As Lufthansa Airlines transforms its business in the aggressively competitive air travel market, it demands tools and information, which helps cut costs, speed transactions and allows employees to make informed purchasing decisions. Factiva.com, a powerful Web-based service that provides powerful tools for searching and monitoring news and business information, enables Lufthansa Airlines’ procurement department to source and negotiate better and faster – and thereby contribute significant cost savings to the organization. Lufthansa, the German airline, contracted with Boeing to purchase aircraft in the mid-1980's, when the value of the dollar was increasing. The price was set in dollars and Lufthansa was afraid that the dollar would strengthen, increasing the Deutsche mark cost of the planes. In 1986, Lufthansa entered into forward contracts for the dollars required to pay for the planes. Although Lufthansa feared a strengthening of the dollar, what actually happened is that the dollar weakened. The forward contracts cost Lufthansa $140 to $160 million more for the planes, than if it had simply waited and purchased the dollars on the spot market (Eckes, 2001). This study is of considerable significance for Lufthansa Airlines, as it will help the organization redefine its business strategy in order to improve its corporate image and to compete effectively in existing tight market situations. The study will help the company in identifying the factors that directly affect customer’s satisfaction and thus will facilitate in providing better quality service in future. As the current market conditions are not much favorable for the airline industry, especially in the US market, which itself is a major segment, airlines are required to ...
... middle of paper ...
...eral Electric and Others Turned Process into Profits. John Wiley. 2001. Ellis j & Williams D (1993) Corporate strategy and financial analysis. Pitman Grundy T (1998) Exploring strategic financial management. Prentice Hall. Johansson, Henry J., Patrick McHugh, A. John Pendlebury and William A. Wheeler III. Business Process Reengineering: Breakpoint Strategies for Market Dominance. Wiley, 1993. Johnson j & scholes k (2002) Exploring corporate strategy 6th ed. Financial times-Prentice hall. Kubeck, Lynn C. Techniques for Business Process Redesign: Tying It All Together. Wiley-QED Publication, 1995. Price Waterhouse Change Integration Team. Better Change: Best Practices for Transforming Your Organization. Irwin, 1995. Rummler, Geary and Alan Brache. Improving Performance: How to Manage the White Space on the Organization Chart. (2nd Ed.) Jossey-Bass, 1990.
The Lufthansa Heist was a robbery that took place at the John F. Kennedy International Airport; the people (players) robbed five million dollars at the time of the robbery. The total amount of money robbed to todays’ date is estimated to be around eighteen million dollars and three million dollars in jewelry. The heist was planned by Jimmy Burke and carried out by a number of people. A van would be used to transport the cash and another car would accompany the van to run interference should something happen.
Leading Change was named the top management book of the year by Management General. There are three major sections in this book. The first section is ¡§the change of problem and its solution¡¨ ; which discusses why firms fail. The second one is ¡§the eight-stage process¡¨ that deals with methods of performing changes. Lastly, ¡§implications for the twenty-first century¡¨ is discussed as the conclusion. The eight stages of process are as followed: (1) Establishing a sense of urgency. (2) Creating the guiding coalition. (3) Developing a vision and a strategy. (4) Communicating the change of vision. (5) Empowering employees for broad-based action. (6) Generating short-term wins. (7) Consolidating gains and producing more changes. (8) Anchoring new approaches in the culture.
of price versus service in the airline industry as a whole, as well as, the
The airline industry has long attempted to segment the air travel market in order to effectively target its constituents. The classic airline model consists of First Class, Business Class and Economy, and the demographics that make up the classes have both similarities and differences to the other classes. For instance there may be similarities between business class travellers on a particular flight, but they will not all be travelling for the same reason. An almost-universal characteristic of air travel is that customers do not fly for the sake of flying; the destination is the important element and the travel is a by-product, a means-to-an-end that involves the necessity of an aircraft that gets the customer from point A to point B. Because the reasons can differ greatly in the motivations for a customer wanting to fly, it can be difficult to divide the market into discrete segments, that is, there is always going to be overlap in the preferences and characteristics of any given segment. With that in mind, the commonalities that are shared between the clientele that make up the respective classes can easily withstand analysis.
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.
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...
JetBlue’s marketing strategy focuses on offering a high-quality customer attentive low-cost product that provides amenities other airlines are unwilling to provide on their low-cost fares. The goal is to attract new customers while retaining current customers and to bridge the gap between low-cost fares and quality air travel, which JetBlue believes need not be mutually exclusive (JetBlue Airways Corporation, 2015). Overall this strategy has been very successful, attracting new customers and earning repeat customers through its innovative additions to its aircraft and by having more free amenities than any other airline. Additionally JetBlue Airways has been ranked highest in customer satisfaction among low-cost carriers in North America by J.D. Power for the last 11 years in a row (JetBlue Airways, n.d.).
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
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.
Often lessors buy the planes and subsequently lease them to the respective airlines. Furthermore, the infrastructures are primarily established according to the precise needs of home airlines (BIEGER & WITTMER, 2011, p. 61-64). As an example, the airport of Zurich strongly adapted needs of Swissair when expanding its own infrastructure. Operations and outbound logistics cannot clearly be distinguished in the case of an airline business, since it is a service industry of intangible output. The “production” of the service and the order processing can be seen together as providing the transport to the desired destination of customers. Moreover, the added value is very much dependant on safety, service quality and comfort. Marketing and sales include every way of promotion and indeed, stipulating sales channels in pursuance of attracting new customers. As already alluded above, progressing technology in online distribution and increasing price competition caused by market liberalization force airlines to lay much more weight on the marketing and sales activities. The core differentiation possibility remains in quality of on-board service and additional services at
Hughes, M 2006, 'Strategic change', in M Hughes (ed.), Change management: a critical perspective, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, London, pp. 52-63.
Porter stated; “for an airline to succeed in the marketplace, it must have a sustainable competitive advantage” (Porter M. E., 2008). The airline industry is the highest competitive industry, and I believe a sustainable completive advantage is essential to succeed in the future of the aviation industry. The competitive advantages that an airline embrace, needs to be based on the airlines strategy and differentiation to competitors. Emirates displays how it has a strategy and how the airline gets ahead of its competitors through how unique it is.
The idea of change is the most constant factor in business today and organisational change therefore plays a crucial role in this highly dynamic environment. It is defined as a company that is going through a transformation and is in a progressive step towards improving their existing capabilities. Organisational change is important as managers need to continue to commit and deliver today but must also think of changes that lie ahead tomorrow. This is a difficult task because management systems are design, and people are rewarded for stability. These two main factors will be discussed with reasons as to why organisational change is necessary for survival, but on the other hand why it is difficult to accomplish.
To prevent the American Airlines loss from the business, he decided to make SABRE a strategic management tool, where he introduced the Ultimate Super Saver Fare plan. To overcome this problem Bob Crandall recognised two factors which would affect their revenue to increase the first reason was the average cost and the other reason was the market value. Both the factors were very well specified by Bob Crandall to improve the rev...
The world is constantly changing in many different ways. Whether it is technological or cultural change is present and inevitable. Organizations are not exempt from change. As a matter of fact, organizations have to change with the world and society in order to be successful. Organizations have to constantly incorporate change in order to have a competitive advantage and satisfy their customers. Organizations use change in order to learn and grow. However, change is not something that can happen in an organization overnight. It has to be thought through and planned. The General Model of Planned Change focuses on what processes are used by the organization to implement change. In the General Model of Planned Change, four steps are used in order to complete the process of change. Entering and Contracting, Diagnosing, Planning and Implementing, and Evaluating and Institutionalizing are the four steps used in order to complete the process of change in an organization. The diagnostic process is one of the most important activities in OD(Cummings, 2009, p. 30).