Developing a marketing strategy for national Railcards

The Young Persons Railcard, Family Railcard and Senior Railcard have been available for many years on Britains railways, with an upfront cost of 20 for the Railcard allowing a 34% discount on rail travel for one year subject to certain restrictions. The Railcards are known to generate off-peak travel, and therefore expanding their take-up can create additional off peak revenue and use up spare capacity on the railways. The optimum formulation of the Railcards has never been analysed. In-depth customer research was undertaken, including stated preference to value the different attributes of the products, in order to identify product and brand improvements that will drive sales and increase revenue. In this paper we present quantitative findings from this research which is being used to drive a marketing strategy and changes to the Railcard formulations. A revenue model was created for each of the three Railcards, based on the respondents in the on-train survey and using the results from the stated preference survey, to estimate the revenue that would be generated with different formulations of Railcard. The research concluded that although the Railcards were not perceived as having a brand identity, they had a high brand utility value and attract considerable customer loyalty. To grow the customer base, marketing initiatives should focus on increasing basic product awareness among eligible non-purchasers, correcting false awareness over eligibility particularly among Family Railcard and Young Persons Railcard potential purchasers, and focusing on first-time purchases among the rail-inexperienced. In order to maximise revenue, it was recommended that some of the restrictions on the Railcards should be removed, with limited increases in other restrictions, and an overall standardisation across Railcards. For the covering abstract see ITRD E137145.