Originally Posted by
Arctic Troll
In and of themselves, rankings like SuperBrands or Skytrax mean absolutely nothing. They're nice if you have a good ranking, it's a nice little badge for your website, but beyond that they mean nothing.
However if your brand reputation is dropping, especially in something like SuperBrands (which is assessed by surveys of the general population), it does matter a little bit more. It won't affect how many bums you get on your seats- anyone can fill a plane- but it will affect the yield. You can't charge a premium if your reputation is dirt, can you?
While I agree that the brand's reputation plays a significant role in how we shop, I don't think that the elements emphasized on FT (the so-called 'product') plays a significant part in how the brand of an airline is perceived. One only needs to consult the results of the IATA global survey to see that the top 3 factors that impact airline brand perception have nothing to do with food or specific seat design. Of course, many will never believe the results of a survey if they do not correspond to their views, however, passengers are behaving exactly as these surveys show and not at all as many on FT claim they should or would be.
Airline pricing has nothing to do with how highly their 'product' is thought of on Skytrax or FT or other rankings. Don't people brag here how they fly a vaaaaaaaaaaaaastly superior QR for half the price that BA wanted?
And we can also refer to the experience of AA that did experiment with offering more legroom and charging a premium, and we know how 'well' that ended. Quite why people still think that there are millions of passengers who are eager to pay more to get to their destination is unlcear. If all it took to charge a premium were to offer a better seat or more legroom or some food airlines would have been doing it.