GERMANY: The Focus is On Airline Brands

Date Posted: 13 June 2008

The summer holiday season is just around the corner. According to a study of the BAT-foundation, last year the Germans went to holiday destinations on average 13.2 days, and this year nearly three quarters of German citizens plan to drive or fly on a holiday – it’s obvious that Germans have the travel bug. The question that arises is which airline can take most advantage of their “wanderlust”. In this context, it would be interesting to identify the different airlines’ brand positions from a public perspective.

With the BrandIndex, the brand management tool for 550 brands in Germany, surveying the opinions of 1,000 people daily, airline brands can be compared with respect to their brand positioning.

In the analysis of all airlines it can be seen that the brand Lufthansa is – as expected – in the best position in Germany. Although the image of the brand gradually lost points in the first quarter, Lufthansa still gets the best rating in the BrandIndex with about 30 points in all surveyed aspects.

It’s interesting that the airline rated second-best is a budget flight company: since the beginning of the year, Air Berlin has a constant position above the BrandIndex-mark of 20 points for all aspects. It is followed by the brands LTU and Condor, both who have been achieving between 10 and 20 points every day since January 2008.

The majority of airlines have between 0 and 10 points. Only single airline brands sporadically achieved ratings in the negative area. EasyJet, Ryanair and Iberia bring up the rear in the public brand-evaluation: all of them constantly achieve negative ratings. For example, since January, an ever increasing part of the daily 1,000 surveyed people have given more negative than positive evaluations of the brands. This is not a surprising result for Ryanair or EasyJet, as they justify any kind of advertising, even against the customers’ reactance, with cheap prices, and maintain a consciously polarising public communication – but for the well-established brand Iberia, it definitely is. This might be due to last year’s total losses of two airplanes. Although no people were injured, public news weighed heavily on the brand. Furthermore, Spain’s biggest airline is in the red; and, a takeover by British Airways is currently blocked for political reasons.

The BrandIndex results show that regarding brand image, public perception does not vote for or against budget airlines, as both – budget and traditional – can be found at all levels on the ranking.

Boris Hedde, BrandIndex Germany

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