Unit 8 Case Study
MT330-01 International Marketing
Kaplan University
Christina Olson
November 14, 2011
Airline manufacturers must compete with one another to be successful, and have the most birds in the sky. Boeing and Airbus are the two largest manufacturers for commercial aircraft, especially those used for long flights. Iberia Airlines wanted to purchase up to 12 brand new jumbo jets from one of these manufacturers. Enrique Dupuy, Iberia’s CFO, set a price that he wanted the company to pay for the aircraft and then started a bidding war between the two super jumbo jet manufacturers. Negotiation between two major companies like Airbus and Boeing can make a marketing strategy very strong or the complete opposite, it can cause a strategy to crumble to pieces in an instant. Airbus and Boeing both have dedicated sales representatives, Bight of Boeing and Leahy to their jobs very serious and developed a marketing plan like none other. These two gentlemen understood one important thing when it comes to marketing, plans must be able to adapt to change at any given moment. Prior to the beginning of the negotiation Airbus had an advantage of Boeing. Iberia Airline were currently using the manufacturers largest plane (Michaels, 2003). Airbus had already established a solid reputation with the airline company. …show more content…
Another aspect of a marketing strategy should have been safety and consumer choice. Airbus was noted to have a system that not all pilots trust “Fly-by-the-wire,” causing planes to malfunction and plunge 100s of feet in seconds (Bland, 2009). Both of these factors can play a major role in how many passengers choose to fly with one airline company over another because of the aircraft used. Had either of the manufacturers used these two simple areas in their marketing strategy the negotiation outcome could have been