3.1 Methodology
The research is an exploratory study by nature and uses a deductive approach. The method used in this research is observation, and the empirical data collected is primarily qualitative data. The aviation entities 2018/2019 sustainability reports are studied and analyzed, alongside sections on environmental issues in the European airline industry, general information on CER, as well as marketing communications and social media, to form a basis for the research. For the sustainability reports, the information found is used to answer the first research question, “What CER target areas and actions do Finnair, Lufthansa Group and Air France-KLM Group currently include in their operations?” Due to the length of the reports, the CER targets and actions of the airlines are summarized in tables and graphs to ease understanding and analysis.
In addition, the Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts of these aviation entities are observed. For Lufthansa Group, Facebook and Instagram observation focuses on the Lufthansa account, as there appears to be no separate account for the whole Lufthansa Group. For Air France-KLM Group, Facebook and Instagram observation is conducted on both Air France and KLM’s separate accounts, as there appears to be no common account for the group on these platforms. The findings are then combined into a common value.
The observation of the social media accounts focuses on finding CER-related posts and counting them, grouping them accordingly to their theme and whether they are a video, plain text or text with (a) picture(s). For each studied company, posts and sections on the companies’ social media accounts are considered CER-related when they fulfill the following requirements:
1) They include at least one of the following keywords; sustainability, environment, environmental footprint/impact, pollution, plastic, single-use, packaging, climate, climate policy, emission, carbon, CO₂, waste, recycling, upcycling, biocomponent, biofuel, sustainable aviation fuel, fuel, bio, energy-efficiency/consumption, clean energy, noise-reduction, noise-abatement, noise (level/disturbance), emissions compensation, weight, on-demand concept, environmental strategy/management, sustainable development,
solar power, route optimization, CER, CSR, eco-piloting/flying, green operations or a combination of the above words
or
The post includes logos, imagery or graphs that can be interpreted by an average viewer to be related to environmental responsibility topics (for example; nature, plastic packaging, pollution)
and
The overall content of the post or section can be judged by an average viewer to be related to environmental responsibility topics.
The researcher observes and counts each studied aviation entity’s total amount of CER-related posts, the amount of CER-CER-related posts per observed social media platform, total amount of related posts with a link to further information, percentage of CER-related posts out of all posts and percentage of CER-CER-related posts per studied social media platform. In addition, based on the keywords and imagery, the CER-posts will be categorized into ten main categories; 1. fuel usage, emissions & CO₂-related 2. energy consumption & saving, solar power 3. plastic, materials, packaging, waste 4. noise 5.
cabin-related 6. weight 7. environment & nature 8. recycling & upcycling 9. sustainable and biofuel 10. general CER. One posts can belong to several categories, depending on the mentioned keywords and imagery. The CER-related posts will also be grouped based on their type; videos, images with text and plain text-posts.
On Facebook, only posts in the feed are counted, as at the time of the research, Facebook did not offer a saved stories-function to access published Facebook stories from the past. For Instagram, “highlighted” (saved) stories are included separately in the post count. One highlight of maximum 10 story slides is counted as one post, a highlight with 10-20 slides is counted as two posts and so on. This is because the maximum amount of videos or pictures in one standard Instagram feed post is 10. (Constine, 2017) The observation and counting of the posts, keywords and imagery are done manually, and the findings are then converted into tables and graphs. The numeric values are converted into percentages where appropriate to allow for a more efficient analysis.
After conducting the study on the aviation entities’ sustainability reports and previously mentioned social media platforms, an analysis and comparison between the three
aviation entities takes place. This comparison focuses on the different ways the airlines are communicating about CER-related topics on social media, if at all. It also explores the possible differences in the content, types, and quantity of social media coverage that the airlines are giving CER.
Finally, conclusions are drawn based on the analysis of the sustainability reports, social media CER-marketing communications observation and comparisons, where appropriate. Recommendations will be given as part of the conclusion.
3.2 Timeframe
Timeframe of literature and sustainability report overview: May-September 2019 Observed timeframe on social media: May 20th, 2019, until September 20th, 2019.
Timeframe of observation of social media: September-October 2019
The length of the observed timeframe is four months as the researcher estimated this to be long enough to give an indication of the aviation entities’ posting styles. The observed timeframe was set to be from May 20th until September 20th, 2019, because this was the most recent four-month period before the start of the observation.
3.3 Limitations
As the social media platforms are observed for keywords and imagery manually, and the data is also collected and analyzed manually, there is a risk for human errors. This risk of miscalculating or missing significant points while observing is minimalized by re-checking the social media platforms twice to make sure that no posts were missed. In addition, the platforms were checked for a timeframe of seven days prior and after the observed period to detect any posts from the observed timeframe that the platform algorithm would have placed before or after posts outside of the timeframe. To avoid errors when analyzing the data, the numbers and percentages are calculated twice to detect any possible mistakes.
Due to the length and detail of the sustainability reports, the main findings regarding the first research question are summarized to make analyzing more efficient. The researcher
aims at being as objective as possible when reading the sustainability reports and making the summaries to minimize the risk of subjective analysis.
When choosing the keywords and imagery for the categorizing of the CER-posts, the researcher aims at being as objective as possible and eliminates keywords that do not have an obvious relation to CER-issues or that could not be objectively classified as being related to CER.
Due to the observatory nature of the study, some subjectivity is unavoidable in terms of what posts are classified as CER and the grouping of the CER-topics accordingly to theme. To minimize this subjectivity and to gain validity, only terms and imagery widely used in aviation sustainability reports are accepted as keywords.