Ryanair’s Southwest Knockoff

Distribution, Ryanair, Southwest, Technology

I’m guessing that most of you who read this blog know about Southwest’s “Ding!” application. In short, you download a program that stays open on your computer. If you’re connected to the internet, you will receive an alert when Southwest publishes special sale fares. These can sometimes be up for only a couple of hours, and you’ll only be able to access them by clicking on a link in the application. The last couple of weeks, Southwest has made a splash with a lot of $25 to $50 one way fares throughout the US and you could only find them on Ding!.

It’s a great program because it enables Southwest to keep in constant contact with its customers. If they keep it up with compelling content, they have a very captive audience that acts like Pavlov’s dog any time they hear the ding alert. So it was only a matter of time before others followed the same strategy. I just didn’t know it would be such a blatant rip-off. Behold, Ryanair’s Bing! application.

07_04_26 bingding

Um, yeah. It’s the one on the left, looking eerily similar to Ding! over on the right. And it works the same way too.

07_04_26 bingdingsystrayThe application sits in your system tray (in your start bar on Windows) and then a little envelope shows up when deals arrive. Click it and it opens those windows with a link to see the deals.

It’s definitely unreal how little effort Ryanair put into this thing in terms of creativity. Nice work, Southwest, for creating a program others want to steal so badly that they can’t even be bothered to tweak it.

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3 comments on “Ryanair’s Southwest Knockoff

  1. I guess if it’s not broken, they felt that they didn’t have to fix it (the marketing strategy). Since they’re not direct competitors–and if Southwest has no patent or copyright on the format (which is surprising if they don’t)–then I guess SWA has no legal recourse.

    As an aside, I hope those e0.01 May fares are still floating around. I’ve got to book a couple of RyanAir flights today.

  2. On Saturday last week i made Rayonair Bing conformed. Now Monday it dosnot work any more at my PC. Please let me know what happens. If possible please in Deutsch.

    Thank You

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