Brand Personality & Brand Emotion – MakeMyTrip.com, OYO
Before getting in to the Travel & Tourism market, would like to discuss on Brand Personality & Brand Emotion. Brand Personality generally provides a clear view to the consumers in what way a particular brand differentiates from others who offer similar product and services. Distinctiveness is an important tool in Brand personality which means “The Brand stands out of the crowd”. Higher Distinctiveness of a brand pulls more consumers and creates a long term relationship as well. In order to improve the Brand personality, the emotion plays a major role here. Brand Emotion is all about understanding the emotional needs of the consumers and tapping right over there with the inclusion of some innovations and creativity result in the good level of brand success. So it is all about a consistent set of characteristics that a specific customer segment enjoys also it is specifically related to an emotional response in a specific consumer segment. The Brand personality completely relies on the emotional associations of the brand.
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Is Thomas Cook India able to relate to its consumers in India?
As far as the Indian market is concerned, Thomas Cook is a vintage Travel agency with higher costing and failed to understand the Emotional needs of Indian consumers. It’s still alive in the market and there are consumers who prefer Thomas cook for their International travel but India’s domestic travel & tourism is very high as compared to International Tourism where the Local travel companies of India made a better understanding on this and tapped more number of consumers which resulted in good level of profitability. The cultural understanding and emotional expectations are not well tapped by Thomas cook in India Tourism market.
In this digitalization era, India stands out unique for its more number of Information Technology operations which predominantly increased the Indian economy as well in turn there is a stupendous increase in the population of middle class and upper middle class. Basically people from these classes prefer for discounts and good level of quality. When it comes to the tourism market in India, Excitement and sophistication plays a major role in the minds of consumers and when it comes with the discounted pricing more number of consumers fall in to the picture. Thomas cook India never attempted this discounting technique but assured great level of quality. Client retention is par below as there is more portability observed in the Indian Tourism market where even the top class/ rich people who preferred Thomas cook earlier are moving to the travel companies like MakeMyTrip.com and GoIbiBo etc. Even today most of the Indian people do not know about Thomas cook as Brand awareness is way par below as compared to the local tourism & Travel markets.
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Local Travel & Tourism Companies impact on India Travel Market
MakeMyTrip.com is one of the travel market leaders in India. They play mainly with the emotional needs of consumers adding “Excitement” and “Sophistication” to the content. In order to capitalize the market, MakeMyTrip.com targeted youngsters and middle age group citizens of India. They derived their Mobile app with a simple user interface and not so flashy. Most importantly they concentrated on customer retention by offering frequent discounts and made deals with quite lot of companies in India for their employee’s official travel by offering great corporate membership which includes huge discounts.
Cinema & Celebrity
Cinema plays an important link here. Acts as a mass communication tool and most of the people in India are cinema lovers including me; in turn makemytrip.com used two important cinema celebrities who have millions of followers in instagram and other social media in order to convey their offers and company messages.
Most of the ads were made in fun mode and comparisons were done as well. Recently they launched an ad in 2018, where if a consumer able to find more discounts on bookings as compared to makemytrip.com, double the money will be returned by the company. The ad was able to connect to the consumers very emotionally through celebrities and strong messages on discounts in a very fun way.
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OYO
This is one of the fast growing Travel & Booking companies in India. Oyo targeted mainly on youngsters, college students and living together couples. Oyo promised “privacy” which is one of the key element where consumers able to connect to it emotionally. Oyo stupendously improved the business of Small and medium level hotels in India where affordability is put in first place in consumers point of view. Also real time experiences were made as ads and vigorously used the digital platform for their aggressive marketing to reach out as many consumers as possible.
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Oyo mainly concentrated on budget bookings which are more affordable so apart from hotels, they tapped homes as well where the owner of the home stays in the ground floor and the second floor will be attached to Oyo rooms. So many house owners benefited of this and consumers also felt safe to stay in such homes rather staying in hotels. Proper facilities like wifi, bathroom kits and bed covers will be provided by Oyo and if there is any issue consumers can address it to 24/7 customer service.
Conclusion
Thomas cook didn’t consider any kind of disruptive innovation in their marketing and they stick to their high costing policies. User interface in the app is bit flashy and complicated as well, now Thomas cook seriously realized it and started offering discounts but still consumers were unable to connect with them as they find their personification mainly with MakeMyTrip.com and Oyo as both brands directly hit the emotional needs and played a significant role in the pricing strategy as well.
ANNAMALAI Vigneshwar
References
Youtube ads of makemytrip.com & OYO
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