TripAdvisor Marketing Strategy & Marketing Mix (4Ps)
Marketing Strategy of TripAdvisor analyzes the brand with the marketing mix framework which covers the 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion). These business strategies, based on TripAdvisor marketing mix, help the brand succeed in the market. Let us start the TripAdvisor Marketing Strategy & Mix to understand its product, pricing, advertising & distribution strategies:
Quick Glance:
TripAdvisor Product Strategy:
The product strategy and mix in TripAdvisor marketing strategy can be explained as follows:
TripAdvisor is one of the leading travel websites giving information, reviews, booking options on tourist places, hotels, travel etc. TripAdvisor’s products are travel associated items with a wide coverage and wider access across regions. Main services in its marketing mix product portfolio are the details of restaurant guides, bookings for hotels, bookings for flights, and travels, renting facilities for vacations, best places to visit, advice for new travelers which gives a comprehensive suggestions and advices as to where to live, where to eat, what to do, how to travel there, etc. The site is full of reviews and opinions about the hotels, restaurants, places of visit, dos and don’ts.
The site is full of pictures and videos and expert blogs about famous as well as unexplored places, etc. User/visitor-driven content is used by TripAdvisor. In this way, the users themselves make newer content and provide better and updated information.
Image: flickr.com/photos/jdlasica
TripAdvisor Price/Pricing Strategy:
Below is the pricing strategy in TripAdvisor marketing strategy:
TripAdvisor site is free for all and gives travel bookings, hotel bookings, etc. at no operational costs.
It also gives access to its users. The users are not required to even log in for such services. The idea behind this type of free services are that the main revenue generating streams of the company are its advertisements. TripAdvisor rents out space to all kinds of advertisers. Its target audience by virtue of its suggested places and the blogs is thought to be the mid and high income level families. Hence the companies having content directed towards these customers are usually the companies who rent advertisement space from TripAdvisor. Advertisement income is also of 2 types, one being the screen times of ads and the other the number of clicks the ads generates to the sites of the ad-renting companies. TripAdvisor is the one which uses clicks more to generate revenue.
Read more about TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor Place & Distribution Strategy:
Following is the distribution strategy in the TripAdvisor marketing mix:
Immediate and robust information system and blogs are available to the people. Major clients are mid and high-income travelers who use all type of devices. This is possible because TripAdvisor is accessible in all types of OS. The goal for distribution of a service company is being more accessible and also being available at all places. TripAdvisor by developing their software to be operational in all kinds of OS achieves this. Its reach has spread over a large number of countries like India, Japan, the U.S., Russia, Spain, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico, Netherlands, etc.
The number of employees are relatively low and only around 3000 people are with the brand.
TripAdvisor Promotion & Advertising Strategy:
The promotional and advertising strategy in the TripAdvisor marketing strategy is as follows:
TripAdvisor’s major promotional activities are integrated to the fact that it is free for all, this meant that it gave access to its critical and important information it had collected for free to anyone who visits the sites. It was one of the first companies to do so. This enabled the site to garner huge traffic and hence it grew very fast. TripAdvisor boasts of having more than 300 million members of the site and having more than 450 million reviews of various different hotels, food joints, places, etc. This then encouraged many companies involved in both hotel and travel or tourism industries to use their ad-space and also allow TripAdvisor to book on their behalf hence being a win-win situation and also enabling trip advisor to grow rapidly and this became the major reason for their rapid promotion. The company has authenticity checking measures which doesn't allow machine generated reviews or automatic reviews. This increases consumer confidence. Availability in local and regional languages for better consumer connect and better outreach as well has help TripAdvisor grow.
Since this is a service marketing brand, here are the other three Ps to make it the 7Ps marketing mix of TripAdvisor.
People:
TripAdvisor focuses a lot on its people strategy ie its customers and staff. Given that it is a user-generated content site, its requirement of employees is quite minimal. Still there are many things which the people in the company have to do like looking for fraud reviews, writing blogs, travel information provision, communication with the hotels and airlines, connecting with different local agents, site development, top management roles, etc. These all requirements are met by more than 3000 staff globally. TripAdvisor strictly follows all the HR regulations like minimum pay and has many benefits systems for its human resource.
Process:
An efficient way is developed in which the services are delivered. TripAdvisor excels in this regard with an easily accessible website. It uses search optimization and other information analysis systems to optimize its website. TripAdvisor website is user-friendly and has various options with also sequential data with sorting options also provided to the visitors.
Physical Evidence:
TripAdvisor website is the biggest physical evidence for the brand. Its offices are the physical contact between its staff and the outside world. Its offices are best in class with comfortable environment, furniture of the highest order, a point of contact in terms of a receptionist and all the other features of a good office. Other physical evidence are the customers and its staff themselves who are the real world marketers of the company. Hence this completes the TripAdvisor marketing mix.
About TripAdvisor:
TripAdvisor is one of the largest and most famous travel and online flight and hotel booking websites of the world. It is headquartered and was started in Massachusetts, U.S in the year 2000. Its founder is Stephen Kaufer. It has many subsidiaries under it like TripAdvisor LLC, SmarterTravel, Family Vacation Critic, etc.
It made a revenue of over US$ 1.4 Billion in 2015. It has its presence in more than 50 countries.
This article has been researched & authored by the Content & Research Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.
Browse marketing strategy and 4Ps analysis of more brands similar to TripAdvisor. The Marketing Strategy & Mix section covers 4Ps and 7Ps of more than 800 brands in 2 categories.
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