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Southwest airlines economic factors
SouthWest Airlines Organizational Structure & Decision
SouthWest Airlines Organizational Structure & Decision
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1) What macro-environmental factors external to the company should Southwest Airlines be most concerned about? How do these factors affect Southwest Airlines? Explain. Southwest Airlines is an airline carrier that operates within the American domestic market. It has been the largest domestic Airline, according to the number of domestic passengers and flights. One of the most important macro- environmental factor, which Southwest Airline should be concerned about is demographic factor. As we know Southwest airline has been a domestic carrier through U.S. So, offering more short distance international flights is a good way to increase the bottom line for Southwest Airline. The other important factor that Southwest should be considered is about …show more content…
It operates 3600 flights a day, serving 95 destinations across the united states, and six additional countries. Southwest Airline advertise itself as a low-cost, low-frills airline with frequent flights to many destinations around the United States. It targets mostly middle class families, small business travelers, and those travelling short distances. People who are looking for the best service for their money. It is known as a low cost carrier for families, tourists, and business men and women to take advantage of low fares. In other words, passengers who are looking for a free checked bags, friendly flight attendant, and competitive fares are the Southwest Airline customers. On the other hand, those with a high income often select first class options over economy class. Because of this targeted marketing, United sells more full-cost fares and increases its overall revenue. I am not sure if offering first class option can be a good option for Southwest, which has an attitude which is called transparency. Transparency is a unique approach to treating customers the way they expected and deserve to be treated, and being a low-fare airline. However, offering more and new short distance international routes seems would be a good solution to increase the bottom line for Southwest Airline. As it is said in Article7 Southwest started offering international flights from Hobby Airport. Adding five new gates for …show more content…
Replacing the old aircrafts with new and more advanced Boeing 737-800s, has given Southwest airline the opportunity to fly out of U.S., and to find more customers such as tourists and business travelers not only inside the U.S. but outside the country. Second, giving promotions and coupons, such as rewards programs would encourage more customers to use Southwest Airline services, and as a result it would increase the company’s revenue. Trying to stick in customer’s mind as a low cost air line through advertisement would help the company to find new customer as well. Moreover, developing some subsidiary services such as car rentals, or taxi services could help customers to reach faster and easier to the airport, so it would have a positive impact in the customer’s
Environmental factors have changed drastically over the past fourteen years. Since September 11, 2001, Airlines have changed greatly to enable safer and cost efficient flights for the world. Specifically, Southwest Airlines has changed their marketing strategy for their flights since 2001. Southwest has faced environmental factors that have affected the costs in airlines, exploited those environmental factors, and faced influential factors in addition.
Southwest Airlines is operating in an industry that is struggling to make profits. The slowing economic growth and raising fuel costs are lowering earnings while revenues remain the same. The macroeconomic factors affecting the airline industry include unemployment, the economic growth in the United States, and inflation. With low economic growth, consumers are finding luxury items more difficult to purchase and airline tickets for vacations fall into that category. Unemployment contributes to a lack of vacation travelers since individuals who are not employed do not have extra money for vacation or airline tickets. Inflation also causes operating costs of the airlines to be higher cutting into profits.
Another internal challenge for Southwest Airlines is the conflicting management style and business operation with AirTran. On top of that, the external challenges such as the increase of competitions and gas prices are some of issues f...
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.
Southwest Airlines: A Case Analysis. ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS It is evident that the greatest strength Southwest Airlines has is its financial stability. As known in the US airline industry, Southwest is one of those airlines who are consistently earning profits despite the problems the industry is facing. With such stability, the corporation is able to make decisions and adjust policies, which other heavily burdened airlines may not be able to imitate.
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.
Macroeconomic environment: The airline industry has proven particularly sensitive to phenomena such as terrorist attacks, wars, outbreaks (SARS), drastic currency fluctuations, and the like. These phenomena tend to have a significant impact on the cost of fuel, overall demand for air transportation, tourism, etc.
1. Issues 2. American Airlines’ objectives 3. The airline industry 4. Market 5. Consumer needs 6. Brand image 7. Distribution system 8. Pricing 9. Marketing related strategies 10. Assumptions and risks
Pricing. Their pricing strategy is based off their market position as a budget airline. Positioning their company as a budget airline, Southwest can maintain and keep their lower price points compared to their competitors. For Southwest to maintain sustainability as a market leader, they must effectively utilize their resources to reduce their cost of operations. By only operating one type of aircraft, short non-stop flights, point to point routes, and flying into less crowded secondary airports, this has allowed Southwest Airlines to keep their price points down while simultaneously reducing their planes turnaround time.
Advertising: As one of the largest domestic airlines, Southwest Airlines has an enormous advertising budget to sustain its presence and increase its market share through focusing on the benefits of flying Southwest over its competitors. Southwest recognizes that flying is no longer a pleasurable experience for many customers, even on Southwest, historically a budget airline. Even though Southwest is often regarded as a no-frills airline, it still attempts to build goodwill from its customers based on its advertising. Of the $249 million it spent on advertising in 2011, Southwest Airlines is unique in that it does not sell additional ad space on the exterior of its aircraft. Many domestic airlines have begun selling aircraft exterior space as a way to increase revenue, but Southwest Airlines insists that it wants to keep its product and advertisi...
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...
The company’s cost leadership strategy of keeping their fares low to ensure frequent and convenient travel along with its playful, fun poking advertising, exciting promotional ways, and various vibrant ways of operation enabled the company to expand exuded its effect on both customer and competitors, thus lowering the prices in the new market. This is the ‘Southwest
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.