Carnival Cruise Lines Case Essay Example
Situation
Carnival has a strong market expansion strategy for selling the mass-market cruise category and first-time cruisers. They have a clear vision and knowledge about the industry and a commitment to their brand essence, which is fun.
Problem Statement
One area that Carnival needs to improve upon in order to stay competitive within the industry is information technology. Carnival has a large IS group, but the focus has been on maintenance and operations of the existing infrastructure. In order to gain new customers they need to know who to market. By analyzing customer data they could find out who to focus their marketing efforts on.
Analysis
Management at Carnival had been discussing what strategy to use in order to personalize their marketing to the customer and how to make them loyal customers. One option was to use CRM software. By utilizing the customer information within their database, they can create a strong CRM program that will differentiate Carnival from competitor cruise lines and ultimately other land vacation destinations. Also, CRM would help with cross selling. CRM had been a fad that had recently swept the industry, but due to Carnival's conservative stance toward IT they did not follow suit.
Recommendations and Next Steps
Once they are ready to implement the CRM system:
1. Make collecting the customer information as easy as possible. Either by adding fields on line that the customer must fill out in order to book the cruise or by simply downloading the data from their sail and sign card.
2. Have a central location for all the data to be stored.
3. The information needs to be easily accessible by the data analysts; The information also needs to be presented in an easy to understand format.
4. Data mining tools need to be used in order to organize the data so patterns can be identified. From there customers can be profiled and a sales and marketing strategy can be made.
5. Ultimately use the information to
Carnival has a strong market expansion strategy for selling the mass-market cruise category and first-time cruisers. They have a clear vision and knowledge about the industry and a commitment to their brand essence, which is fun.
Problem Statement
One area that Carnival needs to improve upon in order to stay competitive within the industry is information technology. Carnival has a large IS group, but the focus has been on maintenance and operations of the existing infrastructure. In order to gain new customers they need to know who to market. By analyzing customer data they could find out who to focus their marketing efforts on.
Analysis
Management at Carnival had been discussing what strategy to use in order to personalize their marketing to the customer and how to make them loyal customers. One option was to use CRM software. By utilizing the customer information within their database, they can create a strong CRM program that will differentiate Carnival from competitor cruise lines and ultimately other land vacation destinations. Also, CRM would help with cross selling. CRM had been a fad that had recently swept the industry, but due to Carnival's conservative stance toward IT they did not follow suit.
Recommendations and Next Steps
Once they are ready to implement the CRM system:
1. Make collecting the customer information as easy as possible. Either by adding fields on line that the customer must fill out in order to book the cruise or by simply downloading the data from their sail and sign card.
2. Have a central location for all the data to be stored.
3. The information needs to be easily accessible by the data analysts; The information also needs to be presented in an easy to understand format.
4. Data mining tools need to be used in order to organize the data so patterns can be identified. From there customers can be profiled and a sales and marketing strategy can be made.
5. Ultimately use the information to