Sport Aviation Marketing

general aviation’s blue ocean strategy

One of last year’s hottest business books was Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. Leaders in the general aviation industry would be wise to order a copy. According to the authors, “red oceans” are crowded with competitors while “blue oceans” represent untapped market space with the opportunity for highly profitable growth. Among the strategies for leveraging “blue oceans” are the following:

1. DO NOT compete in existing market space. INSTEAD you should create uncontested market space.
2. DO NOT beat the competition. INSTEAD you should make the competition irrelevant.
3. DO NOT exploit existing demand. INSTEAD you should create and capture new demand.

I’ve written about this previously but it is worthwhile enough, in my opinion, to repeat: Women represent a blue ocean for the aviation industry. Only 5.8% of today’s private pilots are female. What’s more shocking is that the percentage hasn’t changed in 15 years. What’s going on here? Does it have to be this way? Are only 5.8% of women really interested in flying? I think not.

Consider the field of medicine. in 1970 only 7.6% of physicians in the United States were female. By 2003 that had steadily climbed to 25.8%. This is still seems low but, unlike the aviation industry, there has been consistent progress. The aviation industry needs to adjust it’s methods for going to market to reach women more effectively.

If the aviation industry could achieve what the medical field has done it could result in over 100,000 new pilots. At first glance that seems to good to be true. However, I think we’ve all become too complacent with the with the glut that the industry has been in since it peaked at 827,000 pilots in 1980.

Broadening the base of female pilots could be the shot in the arm that the industry needs. There have been several instances in the history of aviation where the number of pilots has doubled or even tripled in under 10 years. We need to think big here - let’s make it happen again!

So which company will capture this blue ocean? Cirrus currently leads the industry in sales - can they capture the female demographic? The majority of today’s male pilots learned how to fly in a Cessna - are they capable of training a new segment of women pilots? The sport pilot rule lowers the price for entry - can Flight Design CT, CubCrafters, or one of the other LSA designs gain the market? It just takes a commitment from an industry leader willing to think outside the box.

Sources used for this post:
Women in Aviation, International
AOPA
American Medical Association

[tags]General Aviation, Women in Aviation, Aviation Marketing, Marketing to Women, Blue Ocean Strategy, W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne, AOPA, Cirrus, Cessna, Flight Design[/tags]

Add comment January 14th, 2006

new CubCrafters site

Job well done to CubCrafters! Since investing in a top-notch designer, Pierre Kotze, the company has launched a new, beautiful, and feature rich website. View it at: http://www.cubcrafters.com.

A few things that really set it apart:

1. Excellent use of typography - it really gives the feeling of a professional company and well-designed product.
2. First class photography - hard not to get excited about flying one of their planes.
3. The ability to watch your plane be built - nice use of Internet technology, webcams, etc…
4. Online ordering and configuration - hard to imagine buying a $100,000 product online but the CubCrafter site design and copy instills confidence by portraying a rock-solid and open company.

A couple of minor things I’d consider changing:

1. The navigation and design of the site is extremely consistent with one exception. When in either the Top Cub or Sport Cub sections of the site, the secondary navigation disappears forcing one to use the “Back” button to click on to the next page.
2. Reversed out type (white type on a black background) can be difficult to read on-screen and can pose issues with printing in certain circumstances.

Overall this is one of the top sites in the industry today. Take note everyone!

[tags]CubCrafters, Light Sport Aircraft, Online Marketing, Aviation Marketing[/tags]

Add comment January 14th, 2006

aopa and sport pilot

Over the last few days I’ve heard several people say that 2006 is the make or break year for sport pilot. I was surfing around recently and ended up on the AOPA site dedicated to sport pilot. It hasn’t been updated in nearly seven months. This is significant considering the thoroughness of the AOPA web communications. Does this mean AOPA believes sport pilot will break?

[tags]AOPA, Sport Pilot, Light Sport Aircraft[/tags]

Add comment January 14th, 2006