ISORG - Mini Research Project

Singapore Airlines (SIA), is one of the leading Airlines in the world who has been operating for over 60 years. Compare to other airlines who emphasize more on their aircraft and services in general, SIA emphasize greatly on innovation, flight safety and excellent services of their flight crews. One of the successful publications of Singapore Airlines advertisement is no other than the “Singapore Air Stewardess”.

Over the years, SIA have revolved from three flights per week in the beginning till today where they have route their network to over 103 destinations in 41 countries.

On 25 Oct 2007, SIA makes a historic move in the Aviation Industry when A380 made its maiden flight from Singapore to Sydney. This aircraft was the world’s largest passenger aircraft where it can carry twice as much of the passengers compare to the usual aircraft.

The purpose of developing a SIA website is to encourage people around the world to access the website for the information they need anytime, anywhere without the hassle of going down to the actual SIA storefront. With the existence of the website, booking flight tickets become more efficient and convenient.

People who wish to know more about Singapore Airlines can also obtain the information through the website where complex and interactive information are available for them to browse. These interactive guides include the service on enrolling as a member of the Loyalty Program (KrisFlyer) and checking out the latest updates or promotions KrisFlyer offered.

Customers with any enquires can get assistance from the “Help” section easily. Inflight Entertainment is also available on the website, where it helps to advertise the different entertainments customer will enjoy while traveling with Singapore Airlines. Besides that, information on the arrival and departure time of any SQ Flight are available in Flight Status section.

To facilitate flexible payments system, SIA accepts the following mode of payments:

Credit Card
i. Visa
ii. MasterCard
iii. American Express
iv. Diners

Debit Card
i. Visa
ii. MasterCard

Direct Debit
i. eNets
ii. Sino Payments

Securities

To prevent any intruders or hackers obtaining confidential information of their customer, SIA website employs VeriSign, the 128-bit Secure Socket Layer Certificate (SSL), which is one of the strongest encryption technologies. Therefore, all confidential online sessions transmitted between the customer and Singapore Airlines are securely protected. In order to provide a Safe and Secure Online Shopping environment, various Credit Card Securities such as MasterCard Securecode and Verified by Visa were used to protect the customer’s credit card information.

Besides VeriSign and Credit Card Securities, Booking transactions will automatically timeout after ten minutes of inactivity. This creates an add on to the SIA website security.

Business Model

Besides a website for online transactions, Singapore Airlines also have “Brick and Mortar” storefronts located in many countries where Customer officers are ready to assist customer with any enquires, flight reservations, problems encountered or any special request.


Business to Business (B2B)

As a member of Star Alliance network, SIA work with its global airline alliance to offer customers a worldwide and smooth travel experience. These airlines offer more than 18,100 daily flights to 975 destinations in 162 countries. Interline booking system is adopted by SIA to work with their airline alliance. This have helped to maintain competitive fares to their customers in the rigid world of competitions.

Singapore Airlines have also work with various Credit Card partners to offer incentives to customers. Customers can convert their various reward points into “KrisFlyer miles” (a point accumulating system) where they can exchange for flight tickets to their favourite destination.


Business to Consumer (B2C)

To ensure every customer’s comfort is well taken care, besides providing excellent services, warm towels are also provided to help passengers freshen up when they board the plane.

International culinary chefs and wine consultants are brought together to provide scrumptious, creative and high quality inflight cuisine for the passengers. Apart from the general cuisine, Customers can even book in advance for a gourmet main course from an extensive selection of fine-a-la carte dishes.

The check-in options are more flexible compare to many other Airlines. Apart from the usual airport check-in options, SIA introduce numerous check-in options too. These include Internet check-in, SMS check-in, telephone & fax check-in.

Customers are able to enroll as a KrisFlyer member through the SIA website to enjoy the privileges and the promotions KrisFlyer had offered. Members are able to earn and redeem their “KrisFlyer miles” on any SIA services or of any Krisflyer partners. These partners include the Star Alliance members, SilkAir, Virgin Atlantic, numerous hotel chains or car-hire companies.

The website emphasize on simplicity and user friendliness. The Web Designers have also put in efforts on the “Look and Feel” components where they have made the website very interactive and easily navigated.

Different shades of blue are used as the main theme colour where it easily reminds the audience of the SIA logo. This allow the audiences to feel the strong connection between Singapore Airlines and the website.


The following aspects of the web design were also taken care off:

i. The website had make used of plenty white space to allow better screen readability for the audiences.

ii. The menu bars and tabs have help the website look very organised. Audiences are able to navigate the website with ease.

iii. Return route (links) were used on the flight booking section where users are able to access to the previous webpage for any amendments they wish to make.

iv. Images used were very attractive and eye-catching. This helps to capture the audience attention.

Strengths

1. Although the fare prices are reflected in Singapore dollars (SGD). There is an icon for customers to click and view the fare prices in different currency rates.

2. Virtual Storefront, KrisShop provides a variety of Inflight products for customers to choose upon. Customers not traveling overseas may also purchase these products and request to have their products delivered to their doorstep.

3. Shopping cart in the KrisShop section is easy to navigate whereby customers can add or remove the selected item easily.

4. The website make use of interactive demo clips to provide customers a step-by-step guide the on the various services available for the KrisFlyer section. These services include the procedures to become a KrisFlyer member, earn and redeem KrisFlyer miles.

With the help of these visual guides, customers will able to have a better understanding on the various online procedures.

5. Interactive Inflight Entertainment are available on the website to help customers get an overview of what they would be enjoying in the flight. This is especially helpful to customers who will be traveling long distance where flight comfort and entertainment are one of their main concerns for the journey.

6. Information on the “Help” section is very complex. It has almost everything a user needs to know. Comprehensive solutions are avaliable to solve any problems users encountered.


Weakness

1. The typography size was relatively small. Audiences with weaker eye sight might have some difficulty reading them.

2. Pre-order products purchase from KrisShop is only available for collection on flights departing Singapore.

People nowadays are very busy compared to years before. Therefore, going down to a “Brick and Mortar” storefront might become a difficult task for them as they are being restricted with the business closing time.

So, to meet the changing business environment, traditional “brick and mortar” businesses are moving on to electronic-commerce business. Whereby people can do their research, obtain resources and complete online transactions anytime and anywhere they want without having to worry about the business closing time.

At the same time, with the increasing use of internet, people are trying to get the “Best Products/Services” by comparing the price, comments and quality against different Products/ Services. This help to spice up competition among the different competitors so that they would keep in pace with each other and get themselves motivated to keep improving.