Table of Contents

Question 1: Why is it so valuable to a company to create a brand image? ................................ 2 Question 2: Why does SIA invest so much in the training of its staff? ..................................... 3 Question 3: How does SIA differentiate itself from rival companies? ...................................... 4 Question 4: What are the benefits that result from successful differentiation?.......................... 6 Question 5: Suggest three ways in which SIA could raise the bar again. .............................. 8 References ................................................................................................................................ 10

Question 1: Why is it so valuable to a company to create a brand image?

Before we can understand the true value of having a good brand image, let us first discuss about the concepts relating to the word Brand itself. Whenever we talk about brand, two things come up into our minds, one is the brand name and the other is the brand image. Brand image refers to the impression of a product held by real or potential consumers and brand name helps consumer recognize the product by the name. In todays modern business world an organizations brand image can be as important as the goods or services it produces. A strong brand image is a powerful asset. A recognized and trusted brand identity makes people confident that the organization is dependable. This is why successful businesses work hard at building their brands and present them in a clear and consistent way. Moving on to the part that why is a good brand image so valuable to its company; a company must have a good brand image due to the benefits associated with it. Effective branding Helps you to differentiate your business, making you to stand out in your customers minds, Gives your business a personality and identity that people can relate to, effectively delivers and reinforces your key messaging, drives authority and trust in your business, drives customer loyalty and brand evangelism, and helps in the positioning your brand correctly can help you to achieve higher prices for your product or service. As a result the company profits tend to increase because of an increase in sales revenue, as the ales will become higher due to effective branding. As far as Singapore International Airlines (SIA) brand image is concerned, SIA is perceived as a competent, modern, international airline of Asian origin, offering the best in-flight service in the world. For your information, SIA spent S$35 million per year on advertising during its first 21 years. The airlines advertising in the early days was based on the Singapore Girl concept of a stewardess -driven service culture. The Singapore Girl is now one of the airlines most recognizable trademarks. SIAs customer service standards are symbolized by the distinctive uniform of its flight stewardess, a sarong kebaya in batik material, reflecting its Asian heritage.

Question 2: Why does SIA invest so much in the training of its staff?
Singapore Airlines Group is Singapores largest private sector employer with a 28,000 strong workforce. The airline has been able to develop its distinctive competitive edge in customer service through its people. SIA has always placed great emphasis on quality training for staff, which has established its cabin crew as the hallmark of efficiency and customer service. This has led to greater competitive advantage as it differentiates itself with its competitors. According to the research, almost half of SIA spending is on functional training and retraining. Newly recruited cabin crews are required to undertake at least three-month intensive training courses. SIAs training aims to enable cabin crew to provide gracious service reflecting warmth and friendliness while maintaining an image of authority and confidence in the passenger s minds. SIAs holistic training includes not only safety and functional issues but also beauty care, gourmet food, art of conversation and languages. In addition, SIA group has seven training schools for the seven core functional areas of cabin crew, flight operations, commercial training, information technology, security, airport services training and engineering. As SIAs reputation for service excellence grows stronger, its customers tend to have even higher expectations, which increase the pressure on its frontline staff. Therefore, the challenge is to help its staff deal with difficult situations and emotional turmoil of having to satisfy and please every demanding customers without feeling that they are being taken advantage of. Transforming Customer Service (TCS) program has been introduced to aim at building team spirit among all the staff. So that together they will make the whole journey as pleasant and seamless as possible for the passengers. In TCS, there is the 40-30-30 rule, which is SIA focuses 40% of the resources on training and invigorating the staff, 30% on reviewing processes and procedures and 30% on creating new product and service idea. Moreover, SIA staff will be the visitors first glimpse. Therefore, it is vital to create a positive impression to the visitors as they are the ambassadors for Singapore. SIA invests huge amounts of money in infrastructure and technology, but ultimately, they need people to drive it. They believe that people actually do make a difference, so the company has in place a very comprehensive and holistic approach to develop their human resources.

Question 3: How does SIA differentiate itself from rival companies?

SIA present itself as a premium brand which for the high quality of its product offering and excellence of service standards. SIA consider the in-flight service to be a critical aspect of air travel. They are seeking to deliver memorable experiences through its emphasis on service excellence to their customers. So, all the cabin crews are well trained in order to provide the excellence servicers. Besides that, SIAs service quality is monitored through regular survey of passengers. Where SIA uses diverse methods to get to know and understand their customers needs and wants by getting the feedback from a random sample of passengers in its flights and carefully study benchmarking studies carried out by International Air Transport Association. SIA also sent out researchers to check on competitors airlines and their flights. They will track and analyzes all the feedback that it received. SIA has a geographical advantage as compared to the others competitors, where Singapore is location is one of the world most important ports. Singapore rapid economic growth is based on the imports and exports in that nation. That is why the rapid growth in air transports for both passenger and cargo in Singapore and SIA play the important role in this part. SIA has been at the forefront of developing new initiatives over the years including: In the 1940s in-flight refreshments comprised a thermos flask of iced water; this was later extended to sandwiches and cold drinks; today customers expect a lot more. In the 1970s: first to offer free headsets, a choice of meals and free drinks in Economy class and long haul customers were given a complimentary bag of toiletries. In 1991: first with satellite-based in-flight telephones services across all three classes (First Class, Raffles Class and Economy Class). In 1995: the introduction of Kris World, an in-flight entertainment system with individualized screens for each customer. This was followed by, gourmet cuisine and non-stop commercial flights.

SIA get ahead of competitors by understanding the customer needs and wants and anticipating their future requirements, which is the key to achieving the competitive advantages. The more they understand their customers, the more customers that they can attract, and higher market share create to make more profits. SIA continually invest in research and development and in new technology because service innovation has a short life span. Whatever service innovation introduced by SIA can be copied by competitors and so it has short lifespan. SIA have to continually search for new ways to differentiate itself from its competitors.

Question 4: What are the benefits that result from successful differentiation?
SIA using the differentiation strategy to provide a variety of products, services, or features to consumers where the competitors are not yet offering or are unable to offer. SIA developing its competition advantages by: SIA has seen achieve an industry leadership position in the field of in-flight entertainment by investment in leading-edge technology. With KrisWorld, SIA customers have access to video channels, audio channels, popular video games, real-time news, information on popular SIA destinations and a personal in-seat telephone. In addition, WISEMEN is a major enhancement of KrisWorld being the first in-flight entertainment system to offer both video and audio on demand. SIA customers were the first to experience in-flight surround sound offered by Dolby Headphones. The revolutionary technology brings high quality cinema-style surround sound to in-flight film viewing in all three classes, First Class, Raffles Class and Economy Class. SIA has taken in-flight dining to new heights with the formation of its International Culinary Panel (ICP) and the introduction of World Gourmet Cuisine. Comprising eight worldrenowned chefs including the UKs Gordon Ramsay - the ICP has created world-class menus for all SIA flights, including signature dishes exclusively for SIA. Other members are Georges Blanc of France, David Burke and Nancy Oakes of the USA, Dietmar Sawyere of Australia, Yoshihiro Murata of Japan, Satish Arora of India and Yeung Koon Yat of Hong Kong. Customers on SIA can enjoy an extensive selection of wines and champagne from the worlds major wine-producing regions. SIA has also created unbeatable packages in each Class. SIA meeting the needs of different markets First Class passengers are able to enjoy individual compartments (Sky Suites) on 747 flights, providing a private space including sleeper beds. Cabins are fitted out in leather and burr wood to provide a luxury feel. All amenities and linen have been redesigned, mostly by Givenchy. To top it off, each individual compartment has a 14-inch personal video screen, specially produced for SIA, by Sharp of Japan. Raffles Class passengers have new seats designed by the Swiss firm Ludeke Design, giving a generous recline and the longest business class seat pitch among major airlines offering three classes. The cabin colour scheme is blue and rose cloud with alternating seat fabrics to impart a touch of style and elegance.

SIAs leadership in Economy Class is underlined by KrisWorld the most sophisticated range of video and audio entertainment. Seats have been updated to provide more room and comfort. Passengers are able to enjoy World Gourmet Cuisine and even champagne.

SIA get ahead of competitors by examining the current lifestyles of customers and trying to anticipate their future lifestyles. They understand the customer needs and wants and anticipating their future requirements is the key to achieving competitive advantages. The benefits that result from successful differentiation are SIA is able to create the synergistic benefits from working with the best employees in the world by steadily improving the quality of products by using the worlds best designers and chefs. While for the passengers, they are invariably delighted with SIA, they can be sure that SIA is working to make their next flight even better.

Question 5: Suggest three ways in which SIA could raise the bar again.
Basically we will look into the context of Singapore International Airlines (SIA) from the company philosophy itself which emphasized on product innovation that comes together with extraordinary services given to the customer. In other word, this simply means by setting a new product and service quality standards in the airline or the aviation industry. Currently SIA already excelled in three aspects which are human resources, product innovation and also in-flight dining. Firstly, SIA have been known in the aviation industry for its excellence in training and molding the human resources that are being rated by the users as six stars employee. This is simply because SIA provide and make it mandatory for each employee to go through each training programs and courses before they are allow serving the users. Secondly, SIA had innovated prenominal of its existing products and also facilities. For example, SIA had continued to invest in technology that create edges for them and collaboration with Dolby had further enhanced their facilities. Last but not least of the sphere that SIA reign supremely will be on the in-flight dining. With the formation of its International Culinary Panel (ICP) and with the introduction of World Gourmet Cuisine had greatly established them in the aviation industry. Next part of the discussion will be focusing on how SIA can turn their current existing competitive advantages into sustainable competitive advantages. Planning and Research Committee We are suggesting to SIA to form up both planning and research committee to better improve their services from the users or stakeholders point of view. Planning committee will be set up to serve as a platform for corporate decisions in several aspects such as new market to venture in, future investment on purchase of sell of flight and facilities and also product expansion or enhancement. The research committee will explore opinions and attitudes of both users and stakeholders towards the airline that will help them in making an informed decision. Enhancement on Current Facilities SIA can advance themselves more in term of the current facilities that they are providing to the users. A clear cut example will be SIA provide private suites which are separated from both open suites and flatbed in the first class category. Spa and Jacuzzi can also be prepared for the users as this will simply make the customers to feel that they are really in a comfortable and make it like a home in the flight. Provide Tablet and Cloud Computing Next we are proposing that SIA should provide tablet to each of their users who can easily do and prepare their works when they are in flight (Internet, Wi-Fi, USB Port and AC Power 8

Adapter). Besides that, SIA can also venture in to cloud computing as currently this is the latest technology that can be put in aviation industry which will ease the users that are using it. This technology will also help pilot and flight engineer to better monitor the airplane and are able to always communicate with the base on their current condition. Human Resource Training SIA already well-established themselves in term of great services they provide to the users. Borrowing the concept of Front house and Back house concept from food service sector we think that SIA front house has been doing extremely very well in serving the users. Thus, we are proposing SIA to focus on their back house that will be the mastermind of the whole success of the airline company in the industry by improving and enhancing their efficiency and effectiveness of system. This can be achieved by having a simpler and combination of processing for instance in purchasing for air flight ticket. Add On Services Other than all these SIA can also venture into providing add on services or we can say it as a package for the customer. For instance, SIA can collaborate with hotel to provide a flight ticket and accommodation in one price. Or they can also provide flight with a tour package with any local tour company. Basically all of the mentioned above will helps SIA to further create sustainable competitive advantages that will differentiate them from other airline company.

References
1. Airlines, S. (2007). Singapore Airlines. Singapore Airlines, 2008. 2. Airlines, S. Annual Report: Operating Review. Singapore Airlines. 3. Allen, R. (1990). SIA: Take-off to Success. Singapore Airlines. 4. Chan, D. (2000). The Story of Singapore Airlines and the Singapore Girl. Journal of Management Development, 19(6), 456-472. 5. Chong, M. (2007). The Role of Internal Communication and Training in Infusing Corporate Values and Delivering Brand Promise: Singapore Airlines' experience. Corporate Reputation Review, 10(3), 201-212. 6. Doyle, P. (1992). Building Successful Brands: the Strategic Options. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 1(4), 5-20. 7. Heracleous, L., & Wirtz, J. (2010). Singapore Airlines Balancing Act. Harvard Business Review, 88(7), 145-149. 8. Heracleous, L., & Wirtz, J. (2012). Strategy and Organisation at Singapore Airlines: Achieving Sustainable Advantage Through Dual Strategy. In Energy, Transport, & the Environment (pp. 479493). Springer London. 9. Heracleous, L., Wirtz, J., & Johnston, R. (2004). Cost-Effective Service Excellence: Lessons from Singapore Airlines. Business Strategy Review, 15(1), 33-38. 10. Heracleous, L., Wirtz, J., & Johnston, R. (2005). Kung-fu Service Development at Singapore Airlines. Business Strategy Review, 16(4), 26-31. 11. Leggett, C. (1984). Airline Pilots and Public Industrial Relations: The Case of Singapore Airlines. Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, 27-43. 12. Wirtz, J., & Johnston, R. (2003). Singapore Airlines: What it Takes to Sustain Service Excellence a Senior Management Perspective. Managing Service Quality, 13(1), 10-19. 13. Wirtz, J., Heracleous, L., & Pangarkar, N. (2008). Managing Human Resources for Service Excellence and Cost Effectiveness at Singapore Airlines. Managing Service Quality, 18(1), 4-19. 14. Yeong, W. Y., Chang, Z. Y., & Loh, L. (1996). The Quest for Global Quality: A Manifestation of Total Quality Management by Singapore Airlines. Addison-Wesley Publ..

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