Analysis of AirAsia’s Cost Strategy
Influenced by the low cost carrier concept from Southwest Airlines in the United States and Ryan air in Europe, AirAsia began its business and finally it turns out that this concept has worked out. Obviously, AirAsia’s competitive strategy is cost leadership strategy, having the lowest costs in its industry and aimed at broad market. According to the book “Fundamentals of Management”, this strategy can be best exhibited in several dimensions, comprising highly efficient, overhead kept to a minimum, does everything it can to cut costs, product must be perceived as comparable in equality to that offered by rivals or at least acceptable to buyers. (Pobbins, Decenzo, & Coulter, 2015)The following discuss will
The bulk of sales (85%) are done via the airline 's website, whereby the fares are paid using credit cards, debit cards or via online banking, without extra labor cost. At the same time, an efficient and practical technological software is a crucial support to AirAsia’s high efficiency target. In 2003, AirAsia launched world 's first short message service (SMS) ticket booking service.
Why AirAsia chooses the cost leadership strategy? Dating back to the time AirAsia established, the low cost sphere of airline industry in Asia was deficient. Inspired by successful benchmarks of Southwest Airlines in the United States and Ryan air in Europe, it started it business. Asia is relatively underdeveloped, compared with America and Europe. Growing in such a hotbed atmosphere ensures AirAsia possess more development space and a rapid development speed. Thus the demand for cheap airline tickets is considerable.
As what I have discussed before, one side effect of cost leadership strategy is the inconvenience, for instance, the secondary airport. Therefore, the target consumers for AirAsia is those who are more elastic and sensitive about the price, so that they can sacrifice some convenience and entertainments to get the lower
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.
of price versus service in the airline industry as a whole, as well as, the
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.
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...
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...
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).
It has stayed relevant to the market through its propelled philosophy of relationships to generate profits in the business. Since its establishment in Monroe, Louisiana the once tiny airline has stretched to greater heights serving in 6 continents. It has also established a distinguishable name among its competitors with a reputation of leading customer services. However, even as an established venture, the company needs to maximize its profits in order to stay in business and expand in to new territories beyond its conquered boundaries. A strategic analysis was carried out by our team to establish the company’s current situation. A SWOT analysis was performed to come up with three referenced, strategic alternatives. This alternatives are meant to act as a strategic guidance to the company in order to enhance growth. The strategic recommendation provided will improve and enable the business to cope with the competitors while the implementation of the strategy section will outline the way to go about achieving these alternatives in the business setting. Lastly, we put up a discussion on the evaluation procedures and necessary controls for the
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
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...
Flight fee is one of the biggest nightmares of the passenger. In this regard, such an initiative is a win-win situation for the Asiana airlines. The establishment of extensive cabin retrofits is also a great improvement to the customer service delivery. The airline also boosts customer experience in a bid to achieve the airline’s sustainability through the provision of lie-flat seats. The seats boost comfort for the passengers aboard; hence, reduction of exhaustion. According to Asian Development Bank (2009), the airline provides the passengers with a sizeable monitor, especially for the business class passengers. The practical productivity of team relies on upon its hypothetical planning, information of an aeronautical building, and tenets of its operation, including exceptional circumstances, and propensities for utilization of this learning, furthermore on order and determination of pilot-in-charge of aircraft and group individuals. The administration productivity air movement, the associations of flight action and a wide range of upkeep of aircraft in the greatest degree is controlled by the proficiency of the action association in the modern undertakings, cognizance of initiators, and the moral obligation of leaders of all positions for action concerning security control of
Air India has gone through this process very strongly and it is very committed with society and on every big event, they are providing the reduce price to keep the customers with the company. On the other hand, this airline is providing the huge income to the economy as the tax for which got has recently accounted to provide the less tax on buying new fleets. Company varies with the suppliers as the supply of fleets is not often therefore company focuses on the different suppliers which provide them the best price.
When an airline does not have a sustainable competitive advantage, it does not have any properties of differences from there competitor and turns to a dangerous price war. The sustainable ...
Within the airline industry currently the airlines can be divided into low cost airlines and full service airlines. The low cost airlines targets customers that are seeking no frills connectivity between cities at low ticket prices. The full service airlines provide several add-ons like free meals, on plane entertainment, and communication facilities. The target market for full service airlines are customers who are willing to spend extra for the services that the airlines provides.
One of the characteristics of service offered by AirAsia is intangibility. Services intangibility is inevitable and sometimes could be a challenge for every service provider. According to Pride & Ferrell (2011) intangibility of services can be defined as the characteristic that the service is not physical and cannot be perceived by the senses. For instance like AirAsia which provides flight services, it is impossible for the customers to touch the flight as it is a journey to specific destinations. They might be able to touch the plane, but in the context of services, the customers do not own the physical tools or equipment used to deliver the service but are only entitled to get the service which is the flight service.
Cost leadership strategy involves the business winning the market share by appealing to cost-conscious and price-sensitive consumers. This is achieved when you have the lowest prices in the target market. The lowest price of value ratio (price compared to what consumers receive). To be successful at offering the lowest price while still achieving profitability and a high return on investment, the business must be able to operate at a lower cost than its competitors. There are three main ways to achieve this.