Jet Blue Case Study Essay example

Business Strategy – BAD 4013 – SUMMER 1999 Case Study Southwest Airlines I. Strategic Profile and Case Analysis Purpose The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of customer service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and company spirit. Twenty-seven years ago, Rolling King, owner of floundering commuter airline, and Herb Kelleher, King’s lawyer, got together and decided to start a different kind of airline that would provide a short-haul, low-fair, high-frequency, point-to-point service in the United States. The company began service on June 18, 1971 with flights between Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio (“The Golden Triangle” as Herb called it). Southwest Airlines is the fourth

JetBlue Airways, the latest entrant in the airlines industry has gone through the initial stages (entrepreneurial and collectivity) of the organizational life cycle rapidly under the successful leadership of David Neelman. JetBlue Airways is currently in the formalization stage of the life cycle where in it needs to create procedures and control systems to effectively manage its growth. Also as it proceeds to grow further to reach the elaboration stage, JetBlue needs to continue to align itself with the environment in order to maintain its sustained growth.

Before David Neeleman’s non-compete agreement with Southwest Airlines expired, he envisioned the concept of starting a low-fare airline that would combine common sense, innovation, and technology and bring the humanity back into air travel (Gittel & O’Reilly, 2001). In 1998, JetBlue was born. In order for David to fulfill his goal of a “do-it-right” kind of airline, he needed to recruit superior industry veterans who were willing to start from scratch and place an emphasis on employees and customers. Each of these individuals, from the President, General Counsel, CFO, and the HR director, wanted to create an airline that was fun, had

JetBlue Airways has been affected by key external factors. The political factor that has affected JetBlue is the resentment towards union formation. Currently, JetBlue is a non-union company. This helps it keep its fixed costs low. Further, there are positive

JetBlue has been one of the most successful airlines since it first entered the industry in December of 1999. Founder, David Neeleman, set out to succeed by offering low-cost air travel in hopes of perpetuating his services to as many people as he could across the US. He was very adamant about having a very customer oriented business that catered to the needs of all. In doing so he wanted to emphatically promote his obligation to safety, caring, integrity, passion, while allowing the customers to have fun while traveling. There motto helps portray Neeleman’s belief stating “You Above All”. His primary goals had been to follow Southwest’s objectives of offering low rates to customers, focusing on customer’s needs and comforts while distinguishing itself with their amenities. Neeleman’s other goal was to establish his low-cost leadership strategy by concentrating his airline in a large popular metropolitan area that already is already correlated with high airfare (Peterson, 2004). He then began operating based out of the New York metropolitan area at John F. Kennedy International airport with his secondary locations in Washington D.C., Boston and Los Angeles.

JetBlue Airways Corporation was formed in August 1998 as a low-fare, low-cost but high service passenger airline serving select United States market. JetBlue's operations strategy was designed to achieve a low cost, whilst offering customers a pleasing and differentiated flying experience. JetBlue has had a successful business model and strong financial results during that period, and performed well in comparison to other airline companies in the US during the period between 2000 and 2003. It had been the only other airline apart from Southwest airlines, to have been profitable during the aftermath of the September 11, 2001

1. JetBlue's strategy for success in the marketplace is based on the cost leadership strategy, as outlined by Michael Porter (QuickMBA, 2010). This strategy relies on delivering products or services at a lower price than competitors, and using that cost leadership as the basis by which to attract customers. JetBlue essentially built their business model after Southwest Airlines, and the company's founders had experience with Southwest that helped them learn about the business. The JetBlue approach to cost leadership is focused on the mass market.

Only two years in existence, Jet Blue decided to become a public company and issue an initial public offering. Jet Blue’s decision came in 2002, just as the airline industry experienced a substantial downturn following the terrorist attacks of September 2011. Despite these challenges, Jet Blue remained profitable and experienced aggressive growth. In order to support this enormous growth and offset portfolio losses, the public offering seemed to be best course of action.

Jet Blue has an opportunity to remain cutting edge in the airline industry by continuing to be low-cost and expanding carrier. A great market for Jet Blue to expand to would be towards the Caribbean's. As well as possibly lobbying Washington to lift travel sanctions in Cuba, which at one point was a major vacation getaway for Americans. This opportunity fits into Jet Blues current business model of short distance flights at a lower cost than the competition.

Another strength that JetBlue has is that they have newer planes, advanced technological aspects that are more cost efficient. However, JetBlue’s weakness includes high debt due to the cost jets and high dependence on the metro area. JetBlue’s opportunity in the industry includes the industry growth and JetBlue’s commitment in partnering with other companies to draw in more customers. Some threats to JetBlue is an over competitive market, raising fuel costs and constant increase in stricter government restrictions ("Blue Airways Corporation SWOT Analysis," 2014).

There are two major strategic issues facing JetBlue. The first is that the company is growing very rapidly. This brings with it a number of critical challenges, such as recruitment and selection, maintaining the corporate culture, and maintaining high service levels. Secondary goals associated with this are maintaining safety standards, finding profitable routes to occupy and avoiding a unionization drive. Growing a company this rapidly is possible given the strong initial financing that the company has, but challenging in that the faster the airline grows, the more difficult it will be to find the right people and the right routes. The company can grow rapidly while plucking the low-hanging fruit but these tasks become more difficult over time.

JetBlue had made significant progress in establishing a strong brand by seeking to be identified as a safe, reliable, low-fare airline that was highly focused on customer service and by providing an enjoyable flying

JetBlue is related to three types of the management concepts in my personal understand, they are: product and marketing. First of all, in product concepts the company focuses on offer the best to fulfill their customer’s expectation “holds that consumers will favor products that offer the most in quality,

Within case analysis assignment, the JetBlue case is analyzed strategically in this document to set answers for following basic questions:

Because what JetBlue did was stop thinking about looking right customers for their business, this way they devoted himself to transform the company to focus on its customers, so used all the basics of marketing which seeks that customers have an important value in the company so that they can better understand consumers and achieve satisfy in the best way, this is the ideology that drives this company, the most important thing for them is that the customer are happy with JetBlue and does not change the company for any reason, and then for the next plans they came back.