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Cost leadership strategies used in airlines
Cost, leadership, and differentiation
Cost, leadership, and differentiation
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Does Jet Blue have a Business-Level Strategy? What do you consider it to be and why?
Jet Blue does have a business level strategy. Jet Blue’s business level strategy can be characterized as a combination of cost leadership strategy and differentiation strategy.
• Jet Blue’s Cost Leadership is achieved by: o Low cost structure, efficient operations, smaller and productive non-union work force. o Use of technology and automated processes to reduce reservation, ticketing and customer services costs. Paperless cockpits, use of e-manuals, electronic ticketing, owning its own in-flight entertainment provider, automated baggage handling are some of the examples where Jet Blue’s use of technology has lowered operating costs. o Operating a fleet of
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Narrow focus on limited value chain activities, competitor’s pricing war and lack of differentiation parity can erode the competitive advantage associated with cost leadership strategy. Similarly, imitation of differentiating features by competition and lack of perceived value of the differentiating features can erode the competitive advantage associated with differentiation strategy. o Jet Blue’s strategy to use a combination of cost leadership and differentiation strategies at the same time in an integrated way helps Jet Blue to overcome any major drawbacks and risks associated with any of the standalone individual strategies. The components and enablers for Jet Blue’s low cost strategy and differentiation strategies are complimentary to each other and they mutually reinforce Jet Blue’s overall integrated combined business level strategy. This combination of low cost and differentiation strategies enables Jet Blue to provide a high quality low cost differentiated customer service experience. This helps Jet Blue create a unique value and also provides a unique competitive advantage for Jet Blue to outperform its competition and achieve long term …show more content…
The E190 CASM is approximately 12% higher than A320. The E190 RASM is 30% higher than A320. E190 also has significant lower acquisition costs compared to A320. This reduces the financial break-even point for the flight operation. Comparing to other regional jets, E190 also has 34% less fuel consumption and higher utilization (10-11 hours vs. 8 hours/day) while offering more seating capacity allowing Jet Blue to service wider range of destinations. Additionally, E190 and A320 both can be operated interchangeably during peak and off-peak hours depending upon the demand. Also, use of E190 to feed A320 customers improves utilization of existing airport facilities and reduced downtime for crew members. This synergy provided Jet Blue added flexibility and more efficient operation. These are some of the reasons why E190 makes it a more economical strategic choice as it is well aligned with the low cost element part of its business strategy and can continue to provide an advantage over its
The following value chain, which focuses on Spirit Airlines, is representative of most of the firms in the Ultra Low-Cost Airline industry. Spirit is the industry leader in many areas such as operational efficiencies/cost structure, aircraft fleet management, brand/network and growth. The firm, however, trails industry foes in areas such as customer service and operational reliability and recoverability. While most in this segment pursue the cost-leader competitive strategy, Spirit has demonstrated the most effective model to date – whether the model is the most sustainable remains to be seen.
Having a low cost of operations is one of the contributing factors to Southwest Airlines’ financial success. Such low cost model of the corporation is brought about by an effective strategy. Southwest uses only one type of aircraft – the fuel-efficient Boeing 737. This tactic keeps training and maintenance costs down. Moreover, the no-frills approach to customer service contributed to the low cost of operations for Southwest.
Adopting a strategy of differentiation makes firms provide products and services what are distinct in some way valued by customers.
As airline industry is a competitive marketplace, the airline companies use new technologies to improve their efficiency and decrease the overhead costs, including ‘advanced aircraft engine technology, IT solutions, and mobile technology’ (Cederholm 2014). The technology changes including technology improvement, new innovation and disruptive technology. The disruptive technology need to meet the characteristics of ‘simplicity, convenience, accessibility and affordability’ (Christensen 1995). The technology changes would bring both opportunities and threats to airline companies. Since Labour cost and fuel costs occupy 50% of most airlines operating cost (Groot 2014). Therefore, if new technologies could be disruptive in the two aspects, there will be important changes to current airline
Porter (1997) suggests in order to gain competitive advantages in the changing business environment, it is essential to design a generic strategy for the business: product differentiation or cost leadership. The competitive strategy is determined at round 2, when recognised our rivals held whole product profile which was the product differentiation strategy. To differentiate our strategy from rivals for competitive advantages, Digby designed to imply the cost
Business strategy is the means by which firm’s plans to achieve its goals and objectives. It can also be termed as organization long-term planning. The strategy covers periods between 3-5 years and sometimes longer. Businesses use two major types of strategy, general or generic and competitive strategies. The overall strategy involves strategies of growth, globalization and retrenchment. The competitive advantage includes low pricing, product and customer differentiation. We will look at the business strategy used by Marks and Spenser (Cole, 1997). The company is a British multinational located at Westminster London and specializes in clothes and luxurious food products.
Boeing’s market strategies have long-term focus. They believe very strongly in network-centric operation (NCO) is the key to the future of the military. They marketing people are involved in understanding the markets, customers, and where they’re going.
One of the many influences that affect Qantas is the presence of globalisation, which has heavily affected the airline both positively and negatively. Globalisation is a process which refers to the increased integration between different countries and economies as well as the increased impact of international influences on all aspects of life and economic activity. Globalisation is responsible for the removal of many trade barriers and the increased level of competition that Qantas has been exposed to. The increased levels of competition has increased consumer sovereignty and forced Qantas to implement strategies to gain a competitive advantage in order to redirect consumers towards their business. Qantas has implemented a cost leadership strategy as a response to globalisation and the influence of cost based competition. One way that Qantas achieved this was by using Globalisation itself to the business’ advantage. Globalisation ha...
Ryanair was founded with the intent of breaking up the air travel duopoly held by British Airways and Aer Lingus at the time (Ryanair, 2013). There isn’t a doubt that the goal was accomplished and continues to evolve. However, a new competitor has entered the market and threatens their “lowest fare anywhere” motto. EasyJet, founded in 1995 (Spotlight falls on, 2013) has emerged as another low cost carrier (Wensveen, 2011) and is keeping competition fierce as they try to exceed Ryanair customer service by providing “speedy boarding”, more flexible fares, guaranteed seats and better food service (Low cost airlines, 2013).
Emirates Airline, one of the globes leading airliners situated in Dubai, a city within the Middle East region has shown throughout its years of operations how the company has grown and become successful in the aviation industry. Much of this success is to its competitive strategy which has been pivotal to the company’s ability to compete against top airliners such as Air France and Lufthansa. Cost and Differentiation has been the main driving force for their competitive strategy which has enabled them to become efficient, capture market share and possess a large customer loyalty base due to their low costs in production and unique award winning services.
With regard to product, JetBlue is cornering the marketplace with its productivity, in-flight features, and customer service. Due to the fact that the company only purchases new planes of a single type, maintenance downtime is reduced and it is able to keep its planes in the air. In fact, JetBlue maintains the highest in-air average in the industry. Additionally, JetBlue employs an "operational recovery tool" technology that allows planners to minimize flight cancellations and delays. On board, JetBlue prides itself on treating all customers as equals and providing more comfort than other airlines.
The first initiative that they were able to gain in competitive advantage was the reduction of costs. They have been able to use an online system where consumers can reserve tickets avoiding which avoids using travel agents. Having this systems reduces costs for the company as well because they do not have to hire nearly as many as employees. Along with buying tickets, JetBlue has been able to use other systems to reduce costs which helps them with the maintenance of their planes and organizing information that involves every aspect of their business ranging from their planes to their employees and consumers. The second initiative that JetBlue uses is the creating of new services. By creating their new online services and systems they are able to gain competitive advantage because it allows easier and less expensive accessibility to their services. Not only have they created new services but they are able to differentiate these services from their competitors because of the easiness and quality of the services that they do provide. They not only focus on making their services the best but also the highest level of customer service that they can offer which other airlines struggle to do. Other competitors have realized that JetBlue is beating them in many aspects in the business that they have needed to adjust what they are doing to catch up. Even with the jumps in technology use with the other companies, JetBlue has still been able to enhance their services to continue to gain competitive
Service is an intangible product involving a deed, performance or effort that cannot be stored or physically processed, were customers directly participate in the production process. Product strategy is therefore very vital for the organization's success. It needs to be developed and manage very careful in order to be successful. British Airways product strategy includes flight services, quality of flights, various destinations across Europe and the world, executive class, business class, speed, security, support facilities and years of experience. It provides the basic product and various alternatives to satisfy all the different customer needs.
A successful business strategy will identify changes in the external trends in the market place. Plan out what the company’s future direction is. Set out the goals for the management team. It will identify a vision of where the company wants to be in the future. Keep all employees informed of the direction of the company.
Competitive strategy is the approach that an organisation takes in order to gain advantage over its competitors. According to Porter, there are two major sources of competitive advantages: costs and differentiation. Cost-based competitive advantage involves reducing production costs so that an organisation can earn higher profit margin or offer products at lower price compared to competitors. Differentiation-based competitive advantage involves offering unique properties that are not offered by competitors’ products. Differentiation allows an organisation to charge a premium for their products because they offer additional benefits to buyers.