Southwest Airlines Case Studies Samples For Students

Herb Kelleher, the former CEO of Southwest Airlines, provided growth of the company using his flamboyant leadership style and extraordinary approach to team making. Southwest Airlines pioneered in the low-cost segment of the market. From 1996 to 2012 the company almost doubled the number of cities served. The operating income of the company had grown by 1.55 times in 2012 if compared to 2008 while its net income made up 2.37 times greater in 2012 in comparison to 2008. Thus, the company had grown significantly, but the growth outstripped to the maturity stage. The previous growth resources were exhausted ...

Introduction

Executive Summary
Southwest Airlines is an airline company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The company has been in operation since 1971. It is the leading local airline in the US. Analysed as per the porter’s five forces model, Southwest Airlines has a good chance of weathering competition from market entrants due to its unique approach to business as Simple, Fun and Profitable. The general external environment presents increased population and therefore higher market, better and supportive technologies, non-bureaucratic political and legal environment among other aspects advantageous to the growth of the company. The main weaknesses for the company are ...

Background

The founder members of the Southwest Airlines were Herb Kelleher and Rollin King. The founders saw the need to respond to rise in capacity of customers travelling over the Texas routes. The carriers already in the industry were Brainiff International and American Airlines. The carriers did not have sufficient seats. This did prompt the southwest airlines to respond to the demand. There was also poor coverage of intermediate destinations in Texas by the former carriers. The relatively high demand for seats shoots the fare high. The federal regulations discouraged starting of a new airline company.

The southwest Airlines have been ...

Introduction

Southwest Airlines was launched with an aim of offering cheap, reliable and friendly flights to different destinations around the U.S. The company’s objective is to connect people to their crucial lives (About Southwest n. p.). Importantly, Southwest Airlines has grown to be one of the largest airline companies offering domestic flights in the United States. The acquisition of AirTran is a strategy that aims at expanding Southwest both in assets and international flights.
This paper analyzes the market position of Southwest by answering questions on the company’s culture, values, opportunities, challenges and acquisition of AirTran.

SWOT analysis of Southwest Airline

SWOT analysis ...

Executive Summary

The study focuses on identifying the major issues related to Southwest Airlines. It uses internal, external, and financial analysis for the company and the results show that information system of Southwest Airlines, the risk of competition, lack of long route flights, and integration issues are the current problems faced by the Airline.

The internal analysis reveals that the company faces major threats in the market, and the specific threats are as under.

Competition,
Legal infrastructure,
Unemployment and inflation, and
The shaky economy of the US.
The SWOT analysis also explains that the company is dependent on different sources that create specific weaknesses for the business. The dependence of Southwest Airlines is provided below.

Revenues through passengers,

Single provider/supplier,
Limited domestic presence,
No ...

Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines is the largest low-cost airline in USA and the 3rd largest carrier in the world (as per the number of domestically carried passengers). It was founded in 1971 and headquartered in Dallas – Texas. The airline operates an average of over 3,800 flights every day. Southwest Airlines offers its scheduled services to 40 states and 98 destinations. Its fleet size has reached up to 72 aircrafts that are comprised of Boeing 737s. (Dess et.al, 2014).

Mission Statement of Southwest Airlines & Its Appropriateness

The mission of Southwest Airlines is, “Dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, individual pride, ...

Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines is the largest low-cost airline in USA and the 3rd largest carrier in the world (as per the number of domestically carried passengers). It was founded in 1971 and headquartered in Dallas – Texas. The airline operates an average of over 3,800 flights every day. Southwest Airlines offers its scheduled services to 40 states and 98 destinations. Its fleet size has reached up to 72 aircrafts that are comprised of Boeing 737s.

Mission Statement of Southwest Airlines & Its Appropriateness

The mission of Southwest Airlines is, “Dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, individual pride, friendliness and Corporate ...

Business Strategy: Southwest Airlines

Introduction
Southwest Airlines has established its brand as a lost-cost air transport service provider spreading its wings across 58 states in the United States and the nearby international market. Herb Keller, the founder of Southwest Airlines, started the airline project with the ideology that getting passengers to their destination in time and at the lowest fare possible will always make them fly the airline. With this simple notion, the Southwest Airlines was born and has been able to gather traction in the US Airline industry catapulting it into the top five largest commercial airlines today.

Operating Revenue, Net Income, Load Factor and Trips Flown for 2014 to 2010 (Figures in $M except load factor)

Data derived from Southwest ...

Introduction

Southwest Airlines is a major US based airline that provides high frequency short-haul services. The airline began its operations in 1971 with a few Boeing aircrafts serving only three cities in the US. Today, Southwest Airlines is one of the largest airlines in the United States, and operates close to 300 aircrafts to 60 cities. The airline’s rapid growth is partly due to its low-cost strategy and efficient customer services. Although the air travel industry has previously suffered a series of drawbacks, Southwest Airlines has always remained resilient. The company’s mission objective is to embrace high quality ...

1.0 Introduction
Operating in a constantly changing business environment is a challenging task. Therefore, those organizations are most likely to develop and expand that take strategic initiative and avail opportunities available to them. However, the expansion could be international or regional where decision is made on the basis of target market and competing regions. This paper overviews case of Southwest Airline and proposes a marketing plan for expansion in a new market.
2.0 Overview of South West Airlines
South West Airlines is one of the largest low-cost airline in the world. The airline was founded on 1967 by Rollin ...

Southwest Airlines actually began the business over 30 years ago in Texas and Dallas, with an intention of providing customers with a low-cost way to fly in United States cities. Whose main mission is to provide a reliable, low-cost, no-frills, and friendly service mode of transportation for people travelling for leisure and business for short distances.

What are the key industry conditions which render profits elusive for airlines?

Competition is one of the factors that render profits elusive. For example, Southwest Airlines face stiff competitions from Delta Express, Continental, United and U.S Airways. In fact new companies venturing into the airline industry try to compete with southwest on the low-cost policy. Actually, with ...

Introduction

This paper presents a detailed analysis about Southwest Airlines starting from how they started and how they reached their current position. It describes their strategic planning, their sources of capital, their market growth, their marketing planning and many other things. It also gives a complete detailed note on their successes and failures and which factors have led to their failures and successes of Southwest Airlines. The culture and the behavior of their employees is an important factor. In short it covers all the factors that are important to the success of an organization will be discussed in detail.

Rolling ...

The Southwest Airlines approach of offering cheaper rates and concentrating exclusively on short haul clients, unlike its competitors in the air industry, has enabled it to record outstanding developments within the past years. Operating and maintaining the biggest 737 fleets and applying connection philosophies enables the Airlines venture to offer more clients their services at reduced costs. Through prioritizing their employees' attitudes and experience, Southwest Airlines has successfully managed to tap business success in the industry. The Southwest Airline's management fully understands that satisfied employees are best at service provision. Additionally, the Airlines Company maintains their growth through a ...

Southwest Airlines Company is a major and the largest low-cost carrier in the world, which is located in Dallas, Texas. The company’s vision is to become the world’s most loved, most flown, and most profitable airline. The vision lays a strong background for the attainment of its main purpose, which is connecting people to what is important in their lives through friendly, reliable, and low-cost air travel. The paper tries to establish the state of Southwest Airlines in 2008 through the analysis of its strategic plan, ethics, marketing research, leadership, organization structure, creativity, and success factors.

Managing Growth

In ...

Select TWO products from the list of product categories below and using the teaching materials and any additional research explain what you think would be an appropriate promotions strategy for both them. In doing so compare and contrast the two promotions strategies explaining why you think they would be similar or different.

Coca Cola targets every potential customer who is thirsty. The company targets all age groups but the most potential is the age group from 18-25 years. This group covers more than 40% of the total age segments. The major segments basically include people who drink Coke daily ...

Background Information

Southwest Airlines is a United States airline company based in Dalla in Texas. The company came into existence in 1967 and got its current name in the year 1971. It has employed more than 45,000 employees and operates over 3,500 flights every day. It has its operations within the U.S. market implying that the company does not operate internationally. In fact, it has more than 90 destinations within 40 states of America. The company uses only one producer airplane in its operations which happen to be the Boeing Airplanes. Despite many other U.S. Airlines that operate both ...

Background Information

Southwest Airlines is a low-cost airline company that was founded in 1967 in San Antonio, Texas. The first flights were operated by Southwest Airlines in 1971 and connected Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. Today the company focuses on domestic flights and offers low-cost and no-frills services to its customers (Southwest Airlines, 2012).

While the idea to start the company belonged to Rollin King, an entrepreneur from San Antonio, the key figure in the formation and in the development of the company was Herb Kelleher. He was a CEO of Southwest until 2008, when Kelleher was replaced by the current CEO Gary ...

Introduction

Southwest Airlines, a company incorporated in March 15, 1967 by Herb Kelleher and Rollin King, is a very competitive airline company, headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It piloted the idea of a “no frills” airline, which meant a reduction in ticket costs for consumers and the removal of unnecessary expenses by the company. This meant using a single type of plane (the Boeing 737) for all the short routes that Southwest serviced. This move proved to be the company’s ace, with just one type of aircraft boosting the company’s efficiency while bringing down its maintenance costs.

Currently, the company services 64 cities in ...

1. How does Southwest add value? What makes Southwest different from just “any airline”?
The Southwest Airline has a different approach of adding value. The value addition is realized on two fronts the workforce and the quality of service offered. Southwest Airlines highly values both its employees and the clients.
2. How would you describe the competitive priorities of Southwest? How does this differ from other airlines?
The competitive priorities of Southwest Airlines lie in both the workforce welfare and the customers’ welfare. The other strategy is the acquisition of similar planes so as to reduce ...

Question one

Southwest airlines add value by using distinctive marketing strategies involving target pricing and proper market orientation. The company reconceptualizes its services in comparison to its competitors in the United States air travel market in order to hit the price target profitably. The company also uses low pricing as a means of adding value. This is because its inception was as a competition to Intra city cars, rather than other airline services. This means that the Southwest airlines attract a large number of travelers than other airline services.
What makes the Southwest airlines different, from just any other airlines, is their low ...

Introduction and Background of Organization

JetBlue Airlines was founded in 1998 by the former executives of the Southwest Airlines led by David Neeleman. The company specializes in the low-cost travel, but it is very different from the other competitors, because it was able “to bring humanity back to air travel” (Dess, Eisner, McNamara, 2012, p. 148). In particular, the company offers in-flight customer service; the booking and check-in systems are user-friendly, and the multiple routes and low flight fares provide JetBlue with the strong competitive advantage.
However, the quick growth in the 2000s meant being exposed to many risks that existed in the external ...

Southwest Airlines is a Dallas-based passenger airline that offers scheduled freight and passenger transportation services, with a particular emphasis on point-to-point, budget services across the US and near-international markets. Founded in 1966 by Rollin King, Southwest’s vision commits it to connecting people to what is important in their lives, by offering friendly, safe, reliable, and low-cost air travel. To this end, the company seeks to ensure excellent customer service, “delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit”. From its inception, Southwest’s business concept has remained cost leadership convenience, reliability, and ensures excellent customer ...

Question 1

The human aspect of business refers to the managers, customers and employees of a company. Managers are responsible for carrying out some duties and roles in the functional areas of the organization, customers create demand for the goods and services offered by the organization, and employees ensure effective delivery of service to meet the specific needs of customers. For service firms, labor relations are an integral part of service delivery and operational efficiency. The dynamism and complexities of doing business in the contemporary business world pushes companies to seek competitive advantage through various strategies. For South West Airlines, keeping a work ...

Introduction

Today, social media has become a factor that has a great influence on the global business environment. Social media is a force used to impact the customers' preferences and gather data about their behavior. Many companies have changed the ways they operate to adjust their activities to the current trends on the market, and these trends are heavily influenced by social media. Social media has also changed a lot from the published newspapers to the electronic sources and various social networks. Every day one can witness a great flow of information that is delivered to the global society through ...

1. Southwest add value by including their concept of fun flying to their services. Airlines around the world are almost the same, but Southwest has a different approach – wherein its employees are the focal point of their marketing schemes.

2. The competitive priorities of Southwest mainly revolve on their low cost structures and their employees. Superb management skills have become a core of their business. Such priorities made them different from any airline because of their capability to give pleasure to their passengers, their diverse culture, and their efforts of serving their customers as their top priority.

3. Southwest is committed ...

Each day on Southwest is different, both for clients and for its employees, but it is always fun, interesting and makes you wait for the next day, for the next flying experience at the board of Southwest. The colored and crazy presence of the Leperchauns among the cabin crew members (“Leperchauns on a Plane”, youtube.com), or the flight attendant’s song (“Southwest Airlines Flight Attendant Song”, youtube.com) and personal communication with the customers represent the added value attributes of the company.
Moreover, the flight attendant’s song clearly speaks about Southwest competitive advantages among other airlines. The employees are ...

JetBlue Airways is a new airline company in the United States that is noted for its low-fare and efficient service. The company was founded by David Neeleman in 1999 and is now one of the major airlines that operate in the United States (Gittell, & O'Reilly, 2001, p.1). One of the key factors of JetBlue Airway’s success is its aggressiveness towards expansion. The company, for instance, added 10 new planes every year as part of its expansion plan as well as adding new routes and domestic markets. Accordingly, the company wishes to achieve rapid growth “while building a value-based, ...

Business Strategy Formulation and Implementation

Business Strategy Formulation and Implementation

In the United States, there are more than 600 fast food restaurants and thus there is a strong rivalry in the market. Every day, a new entrant in the market tries to steal the revenue and existing customers of the already established business firms. This has forced many firms into coming up with competitive strategies to maintain or increase their market share and revenue. For Panera Bread, the main strategy that they have implemented is the product differentiation. The firm comprehends that the differentiation is a determining factor in the fast casual industry, and it provides a competitive advantage ...

1. How does Southwest add value? What makes Southwest different from just “any airline”?
Southwest Airlines adds value through its focus on simplicity, efficiency, excellent customer service, and fun. Its lower prices, outstanding delivery of service to customers, innovative human resource management practices, and efficient operations to drive the low cost structure, makes Southwest different from other airlines. Some of the operations include the purchase of only one type of plane to ensure large discounts during purchase and reduce the maintenance and repair costs. The company also adds value through its excellent communication – it communicates frequently, in a ...

1. Using the information presented in this chapter, what changes would you suggest to Jim?
Jim, on the advice of Stacey, may proceed with a number of changes such as the use of relay terminals, sleeper teams or break-bulk terminals to reduce the time its drivers are on the road. With the help of relay terminals, Jim’s drivers would stay within the limit of 10 hours’ time while sleeper teams would enable drivers to relax while other teams may be driving the carrier through the route. Use of break-bulk terminals would further allow unloading entire trailers at a ...

American Airlines, Inc. v. Department of Transportation
This is a landmark case in Administrative Law. From the facts of the case, Dallas and Fort Worth operated two separate independent airports that were competing against each other in the same locality. The agency that operated as the Department of Transport, CAB identified that the presence of two airports was harmful to the region and as such, they ordered the two airports to merge in 1964. This culminated in the Regional Airport Concurrent Bond Ordinance, 1968 which was to close off some airfields in the region to commercial activities. The Ordinance ...

In the article Strategy: An Executive’s Definition, the authors seek to define a business strategy. The authors are quick to point out that strategy differs from mission, vision, priorities, goals and plans. According to Favaro et al (18), a business strategy is “the product of choices that executives formulate on where to play, how to win and maximizing long-term value”. This article therefore examines these three critical aspects of business strategy. The first aspect discussed is “where to play”. This aspect defines the target market on the needs to be met and the customers. The several characteristics of a target market ...

CULTURE OVERHEADS

Over time, the southwest airline’s culture has proved to be one of the strongest of cultures in the airline industry with good management and strong backbone of discipline among the employees. To start with, the southwest airline has one of the best and colorful C.E.O, who changed the image of the company overtime. The southwest culture is one that values the need and efforts of each employee, starting from the top administration to the junior workers. In particular, the C.E.O, Kelly, changed his dressing styles to a more informal way, by dressing casually as a way of releasing tension in the ...

The following paper details the excellent market strategies used by Zipcar to excel in the field of car sharing services. It basically talks about the companies target plan and how by targeting the young generation, the company moves towards the path to success.

A car sharing company serving almost about 6, 73000 members in Europe and North America, Zipcar works on a simple membership concept. It has 9000 vehicles in all operating in these two countries. By the year 2011, the service witnessed a growth of 25% ultimately increasing the revenues by 30 percent from the previous years figures . No doubt, ...

1. How does Southwest add value? What makes southwest different from just “any airline”?
Southwest airlines is unique because of its policy of not following conventional rule set up by other players in the airline industry. It adds value by not serving meals and avoiding handling baggage between airlines making a profit margin of 6% making them most consistent, profitable and fastest growing airline resulting to value addition. It is different since it has the best baggage service and has received few customer complaints. It also takes 15-20 minutes to turn plane around as opposed to the usual ...

1. The company adds value through its simple, excellent, and low cost approaches in service delivery to the customers. It purchases only one type of plane, Boeing 737 series. This reduces the repair costs and ensures the company gets bulk discounts during purchase. The credit it offers is based on the trips and not the miles covered, thus, attractive to more customers. The company relates excellently with the employees thus team work is encouraged, employee productivity improved, and ticket sale maximized thus higher revenues. Southwest Airlines also adds value through the use of interest rate hedge which has reduced ...

1. Southwest is able to differentiate itself from competitors by offering low prices to its customers, while emphasizing high level of customer service. The ability to combine these two factors makes the company stand out and helps to offer a unique value to its passengers.
2. In order to maintain its current position in the market, Southwest should pay careful attention both to the level of customer service and continuous innovation, as well as to the cost reduction and efficiency enhancement.
3. Southwest airlines’ services do not fit all travelers, but only those, who travel only on short ...

The Nature of the Marketing Problem

Promoting the business was the major problem that the new airline had to overcome if it had to achieve success in its operations. Other than the need to hire an advertising agency to handle publicity and public relations issues, Southwest Airlines was yet to evaluate and/or conduct an analysis of the Texas airline industry. Analysis of the image of each independent career with respect to the quality of their advertising and promotional effects became an overriding issue for Southwest Airline. While the Company needed to come up with a detailed and innovative marketing strategy, designing the ideal personality description model ...