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Customer loyalty and relationships
Customer loyalty and relationships
Customer loyalty and relationships
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In choosing Delta Airlines and Southwest Airlines for this comparison was simply based on my wife’s familiarity in being her 10th year anniversary today working for Delta Airlines and the extensive travel, we have had over the years, well extensive to us as having some first-hand knowledge in the service of these two companies. In attempting to be bias over the years there has been some deciding factors as why we like utilizing and trusting Delta Airlines service beyond my wife’s affiliation that to us being thought of as just regular folks have found a number of inconsistencies in service that the Airlines provide. Some of these inconsistences are very blatant and it will be interesting to compare their operating, financial bottom lines to …show more content…
These operating cost have not been pasted on to the consumer (Motif Investing (2016). However, in manufacturing Boeing and Airbus hold a large proportion of the market and with other player joining the market it is unknown at this time if this trend will continue for Boeing and Airbus as consumers may take a benefit with new competitors surfacing (Motif Investing (2016). The concern and problem extend to government regulations placing local and foreign market competitive constraints along with the future fuel market is yet to yield. In looking into the current trends and future competition as (Motif Investing (2016) discusses “consumer confidence is may be as important as any of them” (Motif Investing (2016). It may boil down to consumer preference and being on the front line in customer service may in fact be the deciding factor for company growth. According to (Wahlen, Baginski, & Bradshaw, (2014), asses the financial statements and deduction is that it is evident that Delta Airlines has a higher shareholder equity as well as cash flow in operations and investments. Cash and short term investments have been relatively the same compared to Deltas showing a growth and double the revenue and less liabilities per capita in shareholder equity. Southwest has nearly double less activity in investments.
Delta Airlines has been a vibrant company in the airline industry, with great success over the years. Delta airlines started as a crops dusting company to serving more than 572 destinations, in 65 countries on six continents (Allan, H., David. H. ,2012). Delta airline moved its headquarters from Monroe, Louisiana to the city of Atlanta, Georgia. The great management strategies have portrayed from time to time to be fruitful even in the verge of a recession. With these consistency in delivery of services, it is clear that the company is out to outdo its competitors and turn out to be the greatest airline in the world.
Since its first grand opening in 1971, Southwest Airlines has shown steady growth, and now carries more passengers than any other low-cost carrier in the world (Wharton, 2010). To expand the business operations, Southwest Airlines took over AirTran in 2010 as a strategy to gain more market share for the Southeast region and international flights. However, the acquisition of AirTran brought upcoming challenges both internally and externally for Southwest Airlines. In this case analysis, the objectives are to focus on the change process post the merger with AirTran, and to evaluate alternatives to address the impacts of the merger. II.
Despite its growing domestic network, the company didn’t offer international flights until July 2014, and even then, it only offered limited destinations (“Southwest Corporate Fact Sheet,” n.d.). Furthermore, the company’s reliance on a single aircraft is cause for concern. Southwest Airlines was also weak with technology utilization initially but has since turned this into an asset, as described later. Finally, the company has a limitation with providing customer perks due to its low-cost operations (Ross & Beath,
Southwest Airlines strategy of focusing on short haul passenger and providing rates as low as one third of their competitors, they have seen tremendous growth in the last decade. Market share for top city pairs on Southwest's schedule has reached 80% to 85%. Maintaining the largest fleet of 737's in the world and utilizing point-to-point versus the hub-and-spoke method of connection philosophy allowed Southwest to provide their service to more people at a lower cost. By putting the employee first, Southwest has found the key to success in the airline business. A happy worker is a more productive one as well as a better service provider. Southwest will continue to reserve their growth in the future by entering select markets only after careful market research.
In today's competitive marketplace, all firms are seeking ways to improve their overall performance. One such method of improvement, recently adopted by many firms, is benchmarking. Benchmarking is a technique used to evaluate internal business processes. "In this analysis, managers determine the firm's critical processes and outputs, baseline those processes, then compare the performance of each process against a standard outside the industry" (Bounds, Yorks, Adams, & Ranney 1994). To effectively improve a business process to world-class quality, managers must find a firm that is recognized as a global leader, not just the industry standard. Successful benchmarking requires tailor-made solutions, not just blind copying of another organization. Measurement and interpretation of data collected is the key to creating business process solutions.
Even though Southwest offers no-frills, there is still a high degree of customer satisfaction that continuously builds customer loyalty for the company. As mentioned, Southwest offers low prices on their airplane tickets. Also, Southwest is renowned in the airline industry for its short turnaround time on arrivals and departures. And since people's biggest concern nowadays is money and time, having low price airline tickets to cater their traveling needs in a shorter period of time will surely satisfy them. Moreover, aside from the low prices offered, what attracts to customers is Southwest’s way in dealing with them. The employees of the airline treat their customers well and really listen to their needs.
Since 1987, when the Department of Transportation began tracking Customer Satisfaction statistics, Southwest has consistently led the entire airline industry with the lowest ratio of complaints per passengers boarded. Many airlines have tried to copy Southwest’s business model, and the Culture of Southwest is admired and emulated by corporations and organizations in all walks of life. Always the innovator, Southwest pioneered Senior Fares, a same-day air freight delivery service, and Ticketless Travel. Southwest led the way with the first airline web page—southwest.com, DING, the first-ever direct link to Customer’s computer desktops that delivers live updates on the hottest deals, and the first airline corporate blog, Nuts About Southwest. Our Share the Spirit community programs make Southwest the hometown airline of every city we serve.
Many elements of Delta Airlines are described in detail, within this paper. There is a breakdown of the external and internal factors, using external and internal analysis. Porter’s Five forces are used to create the external analysis, and the key factors for Delta are power of buyers, and rivalry. Delta’s competitive advantages are identified as customer service, sustainability, brand image, strong strategic alliances, and corporate travel. Delta’s main issues are the low expansion in international markets, continuous changing of incentive program, and glitches within technology. Delta should expand more into the Chinese and African markets in order to gain market share within the airline industry.
In a high competitive world market and with the increasing rational buyers a company can only win by creating and delivering the best customer value than the others competitors do. To succeed, a company needs to use the concepts of value chain.
Southwest Airlines is competing with "Shuttle by United" head to head in about 9 routes. United has just announced that it is discontinuing its Oakland - Ontario route and hiking the fares in all the 14 routes by $10, which calculated to be 14.5% increase in the fare. Southwest has to respond effectively to these unexpected developments and has to act accordingly while maintaining their current low fare image and increasing their daily operating profits. We have considered the elasticity of the market to be 1.15.
The Southwest Airlines company and its culture is one that is often cited in today 's business classes. The airline is widely known to be “different” compared to many of its competitors, a result of its founding values and strong corporate culture. This culture developed early in Southwest’s history and was deeply entrenched due to the competitiveness of the airline industry, as well as due to some of the pressures experienced as a result regulatory issues and stiff competition.
There are few things that are impressive about Southwest Airlines first one is how they treat the employees. For Southwest Airlines employees are first and customers are second. If the employees are treated well that will bring in happy customers. Next is that Southwest is not only with their low prices but is able to create a competitive advantage by offering a fun and humorous experience when flying. Finally another impressive fact is when Herb Kelleher’s retire from CEO position yet remained a Southwest employee till July 2014. Even after the retirement he was still active with the Southwest Airlines that reflected his enthusiasm and dedication for the
Before to select the proper alternative, three alternatives were analysed and evaluated under four decisions criteria: customer experience, cost, growth rate / market penetration and ease to implementation (See Exhibit 2: Factor Analysis). Between all the alternatives, it was suggested that Southwest Airlines enters to New York City by bidding the slots and gates at the LGA (See Exhibit 3: Alternatives Analysis). This alternative sustains the challenge of changing the customer experience which means adding more flights from and to the East; furthermore, entering to new markets will reinforce “the power of the network” through LGA. At the same time, this decision will allow signing more code-sharing agreements with other airlines flying to international destinations and offer new products and services to LUV customers as loyalty rewards, in-flight internet, onboard duty-free purchases, etc.; as a result of this, it will increase passenger’s insights and experiences by flying with Southwest Airlines. Nevertheless, there is potential risk by selecting this alternative, in the recent years the energy prices has had a huge increase affecting costs, fares and even capacity needed, however Southwest Airlines has been able to hedge fuel for decad...
Airline and travel industry profitability has been strapped by a series of events starting with a recession in business travel after the dotcom bust, followed by 9/11, the SARS epidemic, the Iraq wars, rising aviation turbine fuel prices, and the challenge from low-cost carriers. (Narayan Pandit, 2005) The fallout from rising fuel prices has been so extreme that any efficiency gains that airlines attempted to make could not make up for structural problems where labor costs remained high and low cost competition had continued to drive down yields or average fares at leading hub airports. In the last decade, US airlines alone had a yearly average of net losses of $9.1 billion (Coombs, 2011).
The mission of Southwest Airlines is a dedication to the highest quality of service delivered with warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and company spirit (Mission…, 2007). The company also provides opportunities for learning and personal growth to each employee. Creativity and innovation is very important and highly encouraged, for the purposes of improving effectiveness. Employees are to be provided the same concern, respect, and caring attitude within the organization that the employees are expected to share with the customer. Southwest Airlines was initially created to be a low-cost alternative to high price of intra-Texas air carriers (Freiberg, 1996). Southwest’s fares were originally supposed to compete with car and bus transportation. It was a little airline, and it would withstand the test of time. As a discount, no-frills airline, it would provide stiff competition for larger airlines. Their strategy was to operate at low cost, offering no food, no movies, no first class, and no reserved seats. They created their own market and provided increased turnaround times at the gate, by avoiding hub-and-spoke airports and opting for short-haul, direct flights. Through this market approach, Southwest has a majority of market share in the markets they serve.