Social Media Recovery for Costa Crociere - Term Paper Example

?Social Media Recovery for Costa Crociere Table of Contents Introduction 3 A Brief Situation Analysis of Costa Crociere at the Time of the Accident 6A Brief Idea Regarding Social Media Marketing Plan 10 Strategy 10 Tactics 11 Action 13 Implementation 16 Control 16 Conclusion 17 References 18 Introduction Costa Crociere SpA is recognised as one of the biggest Italian groups in the tourism sector. It is also observed as one of the leading names in global cruise industry and is also regarded as a prestigious Cruise Line of the world. In the year 2010, the turnover of Costa Crociere amounted to 2.9 billion Euros, which was quite significant. The company possesses several well renowned as well as prestigious brands that include AIDA Cruises and lberocruceros among others (Costa Crociere SpA, 2012). Costa Crociere SpA generally operates their business trading functions as Costa Cruises. The initial foundation of the company was in the year 1854. It has its headquarters located in Genoa, Italy. The company performs its business operations throughout the world that include Northern Europe, Caribbean, South America and Dubai among other regions (Costa Crociere SpA, 2012). As a matter of fact, in the year 2010, Costa Crociere SpA proved itself as one of the companies that successfully reached up to the benchmark of Italian services and tourism especially for its reputation and reliability in the international research that is popularly known as “Global Reputation Pulse”. Furthermore, in the year 2011, Costa Crociere SpA emerged in the ranking of Mediobanca that carried out assessment of 3,700 Italian enterprises which ultimately made the company to reach a turnover of approximately 50 million Euros during that year. In this connection, the company or the group was ranked amid the top 10 companies in terms of profitability and productivity and also in terms of turnover (Costa Crociere SpA, 2012). Costa Cruise has been accredited with an incorporated arrangement of voluntary certification of conformity along with highest international benchmark towards the aspect of safety, quality, environment and social accountability. Costa Crociere is fundamentally denoted as an international company holding its several offices in different regions such as Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Zurich, Brussels and Lisbon among others. The company employs more than 19,000 working people throughout its organisation and is organised into a flexible arrangement of various human resource functions (Costa Crociere SpA, 2012). The prime vision of Costa Crociere is to serve better as well as with enhanced services to their worldwide customers with special regards to behaviour. The aspect of consumer satisfaction is the principal motive and also the mission of Costa Crociere. In terms of business operations, since the year 1997, especially Air France and Costa Cruises are the partners, sharing the similar vision or objective of delivering superior and enhanced services to their worldwide guests or customers along with maximising customer satisfaction (Costa Crociere SpA, 2012). In this connection, one of the partners of Costa Crociere i.e. Air France is an airline which operates in an international network and also performs its business operations in 182 cities in 98 countries. Air France offers more than 1,700 flights which generally covers numerous destinations throughout the world. The hub of Air France is recognised as one of the most efficient hubs in the entire Europe. Along with Costa Crociere, the main priority of Air France is to ensure ultimate customer satisfaction (Costa Crociere SpA, 2012). In the paper, a detailed analysis regarding the accident that Costa Crociere had faced along with certain weaknesses as well as threats that they faced due to the accident will be depicted. Various aspects that include preparation of a social marketing plan on behalf of Costa Crociere in terms of strategy, tactics, action, implementation and control will also be portrayed in the discussion. A Brief Situation Analysis of Costa Crociere at the Time of the Accident Costa Crociere’s cruise ship named Costa Concordia faced with a major accident in the month of January of 2012 close to the island located in coast of Italy. The entire authority of Costa Cruises or Costa Crociere was very much saddened regarding the accident that they had faced very recently in this year 2012. Costa Crociere made deliberate efforts in order to perform rescue operations along with supporting the ongoing research making sure that the guests or the customers as well as the crewmembers could return into their home safely. The utmost priority for the company in this connection regarding the accident was to deliver utmost security of its guests and crewmembers along with showing concern towards the ecological impacts. The company deliberately monitored the accident by engaging one of the leading global specialised companies dealing with rescue operations in order to form an action strategy for the protection and safety of the guests along with the crewmembers. Furthermore, the company also kept in touch with the investigators in order to detect what happened exactly and what exactly went wrong leading towards the accident (Costa Crociere SpA, 2012). Costa Cruises commented on the web and to a news channel as well that the company had performed an internal investigation and generated a detailed report which is positively shared with the flag state authorities. The company had no intention of disclosing the internal investigation report that it made regarding the accident until the final investigation is not completed. It has been identified that the accident mainly took place because of the human mistake that was made by the Captain of the ship (Cox, 2012). Moreover, in context with the accident, Costa Crociere announced a proposal based upon compensation that would be provided to the guests or the victims along with their families who were involved with the tragic accident that took place in the beginning of this year. The company deeply apologised for the damages that were caused to its victims or guests due to the accident and as a result the company declared for the reimbursement package (Costa Crociere SpA, 2012). In this connection, the reimbursement package that the company declared for the victims include a considerable amount of 11,000 Euros that would be payable to all the guests including the non-paying children, regardless of their age and repayment if there prevails any sort of bearable medical expenditures. Moreover, the package also includes recompensation of expenditures relating with the onboard function during the cruise, bus and air transfer charges that comprised in the cruise recompense package if any and full compensation regarding the travelling expenditures while returning from the accident spot (Costa Crociere SpA, 2012). From the perspective of the online reputation situation analysis of the company, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chairman of Costa Crociere i.e. Pier Luigi Foschi responded that the accident was chiefly caused because of the human mistake that was made by the Captain of the ship and the entire authority of the company along with it Pier Luigi Foschi also could not deny this particular fact of human mistake that largely led towards the accident. At the same time, Pier Luigi Foschi admired its crew members regarding the handling procedure of the crisis and believed that the accident would not hurt the business of the company in terms of financial viewpoint in the long- term. Furthermore, he was also convinced of the fact that the reputation of the company will recover soon as well as it will be able to deliver extra support and safety towards its worldwide customers (Meichtry & Castonguay, 2012). After the occurrence of the accident, Costa Crociere had to provide with various sort of answers towards the media and also presented them with deep regret along with providing remedial measures towards its loyal guests or customers or the victims of the accident. The company along with the senior management officials had to face certain sort of harassments in order to provide various kinds of logical explanations to different people. This is one of the major weaknesses that had been faced by the company after the accident. Along with this crucial weakness, the company also faced certain significant threats. The most imperative threat that was faced by the company was regarding the emergence of other cruise lines such as Royal Caribbean and Disney among others that took the advantage of attracting the customers or guests to travel in their cruise after the accident that was faced by Costa Crociere. Thus, it can be stated that the rapid emergence of other cruise lines or competitors of Cost Crociere ultimately posed a significant threat towards the company (Costa Crociere SpA, 2012). Apart from the weaknesses and possible threats that are faced by Costa Crociere, the company focussed upon certain major aspects in terms of its opportunities and strengths. From the viewpoint regarding the strengths of the company, Costa Crociere strictly complies with every safety regulations and their working personnel are very much enthusiastically committed in order to deliver utmost security towards its worldwide guests or customers. With the motive of recovery after the accident took place, the company focussed greatly upon offering more superior as well as advanced security services for its guests. In terms of the opportunities, the company also focussed upon the financial terms by declaring reimbursement package towards the victims of the passengers which include various kinds of reimbursements that would be provided towards the victimised passengers or customers of Costa Crociere (Costa Crociere SpA, 2012). Costa Crociere greatly apologised for the accident that took place in the commencement of this year and they took certain major actions in order to recover from the miserable situation that generated due to the accident. The company in order to recover from the miserable situation announced various sorts of recompense packages along with focussed largely upon delivering more developed as well as enhanced security facilities towards its worldwide passengers. Apart from announcing various sorts of reimbursement packages, the company also took the action of delivering a program for psychological assistance towards the victimised passengers or guests. Besides, the company greatly focussed upon the payment facilities that would be offered towards the victimised guests or customers due to accident by making the compensation payments to be credited within one week of the proposal acceptance (Costa Crociere SpA, 2012). In order to come out from the miserable situation that was caused due to the accident, the company should not ignore the media regarding any information of the occurrence of the accident and should provide genuine, relevant and actual information to the media along with keeping them updated by conducting press releases periodically. Along with this important fact, the company should also largely focus upon delivering superior safety conditions for the customers along with properly managing the announced compensation packages that would be offered to victimised passengers or the guests. A Brief Idea Regarding Social Media Marketing Plan A social media marketing plan is regarded as the scope as well as the direction of a social media that makes deliberate efforts which are very much useful in the long-term for the purpose of attaining several benefits related with any organisation along with complying with the utmost requirement of the customers along with fulfilling the opportunities of the stakeholders. The main motive in order to execute as well as to follow a social marketing plan or strategy is to produce greater awareness regarding the various resources that are available within an organisation which would create a long-term advantage for the organisation (Evans, 2012). In this connection, a social media marketing plan or strategy would be depicted for Costa Crociere for the purpose of attaining speed in terms of trust, reputation and bookings after the occurrence of the accident. The proposed social media marketing plan would comprise certain important facets that include strategy, tactics, actions, implementation and control. Strategy The editorial proposition on social media platforms acts as a powerful way in order to disseminate information regarding any organisation for sustaining its brand awareness and equity. In this context, Costa Crociere would have to develop their social pages to communicate along with to maintain a sustainable interrelation with its worldwide passengers along with their families. Apart from the execution of the social media platforms, the other strategy could be regarding their target groups’ segmentation along with related diversification. Costa Crociere could make the segmentation of their target groups by forming a business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) level of customer bases with the help of their social pages. The B2B customer base level would include the other cruise lines or the competitors of Costa Crociere and the B2C customer base level would comprise its worldwide guests or passengers. From the perspective of the integration with sales promotion and distribution channels, it has been recognised that the major distribution channel especially for the cruise line based companies would be the travel agencies in the upcoming years that will deal with approximately 85-90% of all cruise bookings (Amadeus IT, 2011). In this regard, Costa Crociere could develop their social pages in such a way so that they can easily communicate with the travel agencies in order to augment significant number of cruise bookings by a certain level (Amadeus IT, 2011). For the purpose of attaining trust, reputation and greater number of cruise bookings, Costa Crociere might execute certain social marketing media tools that include blogging, social networking pages, photos and videos sharing through social sites, message boards and chat rooms. It has been recognised that Costa Crociere had executed one of the instruments relating to social marketing media i.e. social pages in order to deliver latest information along with smoothly communicating with the passengers along with their families (Costa Crociere SpA, 2012). Tactics The conception of social media marketing is acknowledged as one of the most effective and powerful tools in order to build trust and demand and to generate brand awareness. As Costa Crociere is active in various social networking websites such as Facebook, the company would have to engage their worldwide customers or users into their social pages by delivering latest information and updates through sharing various sorts of photos and videos or through executing message boards as well. This particular approach of making engagement of its customers and users into their social pages might assist and support Costa Crociere in order to build their trust, reputation and bookings by a significant level. Costa Crociere can also adopt certain sort of e-CRM techniques, also known as electronic customer relationship management standard for the purpose of successfully building the trust of consumers and enhancing reputation in front of its global passengers or guests. The aspect of e-CRM is regarded as a form of establishing an effective interrelation especially with the customers by focusing upon the execution of information technology. The conception of e-CRM is very much effective and essential for the purpose of enhancing competitive benefit in the long-term along with attracting more customers which would ultimately help a particular business organisation to build their trust and reputation. Moreover, this particular approach of an effective e-CRM can support the business organisations to attain their expected business targets by a considerable level (Kelley et. al., 2003). Costa Crociere can make use of several effective e-CRM techniques such as internet, email and wireless technologies to establish smooth interrelation with the customers for the purpose of increasing their business opportunities along with raising the customer loyalty. Moreover, the company can use their social pages in order to form effective electronic customer relationship management which might help the company to attain trust, reputation and bookings. Action The chief task for Costa Crociere would be to build an effective customer relationship by the execution of its social pages in order to develop proper communication with its worldwide customers. In relation to the accident that was faced by the company, it should make best use of its social pages by delivering latest updates through sharing of the videos or photos. From this particular process of video or photo sharing in the social pages, the customers can attain useful information regarding the accident and thus Costa Crociere might be able to retain the trust, reputation along with large number of cruise bookings. Moreover, the company would have to focus upon its both the customer base levels i.e. B2B and B2C by a large extent through proper execution of the electronic customer relationship management technique. From the perspective of B2B customer level base, Costa Crociere would have to deliver remarkable as well as world class services as well as products that are more advanced and superior than its competitors. At the same time, from the viewpoint of the B2C customer level base, the company would also have to perform certain important actions towards its worldwide passengers or guests as customers that include augmenting protection and safety measures among other quality actions. By applying the actions upon both the customer level bases i.e. B2B and B2C, Costa Crociere might attain the loyalty, trust and reputation by a significant level. Costa Crociere possesses efficient resources in complying very firmly with security regulations and the working people belonging to the company are highly committed towards delivering superior protection for the global passengers or guests. It has been observed that all the crewmembers hold a certificate relating to Basic Safety Training (BST) and also are efficiently trained towards managing any sort of crises or emergencies. Moreover, Costa Crociere possesses an enhanced and a superior computerised system of delivering lifeboat and evacuation instruments for its worldwide guests or passengers. In addition, the company also offers better safety regulations towards its guests by providing various life-saving equipments which are all designed under international benchmark. All the ships of Costa Crociere are certified with international standards along with holding highest yardstick of technologies (Costa Crociere SpA, 2012). Costa Crociere should depict and inform about the above discussed available resources of the company through their social pages to the consumers, may be in the form of video and picture sharing so that the customers would be well aware of the company’s safety and security regulations that it offers to the passengers or guests. The customers could visit the social pages of the company and can acquire a better idea regarding the brand equity along with the various offered quality services of the company. By performing such actions, it can be stated that Costa Crociere might become successful to build its trust, reputation and loyalty towards its worldwide customers or passengers. Costa Crociere can adopt the planning of outsourcing as well as partnering for the purpose of attaining trust, loyalty, reputation and ultimately profitability by increasing greater number of cruise bookings. In order to fulfil these particular motives, Costa Crociere could outsource certain areas that include its design and development, analytics and content creation among others. The company could adopt the strategy of outsourcing its certain major areas in order to regain the faith and bookings. Along with outsourcing, the company could also opt for partnering to acquire certain major benefits for regaining the trust and ensuring that the company can acquire large number of cruise bookings. Thus, it can be stated that in terms of social marketing media plan, Costa Crociere can apply the strategy of partnering along with outsourcing in order to regain its reputation and trust. From the viewpoint of the social media marketing plan, Costa Crociere could greatly emphasise upon the human resources to regain its trust and reputation since the company faced the accident. The company should develop the social media guidelines especially for its working people to make them more effective for performing various sorts of obligations within the company. Moreover, the company could desire to develop the framework of social media to keep track of its working personnel upon their communal media behaviour with the customers as well as with the entire authority of the company. The company could deliver a superior and enhanced training of social media towards its working people in terms of in-house training and online courses among others. This particular deliverance of superior training towards the working people of Costa Crociere could ultimately enable it to form a cross-discipline among them which might support the company to regain its trust, bookings and reputation since the accident that was faced by the company. The aspect of timing is very much crucial for any organisation because it is the factor of timing which decides whether a particular goal will be attained or not within a stipulated epoch of time. In this connection, the company i.e. Costa Crociere requires to greatly focus especially upon the timing in order to regain its trust, reputation and large number of cruise bookings since the company had faced the accident. Implementation The key development tasks for Costa Crociere could be in its strategy aiming to attain or rebuild its trust, reputation and bookings that include forming effective relationship with the customers through its social pages, developing the social media guidelines for its working personnel and ultimately active engagement of the users or customers by applying e-CRM techniques or practices. The organisational team of the company should operate its business functions in a quite systematic and orderly way to preserve as well as to develop various working procedures within the entire company. Furthermore, the company should adequately implement the key development tasks along with organisational responsibilities which might support the company to attain trust, reputation and huge amount of bookings by a considerable level. Control For the purpose of implementing the social media marketing plan to regain loyalty, reputation and large number of cruise bookings, the company i.e. Costa Crociere should control certain business methods. The business methods for the company might be communicating certain useful messages and resourceful execution along with implementation of the element of social media for successfully conducting social media marketing plan. The company can undertake the measurement procedure for the above discussed business methods by the execution of the process of control as compared with other channel outcomes (Perreault & McCarthy, 2006). Conclusion Costa Crociere, which is considered as one of the renowned cruise brands, had recently faced a tragic accident in the beginning of this year. The company faced certain weaknesses as well as threats after the accident but managed to recover well from the miserable situation with the depiction of certain strengths and thus has been able to draw upon certain opportunities. A social media marketing plan has been depicted in this particular paper on behalf of Costa Crociere on the basis of strategy, tactics, action, implementation and control procedure. The company, if efficiently as well as positively follows the proposed social media marketing plan, it might be able to reinstate its trust, reputation and large number of cruise bookings by a significant level. 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