What's Paramount ?

I was reading a magazine on marketing a few days back and I came across an article on Paramount arlines. I have heard of this player in the airline industry and could even recognize its blue signature color, but what I didnt know was that it caters to only the premium segment. It only serves the business class and has no provision for economy class at all.

Well, this strategy may be the USP of the brand as none of its competitors has ever served just the business class. The USP of a brand helps attain the competitive advantage that is sustainable (Sustainable Competitive Advantage). Of course, this unique targeting of business consumers has given the airlines an edge, which is evident from the fact that the Paramount airlines has captured 27% market share in Southern Indian within a span of less than 3years. The airlines has ambitious plans to extend its services to north and north east India. Also, the airlines plans to go international after 2011, when it completes 5years of operation in the domestic market.

As such, Paramount has sucessfully been able to use its unique targeting strategy as its USP, but I guess the utility of this strategy is subjective than being objective. When the market was booming and economy was doing well, Paramount could have expected to extract the maximum out of its space or seat utility. But in times of recession, when the companies are into cost cutting, even the executives who are the target customers of Paramount airlines may travel in economy class.

Airlines sector is the one which is most badly hit by recession. The giants like Kingfisher and Air India have suffered huge losses. Kingfisher is trying to compensate for its losses through its low cost variant, Kingfisher Red and even Air India is seriously considering revision of its pricing policies.

As such, the unique targeting isn't a USP of Paramount airlines as USP helps you gain long term advantages, which hasn't been the case. USP isn't subject to subjectivity, rather it is objective which helps a brand to get out of adversities by differentiating from the competition.

When companies build brands, there are several criteria that must be kept in mind. The brand elements and associations must have six elements including memorability, meaningfulness, likability, tranferabilty, adaptability and protectability. The first three elements are offensive in nature and help in building brand equity while the latter three are defensive that help in maintaining brand equity.

I guess the offensive criteria for brand building are in place for Paramount which is evident from its growth figures, but I really suspect the defensive critera. The brand lacks the elements of tranferabilty and adaptability in the gross era of recession. I think Paramount airlines has missed on this Paramount part of a successful business strategy.

Let us just wait and watch and see how Paramount countinues to grow or move towards downfall.