.

Although Hainan Airlines provides above average services, there are new travelers

mindless on service and timing but travel budget. At last, a big number of customers

will divert to economic airline companies.

CRH competition.

The Chinese government had put huge budgets for railway construction in

these years. For example in 2010, the fixed asset investment for CRH is 842,652

billion RMB (Li, et al, 2008). The rapid growth of China Railways High-speed had

diverted customers rapidly through short distance flights to long distance flights.

Fluctuation of fuel price.

The world economy is not peaceful lately. Financial crisis has been

reoccurred more frequently. Therefore the crude oil price has been critical fluctuated.

Hainan Airlines has not enough reserved fuel to meet this challenge.

Analysis Implication

19
 Based on the PEST and SWOT analysis above, with the rapid economic

growth in China and the increasing trend of the consumption level among Chinese

citizens, the demand of Chinese citizens became diversified. Moreover, the

improvement of the consumption concept makes more Chinese citizens pay attention

to the service quality and delighted experience. In addition, the increasing leisure time

among Chinese citizens, the permission of the fifth privilege of Hainan Airlines by

CAAC as well as the reformation in Chinese aviation industry have also provide great

opportunities for the development of Hainan Airlines.

The rapid development of digital technology and the launching of smart

transportation system as well as ground service management among international

airlines demonstrate that Hainan Airlines falls far behind in developing customer

satisfaction. In order to enhance the domestic as well as global competitiveness of

Hainan Airlines, it is vital for the company to develop the smart online system and

integrate its services ranging from ticket-booking to luggage tracking. In this way,

Hainan Airlines could improve its efficiency in dealing with various issues. With the

improvement of its efficiency, Hainan Airlines could obtain large number of

customers and attract a great many of potential customers.

To sum up, it is necessary for Hainan Airlines to develop its digital

marketing service. The reasons are as following: first, it will raise the domestic and

20
international competitiveness of Hainan Airlines. Second, Hainan Airlines could use

digital as a marketing platform to develop its unique product so that the company will

utilize the platform in future marketing. Third, the good use of digital technology

could guarantee that Hainan Airlines could obtain more loyal customers as the

number of netizen keeps increasing. Fourth, the implementation of digital marketing

service could ensure that company has more resources to compete with its substitutes

within the industry and other substitutes like Chinese Rapid Highway. Last, with the

implementation of digital marketing service, Hainan Airline will have the opportunity

to enlarge its market share in domestic and international airline industry.

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 Digital Marketing Overview

Digital Marketing Assessing

Strength

Cost.

Although digital marketing is not free, compared with traditional channels

like TV, radio, print and outdoor, it is generally far less expensive. For digital

marketing, the economic barrier to entry is less significa nt than traditional marketing.

Furthermore, the pricing structures of digital marketing, such as cost per click-through,

are under a better control.

Reach.

Traditional channels have limited reach to huge multinationals, while digital

marketing has a truly global reach. When a company releases a television commercial,

it has the opportunity to reach as many viewers as possible at that given moment.

With the assistant of digital strategies, marketing is shareable and constantly

accessible, thus can get access to potential consumers from all over the world. (Lee,

n.d.)

Interactivity.

While traditional marketing is generally about presenting messages of brand,

digital marketing offers consumers an opportunity to engage with the company. No

22
other medium can provide such a level of interactivity and engagement than digital

marketing since the development of Internet has changed the one-way communication

into a two-way conversation. (Lee, n.d.)

Measurability.

Measuring the impact and success is always crucial for any kinds of

marketing strategy. For traditional marketing, marketers assess the advertisement

impact by evaluating media report. Nonetheless, the circulation of a local newspaper

hardly shows a predictable number of potential readers. Digital marketing can be fully

measured. By using metrics like views and clicks, etc., marketers can track the

performance of any strategy. With digital marketing, there is no need to rely on the

third party's estimation; marketers could get the exact and accurate data.

Immediacy.

Digital marketing is able to provide an immediate impact. Only with a few

quick clicks, consumers can order products. Furthermore, the company can get

response from consumers almost in real time, which benefits the company to consider

marketing strategy development, such as when to push or pull. (Lee, n.d.) The most

effective part is that digital marketing makes business hours 24 hours per day for 7

days per week. The immediacy of digital marketing can shorten the consumer buying

cycle and change the orientation of advertising.

23
 Customer targeting.

Digital marketing allows marketers to target customers not only by age,

geographic location, likes and dislikes, but also their searches and social media

preferences. Marketing messages are most effective when they are presented directly

to the audience who are most interested in. The Internet helps marketers to target their

ideal consumers, so that, they can minimize the cost of customer targeting and own a

better margin.

Weakness

Trustiness problem.

Digital marketing exists on the web, so that there is no physical evidence to

tell whether the product is good or not. Therefore it takes time to gain the trustiness of

netizens.

Tough competition.

Because of the merits of digital marketing, many business oriented people

became interested in it. As a result, there is an overload of information presented on

the Internet, and it is hard to be outstanding. In the digital world, the marketers have

so many good competitors, so marketers need to cope with the tough competition and

try to make their own information stand out.

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 Figure 3: Comparison between Digital Marketing and Traditional Marketing

Current DM Review of Hainan Airline

Multiple Digital Marketing Channels

With travelers caring more on trips and fares than ever, travel industry

companies must maintain a constant and highly relevant dialogue with potential

customers in order to influence their purchasing decisions and increase customer

loyalty in this highly competitive industry. Therefore, there is no surprise that digital

marketing is vital to an airlines success in the marketplace.

The foreign companies have long embraced the use of digital marketing

technologies but are only now beginning for mainland companies to use such

strategies in a truly effective manner. It’s no longer enough to contact customers and

25
potential customers with one or even two forms of communication. Now, there are all

about hitting consumers in multiple ways, providing them with compelling offers and

keeping them engaged in ways they like. From fare alerts to flight delays, all

time-sensitive information needs to be broadcasted via as many marketing channels as

possible.

Figure 4: Hainan Airlines Website

Messaging Marketing.

Now the messaging campaigns include the following ways:

- a variety of methods from email to SMS and even IM for the travelers;

- real time Q&A on the website of Hainan Airlines;

- send last minute flight cancellation or weather delays via text message to

your traveling customers who are unlikely to have access to email;

26
 - use email program to increase travel by sending valued members special

offers, discounts and vouchers.

Figure 5: Hainan Airlines Instant Messaging

Mobile Marketing.

At the end of 2006, Hainan Airlines released http://iwap.hnair.com website,

providing an interactive service to visitors through the WAP channels, which became

a pioneer in domestic airlines.

In recent years most travelers carry smart phones, and then airlines create

mobile Apps that enable these devices to serve customers.

Although many travel Apps specialize in things like tracking a flight or

guiding travelers to airports, the airline Apps aim to do it all: from check- in to flight

status updates and baggage tracking. Hainan Airlines offers Apps for the most popular

devices, iOS and Android systems. Separating Apps are in the works for iPad and

other tablets. Depending on the function, all Apps are free, and most travelers will

27
find them useful tools, particularly when they go for a trip. One of the special points

of Hainan Airlines App is that it provides some games which are useful to kill time

when waiting for flights. This is a very creative marketing element of Hainan Airlines.

Plus, companies are increasingly using mobile Apps as part of their marketing

strategies.

Figure 6: Hainan Airlines iOS App Interface

Social Media.

There are thousands of flights in daily transport carrying millions of

passengers all over the world. As we all know, tra veling can make one feel irritable,

and delays or lost baggage prompt many consumer complains. Fortunately, Hainan

Airlines has taken note of the social web as a customer service tool for collecting

complaints, inquires, and even compliments on Weibo and Renren. Aside from
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customer service, Hainan Airlines also use social media to build their brand and

cultivate followers. Now Hainan Airlines has 1,173 friends on Renren and 248,543

follwers on Weibo.

Figure 7: Hainan Airlines Weibo Home Page

Figure 8: Hainan Airlines Renren Home Page

Consumption Life Cycle

29
 Hainan Airlines has a relatively mature online consumption lifecycle. At the

ticket reservation stage, customers can easily get access to the official website of

Hainan Airlines to book ticket or get the flight information. Also, customers can book

ticket or get the flight information through mobile WAP site which was first

introduced by Et-chellona Company. Hainan Airlines also established its

ticket-booking service on mobile phone. Different mobile phone systems like android

and iSO enable the users to install applications to book and pay for the ticket online.

These three channels guarantee the accessibility of ticket online booking system of

Hainan Airlines.

Once ticket reservation is finished, Hainan Airlines can again resort to the

function of online service to help customers ease their check-in procedure. For

example, customers can receive SMS from the online service system to confirm their

ticket and personal information. Also, the customers can enjoy the eDM service to get

the precise information of where to take an airport express and how to order food or to

purchase products through DFS online. Hainan Airlines introduced Haihang Shanglv,

a mobile app that enables customers to use automatic check-in function online or

through mobile apps to save time for the customers. One famous example is that the

ground staff of Hainan airport once used iPad to help customers check-in.

30
 Before customers boarding on the flight, they can fully enjoy the

convenience of online service of Hainan Airlines. What should be improved here is

that the airline company should send email or ask those customers who used its online

ticket reservation system to do a questionnaire online and give their feedback and

suggestions about the service of the airline. Of course, some bonus and small gifts can

attract the customers to give their precious feedbacks to the company. For example,

the frequent flyer program of Hainan Airlines, also called Fortune Wings club is a

membership system that consists of senior club members. Members of this club will

receive emails and online questionnaires from the online service system. In return, the

members of this group can get free air miles according to their historical record. This

kind of membership club can encourage the customers to take part in the online

questionnaire and survey in order to improve the service of the airlines. The

membership system in turn guarantees the smooth operation of the consumption life

circle and customer engagement. It’s also a necessary mechanism to turn customers

into loyal ones which can be seen as an effective customer retention strategy. With

customers’ feedbacks and suggestions on ticket reservation, check-in, and onboard

service, Hainan Airlines will definitely improve their online service and performance

to a higher level.

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 In this consumption life cycle, from boarding on the plane to getting off the

plane for luggage pick up, consumers are not engaged in the online service any more.

Maybe at the luggage pick up stage Hainan Airlines should also apply online service

and bring great convenience to the customers.

Through this consumption life cycle, the four steps digital marketing

strategy ：reach, act, convert, engage is clearly revealed. First, Hainan Airlines can

resort to the official website of Hainan Airlines and social network sites, as we

mentioned that Hainan Airlines establishes its microblog on Weibo and its own

webpage on Renren to reach prospects and customers online. Second, as the potential

customers click on to the next link to book a ticket and consume the services that

Hainan Airlines provided online act and convert is furnished. The membership system

like Fortune Wing club and the online questionnaire and feedback of customer

satisfaction survey are ways that keep customers actively engaged. Customer

engagement places the strategic emphasis on the creation of valuable relationships

and encourages both parties to see mutual advantage in that relationship. Considering

this, the feedback of the customers can be seen as a way to improve the service of the

airlines in order to provide customers with a better traveling environment. And the

Fortune Wing program is also a way to attractive more customers to increase

customer loyalty.

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Interview Feedback

Interview with IT management department vice-general manager.

HNA Group paid much attention and budget on information technology

system to smooth operation and supervision. The Group staff work on their Integrated

Office System internally by the external link of https://web.hnair.net. To convenient

the operation of senior management group, there are applications on the Apple App

store platform simplifying the office procedures.

Figure 9: Hainan Airlines Mobile OA System

33
 The IT system adapted by Hainan Airlines for operation can be referred to

in figure 9. Executives will refer mostly to the Digital HNA Operational Statistics to

fulfill their production supervision.

The annual IT budget in 2012 is increased compared to last year. The

projects investment takes 20% of total budget. IT fares takes 50%. Hardware

investment takes 15%. IT merging and acquisition takes the rest 15%. Hainan Airlines

takes 30 IT projects, and takes 7% of the total budget within the Group. Combining

the technology of Mobile and Internet of Things, Hainan Airlines will launch the

in-flight online and SNS service this year.

In Dec. 14, 2011, Hainan Airlines signed a strategy cooperation contract

with TravelSky China to develop a new series of Customer Service system (Travel

Sky). The cooperation could spread its flight network further to America and

European countries. The contract scope will cover business development support,

customer service marketing, IT system layout, customer experience, etc. Hainan

Airlines is upgrading its service channel to reach its world class value.

In Nov. 27, 2010, Hainan Airlines signed Passenger Services Intelligence

(PSI) cooperation memo with Travel Sky China. The PSI project will take three years

to personalize customer service and to supervise in-time service resources and

servicing staff. At the same time, this PSI could be useful at discovering customer,

34
targeting customer, servicing customer, evaluating customer and maintaining loyal

customer.

Interview with Hainan Airlines Micro-blogger.

The department in charge of the official micro-blog is the branding office in

marketing department of Hainan Airlines. The assistants of branding take care of the

micro-blog broadcast of Hainan Airlines. There are other official micro-blogs within

HNA Group. The response among them is to make an echo and create more likes and

comments. Some of followers of these micro-blogs are employees within HNA Group.

The employees have a mind to advertising its own brand through micro-blog network.

In the office of CRM and CSR, there has not yet been anyone in charge of

digital marketing solution. The Micro-blogs has been suspended for a while if there is

not a theme campaign. Besides the nationwide airhostess recruitment advertising

through micro-blog, there has been no statistic analytics of customer-targeting or

information-pushing. For example, the current branding is focusing on “Oriental

Beauty”, it is not easily for outsiders to search it and find a way to know it. What’s

more, as the restrain of personal information, Hainan airlines cannot push information

to customers even through there are email addresses and mobile numbers database on

hand.

35
 It is not only Hainan Airlines has not yet build up an effective digital

marketing system, but also the mainland airline companies. The digital marketing has

not been adapted by mainland companies since 2009. And few progresses have been

made during advertising campaign. Thus, to make an integrated marketing campaign

with the tradition marketing and target correct customers is the aim of Mainland

Company.

Case Study

In order to study the distance between Hainan Airlines and other

counterparts in the field of digital marketing service, several case studies are

necessary. These case studies could show the direction of the development of the

digital marketing service offered by Hainan Airlines.

When it turns to the reason of choosing oversea cases rather than the

domestic cases, they are listed as following: Firstly, the international airlines such as

Lufthansa Airlines and Finnair offer systematic and integrated digital marketing

service package on their official websites. Secondly, the campaigns these airlines

have made own vivid style as well as specific themes. Thirdly, these airlines have

their own uniqueness that could rarely be imitated. As a result, a comparison between

Hainan Airlines and its international counterparts could help Hainan Airlines find out

36
how the company could improve its digital marketing service and make good use of in

digital era.

Lufthansa Airlines

Background information.

Lufthansa is the largest Airlines in Europe. The head-quarter locates in

Frankfurt. It is also the National airline of Germany. Lufthansa Airline is one of the

companies under Deustche Lufthansa AG. It was founded in 1926 in Berlin and it was

reestablished in 1955. Lufthansa had a rapid development in its passenger transport

and freight since it was rebuilt. Nowadays, Lufthansa airline has become the largest

airlines in Europe.

Lufthansa airlines set up the first airline union “Star Alliance” with four

other world famous airlines in 1997. It is the largest airline union worldwide at

present. It has altogether 14 airline companies, offering 11,000 airlines per day. It has

729 destinations around 124 countries. Thanks to the “Star Alliance”, Lufthansa not

only provides convenient flight service to customers, but also offers flexible choices

for them to travel around the world.

Nowadays, Lufthansa owns the most frequent direct flight right between

China and European. The destination for direct flight between China and European

37
includes several cities in China such as Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Nanjing and

Guangzhou. Qingdao and Shenyang is going to be in the list on March 27th, 2012.

Campaign made by Lufthansa----nonstop you.

Figure10:The Non-Stop Campaign of Lufthansa

One of the campaigns that Lufthansa has launched is named “Nonstop you”.

It is a campaign that launched in 2008. This campaign was suitable for explaining the

pledge made by the airline company to its customers. Such campaign could be

interpreted in two aspects: First, the campaign emphasized the recognition of its

leading role in carrying business travelers. Such recognition was based on several

factors: the thick route network, comfortable entertainment rooms, services for

different individuals and a large number of inno vations. Apart from business traveling

38
sector, Lufthansa also paid attention to the leisure travelers in its new campaign. The

focus point of Lufthansa on this group of travelers are their wishes, experiences

together with their dreams related to flying Lufthansa.

According to Dr. Reinhold Huber, the Senior Vice President of the Product

and Marketing segment of Lufthansa Airlines, The purpose of the “Nonstop you” is to

expand the brand image of Lufthansa among its customers. Meanwhile, Lufthansa

emphasized its pledge of living for different groups of its target customers in the

“Nonstop you” campaign. Such new campaign was a signal for Lufthansa to become

customer-oriented rather than service-oriented.

Services and its digital marketing promotion.

Lufthansa Airline has 6 kinds of services, such as passenger transportation,

ground service, plane repairing, food and beverage service in airline, traveling, and IT.

The core business and service of Lufthansa is the domestic and international airlines

as well as freight. The routes offered by Lufthansa include 450 destinations

worldwide. Apart from airlines, Lufthansa also provides a series of services.

Lufthansa follows the service idea of safety, reliability, high quality, technical

competitiveness, flexibility and information made by Deustche Lufthansa AG.

39
 In the meantime, Lufthansa also implement some ways of digital

marketing in order to offer convenience to customers as well as expand the influence

of its brand.

Figure11:Facebook account of Lufthansa Airlines

Figure 12:Renren Account of Lufthansa Airlines

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 Lufthansa has its own websites in social networking sites like Renren,

Facebook and Microblog. Lufthansa make use of these social networking sites and

publish its flight information as well as its services. In addition, the company also

provides tips to customers about how to use the services. Furthermore, Lufthansa

could upload photos of the tourist sites in order to attract tourists to take the flight of

the company. Meanwhile, Lufthansa also give the customers or the page viewers best

wishes in special days such as Spring Festival. It also uploads videos about its

promotional activities in its microblog. In all, Lufthansa make great use of such

digital platforms to promote its products and services.

Figure 13:Intergrated service package on the official website of Lufthansa

41
 Figure 14:Online ticket booking system of Lufthansa Airlines

Apart from the social networking sites, Lufthansa provides a series of

services on its official website. These services include flight information, boarding

and luggage storing. Such series of services can provide customers with convenient in

getting acquaintance to the flight information they need as well as luggage checking.

Meanwhile, Lufthansa also provides the Electric Direct Mail (eDM) service for

customers. With the eDM service, customers could get the latest information about

the flight they need to take in a short time. In this way, passengers will not lose

themselves when they try to search for their flight in the airport. The procedure is like

42
this: First, customers have to click on the item called “Plan & ticket booking”; Next,

click on “Flight ticket booking”; After these two steps, an interface of ticket booking

appears. Customers could choose single-trip, round-trip or multileg itinerary.

Meanwhile, customers could choose the date they want to take the plane. In addition,

customers could also choose if they are flexible in the date they need to take the plane.

This procedure takes about 2 to 3 minutes for customers to book the flight ticket on its

official website. It is an efficient and convenient way for customers to book the flight

ticket as well as order services they need.

Figure 15:Hotel Reservation

43
 Figure 16:Taxi Reservation

Besides, Lufthansa also provides tips for traveling as well as hotel and taxi

reservation service on its official websites. In this way, if customers arrive at the

airport ahead of time, it is convenient for them to make hotel reser vation and wait for

their flight at hotel instead of staying at the airport for a long time. Taxi reservation

can also shorten the time for passengers to catch their flight. These detailed services

can not only enhance the efficiency of the services, but a lso build good reputation

among customers.

44
Figure 17:Check-in & Demonstration

Figure18: Destination demonstration

45
 Apart from the services mentioned above, Lufthansa also shows the

destinations of its flight on its official website. In this way, customers could know

exactly where they will travel to or the location of their destinations. In the meantime,

Lufthansa also has a demonstration of how to check in on its official website. In this

way, even the customers who have never taken the flight of Lufthansa before can

handle the process easily. In this way, Lufthansa can obtain a large number of

potential customers and turn them into loyal customers with their considerate services.

What could Hainan Airlines learn from Lufthansa.

Speaking of Hainan Airlines, although it also has its official websites, it still

needs much improvement in terms of its digital marketing service. Lufthansa is a

wonderful model for Hainan Airlines to enhance its digital marketing services. For

instance, Hainan Airlines could provide Electric Direct Mail service in order to let

passengers get acquaintance to the flight information and other kinds of information

they want to know. In the meantime, Hainan Airline could also consider providing

hotel and taxi reservation on its official website. In this way, customers will feel as if

they were at their own home. Furthermore, Hainan Airlines could also offer a series of

services ranging from online boarding to luggage storing. Such service could enhance

the efficiency of boarding. Customers will also feel comfortable with the luggage

storing process. Furthermore, Hainan Airline could also consider making a

46
demonstration of how to do online check- in on its official website in order to let

passengers who never or seldom take airline from Hainan Airlines quickly handle

such steps. In this way, Hainan Airlines could cultivate a large number of potential

customers like Lufthansa does. In addition, traveling tips is another way of obtaining

loyal customers as well as expand its brand reputation. If Hainan Airlines could

provide useful tips for customers when they travel to places they are unfamiliar with,

customers will feel warm and they will support the development of Hainan Airline.

Conclusion.

To sum up, if Hainan Airline wants to become competitive in the domestic

and international airline market, it is necessary for them to make good use of the

internet in such a digital era. Therefore, to enhance its digital marketing service and

pay attention to the detailed service on the internet and other electric devices should

be taken into consideration.

Finnair

Brief introduction of Finnair.

Finnair is one of the world's oldest continually operating airlines. The

company was founded on 1 November 1923. In recent years, a key part of Finn air’s

strategy has been strengthening the company's position in the Asian market and

47
particularly in traffic been strengthening the company's position in the Asian market

and particularly in traffic between Europe and Asia.

Impeccable customer life-circle.

The Customer life-circle is alternative and diverse in Finnair. Customers

can not only check in at the airport, but also can check in online and even text

message via mobile. Furthermore, there are a series of considerate videos and tips

which help customers learn how to make preparations for traveling such as booking

tickets, checking in, getting off the plane and till reaching their destinations.

(Anonymous,2011)

Figure 19: Information and Services of Finnair

48
 Figure20: Information and Services of Finnair-How to check-in

Figure 21: Information and Services of Finnair-Baggage Drop

Digital Marketing Situation of Finnair.

Below the official website of Finnair, there are various social media links

which are very popular in western society, including Facebook (the number of fans is

89383), Twitter (the quantity of fans is 1980), Fin air’s blog Runway, YouTube, and

Fin air on Foursquare.

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 Figure22: Social Network Link of Finnair

Figure 23: Facebook Home Page of Finnair

Figure24: Twitter Home Page of Finnair

In the blog runway of Finnair, there is E-mail service button. When visitors

sign up, they can receive the blog address of Finnair via email.

50
 Figure 25: eDM Service of Finnair

In order to cater to its recent years’ strategy of strengthening the reputation

of Finnair in the Asian market, the company also launched related campaigns such as

“Win Ticket to Chongqing, China” on its website and links it to Facebook in order to

attract attention. This strategy enables the company to not only build good

relationship with its consumers, but also promote its new flight route. In May, Finnair

will be the first European airline(s) that has a direct route to Chongqing, a burgeoning

metropolis of 30 million in Mainland China.

Figure26: Campaign of Winning tickets to Chongqing

51
 However, Hainan Airline just opened its official microblog. (It still) lacks

interactive activities with its customers via more forms of social networking sites that

popular in China.

Finnair also had held an “Angry Birds Asia Challenge” competition together

with Finnish company Rovio, the provider of the mobile game Angry Birds( Angry

Birds™ ©, 2009-2011). The Company will look for online competitors who can

persuade the airliner that they are a big fan of Angry Birds to get free trips to Helsinki.

The final winner among the selected competitors will be awarded on board on Sept.

20. The flight starts from Helsinki and the destination is Singapore. The purpose of

the challenge held by Finnair is to promote its brand in Asian market and expand its

flight route between Europe and Asia.

52
 Figure 27: Campaign of Happy Fly with Fin Air Angry Birds

The following words and feelings were said by a passenger who had taken

Fin Air Angry Bird Aircraft .“I enjoy playing Angry Bird while I feel boring, it made

me smile while I was away from home. Thank you Fin Air to make this Aircraft .I

feel like this Angry Bird jump from my hand to the real eye fly over the real world. ”

It shows that Finnair surely succeeded in getting closer to its customers via this

campaign. Meanwhile, Finnair made its new flight routes between Europe and Asia

more familiar to them.

For Hainan Airlines, similar campaign can be launched to promote its brand

and build closer relationship with its customers.

Conclusion of Contrast

Seen from the current digital marketing review of Hainan Airlines as well as

the comparison between Hainan Airlines and its competitors worldwide, Hainan

Airlines still needs to make huge improvement in its digital marketing service. Under

the period of digital era, it is essential for Hainan Airlines to integrate its digital
53
services on its official website like Lufthansa and Fin Air do. By doing so, the

efficiency of Hainan Airlines to deal with various demands could be improved.

Meanwhile, Hainan Airlines can cooperate with companies like ROVIO and release

digital campaigns with attractive cartoon image like Finair does. The funny and

popular cartoon image could draw much attention from customers and attract a large

number of potential customers.

Besides, seen from the current digital marketing review of Hainan Airlines,

it seems that the company is just a follower of digital marketing service. For instance,

the company imitates Lufthansa as well as Finair , and establish its official account in

social networking sites like Renren, Facebook and Microblog. However, Hainan

Airline does not make enough use of such platform and offer valuable information for

customers. Under the digital era, it is essential for Hainan Airlines to make good use

of the internet as the number of internet users has increased.

54
 Proposed Digital Marketing Campaign for Hainan Airline

Planning Process of Campaign

Objective and Description

As shown in figure 28, it shows that the top three consumer groups of China

civil aviation are 22-34(46%), 35-44(31%), and 45-60 (11%). What is more, the age

structure mainly lay on the age groups of 15-64 years old with abilities of working

and consuming. It stands for that there are more than 90 million potential customers in

China, which means that Hainan Airlines has a huge and potential market.

Also, there is a vital factor for us to pay attention. From the age structure of

aviation passengers it is a matter of which age group is the main customer. Moreover,

digital marketing plays an important role in airlines industry, because the major

purchasing group array between the age of 22 and 44, who are living in the digital

environment and are reachable through the digital marketing channels.

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 60 above

45-60

35-44

22-34

22 below

0.00% 5.00% 10.00% 15.00% 20.00% 25.00% 30.00% 35.00% 40.00% 45.00% 50.00%
22 below 22-34 35-44 45-60 60 above
Percent 10.50% 46% 31% 11% 1.50%

Figure28: Age Structure of Civil Passenger

According to the research of Civil Aviation Development Report

(2007/2008) and figure 29, business passenger takes half percent of airlines customers.

They take flight frequently and take more concern about price but on timing and

safety. As Chinese taking more concern in their golden holidays for traveling, this

group of passenger could take a large percentage in the future and be loyal to airlines.

That means a large part of the frequent customers of Hainan Airlines are mainly

business oriented. In other words, customers of Hainan Airlines that fly for business

purpose are already fixed, so Hainan Airlines has to take action to attract more

flexible customers who like traveling and turn them into potential loyal customers.

The objective of the digital marketing campaign is to build brand awareness of

Hainan Airlines and build up a digital marketing platform for the future digital

56
marketing solution.

Figure 29: Passenger Ratio on Purpose

According to the interview of Hainan Airlines Micro-blogger, It is not only

Hainan Airlines has not yet build up a effective digital marketing system, but also the

mainland airlines. Besides, the situation of Hainan Airlines’ digital marketing is a

follower, it is our objective to improve its digital marketing level and build platforms

via this campaign so that it can influence much more netizens and lay a good

foundation for online promotion.

In order to achieve the objective we mentioned above, the proposal for

Hainan Airlines is to launch a campaign named “影相海南” for building the brand.

The specific activity is to advocate netizens to upload photos taken in Hainan Island,

and this campaign will hold public vote on its own platform and select top 10 photos

57
according to final vote result in three months. For those winners, Hainan Airline will

provide them with round-trip flight ticket and 4-night free room in HNA Group hotel.

Budget Constraints

Although digital marketing is a cost-effective method to achieve amount of

goals of business, we still need to take cost-saving attitude into consideration. After

the interview with the IT manager of Hainan Airlines, we have a deeper

understanding about the supporting costs for digital marketing implementation.

Depending on the current resources Hainan Airlines, we attempt to launch an

effective digital marketing presence and maintain it with low cost. It is possible for

Hainan Airlines to achieve the objective of campaign by the internal support from

HNA Group

The factors that the budget mainly contained are as follows:

- Education and training for company staff

- Market and customers research

- Promoting various digital marketing platform presence

- Generating followers and increasing the traffic

- SEM and SEO spending

- Optimizing the relationship with public and consumers

- Monitoring major competitors

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Digital Marketing Method Selective

Considering the budget-cutting factors mentioned above, it is not suitable

for Hainan Airlines to invest on numerous social media for propaganda. Instead, the

company had better concentrate on certain websites and ensure the outstanding effect.

Based on the study of target market and customer character, Sina Weibo

and Renren are the major platform for releasing campaign-related information online

and communicating with netizens. These two well-known social websites have great

influential power in domestic market, especially for young customers.

Risk Evaluation

Since the proposed campaign designed for Hainan Airline needs collect the

netizens’ comments on the social network, preparation should be made in evaluating

the risk of potential threats for damaging company’s reputation.

It is no doubt that it is not controllable either the posts that appearance on

the social media or the opinions of public to company’s products and services.

Sometimes, negative messages made by netizens will lead to damage effect on brand

image of the company.

However, the measurement of information blackout is not a right solution,

because it also obstructs the communication channel between company and customers.

Therefore, the crisis management suggestion to solve this sort of problems is to get

59
involved actively and direct public opinion for the purpose of fortifying the reputation

of company.

All Hainan Airlines has to do is searching the negative posts about

campaign on the Internet, understanding the reason why they said that, and showing

positive reaction to their conversation with the willing that company is try their

upmost effort to handle problems they care about.

Implementation Process of Campaign

Pre-campaign Preparation

In order to put forward the photo campaign, Hainan Airlines will do the

following preparations: Hainan Airlines will initially invite some famous people who

have a large number of fans on their blog and Microblog to take a visit to Hainan and

let them take photos, videos as well as write tourism diaries on their blogs. Moreover,

Hainan Airlines will gather these photos, videos and tourism diaries together and post

them to its official website as well as its social networking sites such as Renren,

Facebook, Microblog for promotion. With more and more page viewers of the official

website of Hainan Airlines as well as its social networking sites get acquaintance to

the sceneries in Hainan together with the experience of tourists travelling to Hainan,

the photo campaign could be released. Moreover, with the highly recommendation of

the popular bloggers or micro bloggers through the place they have visited, it is going
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to attract a large number of people who are eager to travel to Hainan to participate in

such campaign.

Reach Segment

When we decide to launch this photo campaign, which is named “影相海南”

The first step is to inform netizens what the campaign and the rule is and how to join

this activity. Hainan Airlines should take advantage of many digital communication

channels to achieve this objective. Following are some methods we attempt to make

use of.

Display.

Since Hainan Airlines official website only provides customers with flight

search and online booking service, it is not a good plan uploading related propaganda

content on the website. And then, the display is to adopt the strategy that making

banner advertising on the portal home page and launching commercials on various

video websites.

In addition, online display advertising enjoys many great advantages

compare with other traditional advertising mode. For example, display advertising is a

cost-efficient way to catch customer attention, therefore, advertising information can

reach wide customers with small budget and easily collect data of visiting number by

accounting the click time.

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 Figure 30: Various Display Channels

Search engine.

Hainan Airlines can also make use of search engine for spreading the “影相

海南”information on the internet. Through purchasing for premium space on the

search engine website, posting contextual advertising, and getting paid inclusion, it is

easy to achieve the effect of increasing the visibility on the results page. The top

rankings can arouse curiosities for this activity and engage customers to access more

messages about campaign in the further step. Certainly, it is a trend in offering them

the super link to transfer to the event registration website.

Apart from the SEM strategy, the SEO is another way that Hainan Airlines

can take to improve the appearance frequency in the search engine field. Hainan

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Airlines can employ a professional agency to optimization the easily-search level of

“影像海南” as these agency have deeply understanding that how the search engines

operate, what sort of content people are more willing to search for, the actual search

keywords typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their

target customers.

Figure 31: Major Search Engine Marketing Platform

eDM.

In order to build better relationship with customers, Hainan Airlines

established its own frequent flyer plan in its member club called Fortune Wings Club

in 1999. This is a perfect communication channel to make those loyal clients of

Hainan Airlines learn more details about this campaign. Through the eDM, we can

send them emails including the brief introduction about “影相海南” and the method

to make reservation for joining the activity.

In comparison to traditional advertising mail, the exactly click rate and

investment return can be accounted, so eDM has been seen as much effective online

marketing tactic which most of company tend to take. After the messages about photo
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campaign have been delivered to Hainan Airlines club members, it will be easy to

track their next step action-opt in the registration link or not- to judge whether they

are interested in this event advertising.

Figure 32: Frequent Flyer Plan -- Fortune Wings Club

Social marketing.

For the purpose of catching more attention from young people to this photo

campaign, Hainan Airlines can also post related information on domestic well-known

social network websites just like Weibo and Renren at company home pages. One of

advantages of social media is timeliness. This is because on the social media platform,

netizens can leave their comments on the campaign, give their advices and enquire the

specific information at any time. And in response to netizens questions, Hainan

Airlines staffs can also be able to immediately give their feedback and deal with their

concerned problems. This kind of interactive activity can stimulate netizen interests to

photo campaign and arose netizen passions to take part in.

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 Figure 33: Major Socia Meida Platforms

Mobile Apps.

The mobile device is another significant marketing field when showed

solicitude for. Hainan Airlines can launch special-purpose “影相海南” App on the

iOS or Android application platform and enable customers download this software.

They can take advantage of the convenient characteristic of this App where they can

post their own photos on the internet directly or vote for others.

Figure 34: Andriod & iOS App Plaforms

QR code.

Currently, most of smart phones are equipped with QR code scanner; if not,

people can also download this app from Internet free, and then this application can

65
use camera lens of mobile to catch the QR code image. In fact, the consumers in

China gradually realized that the QR code is a more convenient and interesting way to

be informed the market messages rather than sending email and receiving the phone

call from corporate. Therefore, it is better to decide to adopt the QR code into the

campaign post that allows people being able to access more related information on the

Internet.

Figure 35: QR Code

Act and Convert Segment

Eligibility for the competitions.

Anyone who has photos about Hainan, and has a message to spread is

welcome to express his or her creativity by submitting a photo to this campaign.

Channels.

The channels contains own website to conduct the photo sharing campaign,

but there are three ways that participants can enter photos:

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 Via Email -- If chosen not to use Hainan Airlines own website to submit

the image, one may complete the online registration form and email photos to the

photosharing@hnair.com with subject line HNA2012- Photo Campaign. Photos

emailed from an email address different with our online submission form cannot be

attributed to the photographer properly, and therefore will not be considered eligible

for the campaign. Hainan Airlines reserves the right to upload photos submitted

through this process to its own website. Please clearly label all photos and read below

for information about including a description.

Via Hainan Airlines Website -- To submit photos via company website, use

Hainan Airlines ID to login to www.hnair.com. If one do not have an account, one

can sign-up for free at www.hnair.com. If one does not tag your photo with an

appropriate tag, it will not be considered for the campaign.

Via Hainan Airlines Apps -- Hainan Airlines has Apps currently available

for both iOS and Android platforms. To submit photos via Apps of Hainan Airlines,

use Hainan Airlines ID to login in. If one does not have an account, one can sign-up

for free via Apps. If one does not tag photos with an appropriate tag, it will not be

considered for the campaign.

If one does not complete all of these steps, then photos will not be eligible

for consideration in the campaign.

67
 Types of photo.

The theme of all photographs will be Hainan.

Participants can submit a maximum of one photograph per person.

Photo captions/summaries must accompany all submissions, and should

include the subject of the image, the location the image was taken and a description of

the photo (maximum 100 words), including a concept or details that will be helpful to

the public in understanding the concept and the theme of the campaign. Entrants must

not infringe on the rights of any other photographer or person.

Photographs considered by Hainan Airlines staff and volunteers to be

excessively controversial, profane or violent will not be accepted or published.

Photographs must not be an artificial one and must not have been published

anywhere or sold to a third party, used for any commercial purpose or won in any

previous competition. Previously published photos for which non-exclusive rights

were granted may be entered as long as the participant maintain the right to grant for a

license. Participants must be able to disclose when and where the photo appeared

previously to Hainan Airlines upon request.

Technical guidelines.

All graphs submitted may be of size 5″ x 7″ or 4″x 6″.

68
 Acceptable photo formats are TIFF, JPEG, GIF or BMP.

Hainan Airlines recommends that entries have a resolution of 6 million

pixels or greater (6 megapixels).

Deadline for submitting photos.

Online entries can be uploaded starting 12:01 am on Tuesday, May 1, 2012.

We will close the campaign for submitting entries on 11:59 pm on Friday, June 1,

2012. Hainan Airlines reserves the right to adjust any deadline(s) as the result of

causes beyond its immediate control.

Voting terms and conditions.

For voting, one should use Hainan Airlines ID to login in. If one do not

have an account, one can sign-up for free via our own website or Apps.

Only one vote is permitted per person.

Online voting will start at 12:01 am on Monday, June 4, 2012. The closing

time of the campaign for submitting entries is on 11:59 pm on Wednesday, July 4,

2012. Votes received after that date and time will not be considered. Hainan Airlines

reserves the right to adjust any deadline as the result of causes beyond its immediate

control.

69
 The top 10 winners will be announced on August 1, 2012 on Hainan

Airlines own website and Apps.

By voting for a winner you are accepting these terms and conditions.

Hainan Airlines will manage the voting system. However, it takes no

responsibility for votes that are lost, delayed, misdirected or incomplete or cannot be

delivered or entered for any technical or other reason.

Engage Segment

After the election of the top 10 tourism photos, participants whose photo

has been selected could have the following merits: First, these participants could gain

the round-trip flight ticket to Hainan. Meanwhile, they can change their destination as

well as the name of customers who wants to go once. However, this round-trip flight

ticket can only be valid in certain period. For instance, Hainan Airline could make a

regulation like this: If the photo taken by certain participants could be selected as the

top 10 photos for tourism, they could gain the round-trip flight ticket to Hainan and

the ticket is valid in three months. Such merit is a way to encourage tourists to share

their experience with others who wants to travel to certain place. Meanwhile, this is

also a way of self –promotion. With the self-promotion of the traveling experience, it

70
can expand the brand name of Hainan Airlines. Meanwhile, it could attract a large

number of potential customers and turn it into loyal customers.

Apart from the round-trip flight ticket to Hainan, offering rooms in certain

hotel could be another merit for the participants whose photo has been nominated as

the top 10 tourism photos. For example, if the photos taken by certain participants

have been chosen as the top 10 tourism photos, these participants will be offered

rooms at three or four star hotels. Such merit could inspire the enthusiasm among the

participants to take high-quality travelling photos. With these high quality photos,

Hainan Airlines could expand its influence among customers and the ones who are

eager to travel to certain places. However, such merit also needs a regulation that

customers could only change hotels within the same level. For instance, if the

participants whose photos have been nominated as the top 10 photos have been

arranged to live in a third-star hotel and they are not satisfied with the living condition

of this hotel, they should change another hotel in the same level instead of changing a

four or five-star hotel. Such regulation could prevent Hainan Airlines from bearing

possible high cost.

Besides, to upload the top 10 tourism photos to the internet and make a

picture show is another way to encourage participants to share their travelling

experience with others. For instance, if the photo taken by certain participants has

71
been selected as the top 10 tourism photos and they want to share their experience

with the ones who wants to travel to the same place, Hainan Airline could establish a

platform for tourists to upload their high-quality photos through the internet. As

internet is widely used throughout the world, page viewers who are eager to go to the

same place as the photos shows could easily get feedback from the ones who have

been there. When participants who have been to the certain place share their

experience via the photos they upload, tourists who have seldom been to these places

would get acquaintance to Hainan Airlines based upon this activity. In this way,

Hainan Airlines could expand its brand name to large number of customers.

In addition, Hainan Airlines could also use its micro blog to set a topic and

encourage participants to discuss their experience. If participants take part in the

discussion, Hainan Airlines will help them to upload their photos or videos to the

micro blog. With this platform, a large number of micro bloggers could get access to

the traveling experience of the participants who have been to a certain place. With the

widespread of information on micro blog, a large number of travelers who are eager

to go to a certain tourist sites will know about Hainan Airlines through the topics this

company sets. It is also a way for spreading the influence of its brand name among

customers.

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 Furthermore, Hainan Airlines could also post the travelling diary of the

participants to its official blog. According to what participants write in their diary, the

blog viewers who wants to travel there could rapidly know what the scenery looks

like in a certain place. Meanwhile, these blog viewers also know Hainan Airlines

through viewing its official blog. This is also a method to extend the brand name of

Hainan Airlines as well as obtaining large number of potential customers and loyal

customers.

After the activity, Hainan Airline will store these high-quality photos,

videos and blogs and upload them to an official platform for promotion. When the

next round of activity starts, Hainan Airlines will select another batch of high-quality

photos, videos as well as blogs and then upload them to the official platform. With

such accumulation, the official platform will become a garage for viewers to get

acquaintance to the beautiful scenery of Hainan as well as the brand name of Hainan

Airlines. In this way, Hainan Airlines can promote itself and expand the influence of

its brand name. As a result, it will attract a large number of customers as well as

potential customers.

To sum up, the ways mentioned above are several kinds of digital marketing

campaign that Hainan Airlines can consider using in order to expand the effect of its

73
brand name. With these digital marketing campaigns, Hainan Airline could make full

use of the internet as a platform for obtaining a large number of loyal customers.

Public Relationship and Crisis Management

Public comments responding

When company releases this campaign, Hainan Airlines should begin to

think about the appropriate method to respond to public comments and complaints. It

is because netizens have public online platform to post comments, complaint and even

vent their anger. They can share this opinion with the people who do not know many

details about the activity and eventually affect the judgments from others toward

campaign.

In order to tackle this problems correctly, Hainan Airlines needs some

solutions for turning unfortunate incidents into opportunity of building brand

reputation. The specific advices are as follow:

Understand the reasons of complaints from public and manage to build

direct communication channel with them.

Avoid expanding the negative influence or inciting the battle of opinions.

If the complaints posts are false or unrealistic, company should give an

official announcement to public for telling them what the fact is.

74
 Do not delete the negative comments which are posted on the social

network as this action will lead to more intensive reaction of public.

Crisis management plans

In case company involve into the troubles which cause extremely negative

effects, company need to launch related solutions to direct the crisis situation:

Designate the staff that should be responsible for the problems

Publish official announcements to show that company is aware of the

mistakes and try the best to solve it.

Urge the involved department to make solution plan to correct the mistakes

or deal with the trouble as soon as possible

It is necessary for Hainan Airlines to be honest, frank and modest toward

public as people tend to accept apologize and forgive mistake when they are treated

like that. Telling lie to them might result in worse and more complicated situation.

Measurement Process of Campaign

Measurement for Hainan Airlines's Own Website

This project will look for KPIs in two categories, engagement and influence.

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 Figure36: Engagement and Influence

Engagement metrics show that the digital plan has earned attention:

-Views

- Time on site or pages viewed

- Key use paths

- Return visitors/frequency

- Opt-ins

- Click-through numbers on banner and email campaigns

Influence metrics means that people moved toward the ultimate goal(s) of

the campaign:

- Became a member / created an account

- Made a purchase

- Recommended a site or tool to a friend

- Created more positive sentiment

Some other key metrics will also can be used in digital campaigns to

measure ROI are:

• Delivered emails

• Customer complaint numbers

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 • Time spent interacting with the digital detail aid

Measurement for Social Media Campaign

Reach and exposure.

Measuring the reach or potential viewers of the digital campaign of Hainan

Airlines is not as simple as tracking the total number of Renren fans and Weibo

followers the Hainan Airlines has. In order to better account for duplicate users, it is

essential to focus on the percentage growth rate over a defined period of time (i.e.

monthly or quarterly).

For example, based on the official microblog of Hainan Airlines, the total

potential reach over a month is made up of the fans and users of those who forward

message. Comparing each of these figures with the previous monthly totals, it allows

the airlines to focus on the growth areas.

For Renren tracking Hainan Airlines want to record the number of followers

it has for its official social networking sites. In addition, Hainan Airlines could record

the number of friends that each user who has:

Become a follower during the month

Commented on posts during the month

Liked posts during the month.

On Youku and Tudou: Track the views of channel, subscriber numbers and
77
their video bounce rates over the month.

On the official blog of Hainan Airlines: look at the number of visitors to

related posts over the month.

Hainan Airlines will also look at metrics that are not directly tied to social

media. Website traffic and searches that are related to the brand name of Hainan

Airlines also indicate increased brand awareness.

Engagement.

By measuring how many users engage and interact with messages provided

by Hainan Airlines, the company can evaluate its marketing efforts. The more

engagement Hainan Airlines could observe the more effective and valuable its

campaign has.

Renren –Hainan Airlines could measure the number of clicks the links of

the campaign received, the number of times its messages were commented on and the

number of times its messages were liked.

Weibo– Hainan Airlines could measure the number of times its hash tag

was included in weibo posts, Number of posts that has been forwarded, the number of

clicks its link received and the total number of Weibo users involved in activity.

Blog– The measurement focuses on the number of new subscribers, the

amount of sharing of the posts and the amount of comments.

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 Youku and Tudou – The measurement occurs in the amount of new

subscribers, the amount and type of ratings (positive or negative) as well as the

number of comments.

Share of voice and sentiment.

Share of voice is a valuable metric for evaluating penetration of the brand of

Hainan Airlines in comparison to its competitors. Hainan Airlines needs to

qualitatively analysis how its brand is being talked about, thereby finding out what

sentiments its base has towards the brand.

Calculating the share of voice of Hainan Airlines requires a bit of data

processing. Hainan Airlines need to collect data on the number of times its brand is

mentioned over a specific time period. Hainan Airlines also has to record mentions of

its competitors’ brands. Hainan Airlines need to assign each mention a category of

positive, negative or neutral. At last, the company has to weight each of those

categories in order to evaluate both its share of voice and the sentiment towards its

brand.

Influence.

When Hainan Airlines have a high level of influence, it is more likely for

the company to inspire its followers to take some kind of action such as engaging with

its message. Metrics that the company can use to evaluate the influence of its brand

79
include:

- The number of links to its message and content.

- The frequency of messages posted on its official Microblog is forwarded.

- How often its Renren posts are liked, commented on and shared.

- The influence of its followers and those who engaged with the company

should also be tracked.

Measure conversions.

There are a number of methods of tracking conversions from the social

media marketing campaign of Hainan Airlines:

Track social media traffic to the website in its own category

Advertise a coupon or deal on social media to properly assign conversions

to the campaign of Hainan Airlines, even if the traffic itself does not come from social

media.

Instead of only tracking direct sales or ad-clicks, time spent on a particular

page, viewing of various products and other such actions can also provide valuable

data for Hainan Airlines.

Before the implementation of the measurement, Hainan Airlines plan to try

out different variations on a theme, measure their impact and scenario plan on a

smaller scale. Meanwhile, Hainan Airlines integrates all of its digital measurements

80
with off-line activity ensure the reliability and validity by testing and repeating

process of such measurements.

Conclusion

The digital marketing concept has been famous for almost eight years in

foreign countries since the founding of Facebook in 2004. However, the digital

marketing growth in mainland China had been deferred as the Chinese government

blocking sites from overseas. There were digital marketing studies published in

81
Chinese from Taiwan in 2009. It was at that time that corporations in China began to

hear words related to digital marketing. As the competition between traditional media

and digital media has become fiercer, it is high time for mainland corporations to

combine the current advertising and publication relationship with digital marketing

services. The objective of the specific digital marketing proposal of Hainan Airlines is

to build up brand awareness and company-owned digital marketing platform.

This solution is based on the mainland digital marketing situation and

specification of airlines character.

First of all, the digital marketing providers in China are a few Taiwan

companies and domestic search engine marketers. There are few suppliers in the need

of a whole digital marketing campaign for companies, especially for airlines in

servicing industry. The concept of digital marketing is such a fresh idea for either

marketing or PRs in China. There are few successful cases for mainland corporations

to refer to. Whilst as a market containing 500,000,000 netizens and the digital

marketing technological basis had been widely developed, Chinese corporations must

follow the leading trend and utilize this effectively and efficiently.

What is more, airline companies have their own advantages in developing

digital marketing campaigns, as they have maintained a large amount of membership

information, such as mobile numbers, email addresses, etc. Whenever a customer

82
accepted push information to their own portal, there will be chances to advertise

company products through digital methods. Moreover, teenagers pay attention to the

airline company recruitment of flight attendants by following the homepage of the

airline company in social networks, which leads to a wide range of effect among

young follower groups and their peers.

The last but not the least, Hainan Airlines is one of the sectors from HNA

Group. Being a part of large group including industries like airports, hotels, travel

agencies, IT, medias and theatres, Hainan Airlines has been the best frontier in digital

marketing development for the benefit of whole HNA Group.

Accordingly, combining strengths of Hainan Airlines and the opportunities

of the Blue Ocean of digital marketing in mainland China, this project proposed a

campaign named “影相海南”, which is suitable for its geographic advantage and

customer entertainment. The campaign could be continually held for several rounds

according to customer satisfaction and KPI feedback. Thereafter, adjustment could be

made based on the measuring result. With the digital marketing platform made

through this campaign, it will be a bright start for the following digital marketing

campaigns and accumulate potential customers.

83
84
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 Appendix

Appendix1:访谈海航集团信息管理部副总经理许竞
问：海航集团信息管理部主要负责那些工作内容?
答：海航集团 IT 管理体系包含集团信息管理部、各产业集团信息管理部

（含代行产业级信息管理职能的机构）、成员企业信息管理业务归集点（专职机
构或人员）；IT 运营公司指集团各产业下属以 IT 产品研发、运营为主要业务的
成员企业。
海航集团 IT 管理体系关注成员企业信息化建设（甲方职责），负责集团
各单位 IT 规划、IT 投资、IT 项目管理、信息系统运行管理、信息化应用用户体

验、IT 审计及体系建设，不对 IT 运营公司的业务发展与运营进行管理。

信息管理部下设四个分部门。总体职责包括：负责集团 IT 战略规划制定
及 IT 产业新技术、新应用的研究；负责集团 IT 建设规范、技术标准和管理规范
的研究、制定以及执行监控；负责提供 IT 项目投资与建设咨询服务，制定集团
年度信息化项目建设计划，进行集团 IT 项目的立项审批、实施监督；负责集团

总部、产业协同的 IT 项目的管理工作；负责集团信息系统的服务监控、系统改
进等提升客户体验的需求分析；负责集团 IT 资源（包括系统、数据、设备等资
源）的统一调配和管理；负责集团信息安全管理工作；负责集团信息化建设的绩
效评估和审计工作；负责集团 IT 体系建设、体系内人才的开发与培养；负责集
团 IT 体系对外合作和宣传工作，并负责对 IT 外包承建商的管理和评估工作；负

责对产业集团信息管理部归口管理和业务指导；负责对集团信息产业化发展提供
支持。
下面分设的项目管理咨询中心职责包括：负责集团 IT 战略规划的制定；
负责集团年度信息化项目建设计划的制定；负责向项目投资单位提供信息化项目
建设咨询服务；负责制订并优化集团 IT 项目建设管理规范，组织招投标并对执

行情况给予监控和管理；负责集团所有 IT 项目的立项审批和实施监督；负责集
团总部、产业协同的 IT 项目管理工作；负责 IT 前沿技术及应用的研究及研发型
项目管理，并定期出具相关 IT 研究报告。

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 分设的运行品质中心，主要负责集团级应用、服务等策划、推广工作；负
责集团信息系统的服务监控、系统改进等提升客户体验的需求分析工作，定期评
估并出具报告；负责集团 IT 资源（包括系统、数据、设备等资源）的统一调配

和管理；负责集团 IT 资源运营收费方式、收费标准的制定；负责集团信息安全
管理工作，以及集团信息系统上线、运行、下线的全生命周期过程中相关标准的
制定。
还分设信息审计中心，负责集团 IT 体系治理规划，体系标准规范的制定
以及执行监控；负责集团信息化建设的绩效评估工作；负责集团信息审计体系的

建立，IT 项目、IT 运行及信息安全的审计；负责集团 IT 培训体系的建立，IT

培训策划与组织;负责集团 IT 体系人才开发与轮岗交流，
IRE 人才的选拔与培养。
最后是创新研究中心，负责集团 IT 战略规划制定及 IT 产业新技术、新应
用的研究；负责与国内外相关 IT 研究机构、专业 IT 运营公司及媒体建立合作关
系；负责对集团北方区域 IT 业务进行本地化支撑和管理；负责 IT 创新项目孵化

与投资研究工作。
问：集团现阶段运行的 IT 系统有哪些?海航航空产业有哪些特别的 IT 系
统？
答：现阶段，数字化海航监控平台应用于所有高级管理层，便于时时监控
生产运营指标。

集团级应用系统还包括资产、资金、外事、会议、预算、合同、结算、审
计、HR、工程建设项目等管理系统。
产业级系统中，海航航空的 IT 开发占据很多优势，更加专业。包括运行
网、优惠机票出票系统、网络培训系统、市场销售平台、航空经营辅助分析、飞
行任务书系统、服务信息系统和小时费查询系统等。
问：海航集团今年的 IT 计划是怎样的？计划投入多少预算？特别是在海
航航空产业的投入有多少？
答：详尽的财务数字，不方便透露，海航集团 2012 年度信息化总预算较
上年有所增加，其中信息化项目投资预算占 20%，IT 费用占 50%、硬件类投资费
用占 15%、其他预算用于在建待付款项目和 IT 并购，占余下的 15%。本年度，海

航航空 IT 项目三十项，同比其他产业板块公司，项目量都排在首位
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 问：海航集团 IT 规划方向是什么？在航空产业注重哪些？
答：一句话：“一个中心，三个平台”在全集团总体规划并分布实施。分
别是数据集成中心，应用展现平台，智能服务平台和安全管控平台。利用兴起的

移动技术和物联网技术，以人为本，打造无限海航，以提高管理效率和客户感受，
打通内部流程，发展 3G 项目应用，推动航空等领域的新技术应用。
在航空产业，预计今年普及海航飞机飞行上网服务，推动开放平台、机上
SNS、3G 无限海航建设，并研究新技术在行业的应用。
问：在海航信息化的过程存在怎样的问题？如何解决呢？

答：信息不断的变化，适应信息化和扩展信息化需要效率和人才。现阶段
海航的 IT 规划处于初级阶段，有些并购公司信息化不健全。这都是有待建设的。
在体系建设中存在二级管理机构职能缺失，IT 人员管理不够专业等问题。
对于上线后的 IT 产品效果反馈制度尚未健全，这部分问题是可以在近期解决的。
问：贵公司信息项目的开发和执行都是由本公司员工完成的吗？有没有与

外界公司联合开发呢？
答：部分项目完全有信息管理部负责开发，部分项目外包给本集团的百成
信息公司，也有部分同其他公司共同开发，例如，2010 年，中国航信与海南航
空签署智能旅客服务合作备忘录，打造旅客智能服务新模式，2011 年底，海南
航空与中国航信签署新一代旅客服务系统合作协议及 2012 年服务协议。这都是

推进无限海航进程的项目。

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Appendix2: 访问海南航空官方微博负责人
问：在新浪微博上见到好多包括海南航空在内的海航集团标识的认证用户
在做宣传，这是贵公司的哪个部门在负责？是否同一个人负责？

答：各个产业有自己的宣传手段，海南航空市场部产品推广中心负责品牌
宣传，中心的人都可以登录微博。在集团总部另有品牌建设办公室负责 CRM 和
CSR 等方面的宣传。
问：贵公司在新浪微博展开的各种活动，是否可以手机到客户特征之类的
数据？或者其他数据？怎样处理这些数据呢？

答：关于客户特质的数据收集目前我们还没进行过多的涉及，下一步我们
可能会进行客户分析之类的。
问：关于海航 2012 年的工作计划中，有没有专门涉及到社会化媒体营销
的部分？ 品牌战略是什么？
答：在海航 2012 年重点工作中，我们要进一步提升品牌战略的创新能力，

坚定不移地将“展现东方之美”作为品牌建设的重点。
问：可不可以详细介绍下贵公司的品牌战略呢？
答：现阶段海航航空要建立群星璀璨的航空企业品牌：海南航空要达到五
星级航空公司水平，金鹿公务航空要实现由亚洲最大变为亚洲最佳公务机公司，
祥鹏航空、西部航空、天津航空、金鹿航空、香港航空都要在各自特色的基础上

实现品牌效应，谋求更大的发展。这些品牌都是在海航集团体系下设立的，同时
目标打造海南航空为大新华航空这个品牌，也是为了配合海航的国际化战略，海
航不是一个地区性航空公司，我们有更大的理想和目光。
比方说，我们在今年线上线下共同开展“寻找东方之美”的空乘招聘百所
校园行活动，扩大海航服务的影响力。

问：航空公司有这样一个优势，就是客户在订票时，会将电话号码或者电
子邮箱地址留给航空公司，贵公司会利用这些资源嘛？如何运用呢？
答：基于信息安全和隐私的考虑，我们仅在推送与购票相关消息时使用客
户信息。

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