Ryanair is an Irish low cost airline headquartered in Dublin founded in 1985. It operates 181 aircrafts over 729 routes across Europe and North Africa from 31 bases. Ryanair has seen large success over the recent years due to its low-cost business model and has become the world’s largest airline in terms of international passenger numbers. Taking Porter’s generic business strategies into consideration, Ryanair operates a cost-leadership strategy to drive itself into achieving its mission of being the leading European low-cost carrier (LCC). Throughout this essay the business strategy of Ryanair will be analysed and the sustainability of their model evaluated. Ryanair’s objective is to firmly establish itself as Europe’s leading low-fares scheduled passenger airline through continued improvements and expanded offerings of its low-fares service. Considering their objectives and mission, Ryanair’s decision on their cost-leadership strategy was based on a few main factors which are discussed below. A major influence Continue reading
Business Strategies
Linkage Between Business Models and Innovation
The question of what a business model is often remains relatively vague. The main reason for this is because business people have an intuitive understanding of business models. This is normal, since the business model is about how an organization makes money, which is a manager’s job after all. However, there is often a lack of a more precise and shared understanding of what a business model is. Yet, such a common understanding is required if we want to have high quality discussions of one’s business model and make important business model decisions. Alexander Osterwalder has come up with the 9 building blocks approach to describe business models. This approach has the characteristics of any other type of model (e.g. in architecture or engineering). It is a simplified description and representation of a complex real world object. It describes the original in a way that we understand its essence without Continue reading
Case Study: Turbulent History of Chrysler Corporation
In 1920, the president of Buick and Vice President of General Motors (GM) resigned his positions in the GM Corporation following political differences with founder and then-president of General Motors William Durant. This former automotive Vice President was promptly approached by a group of investors to focus his business acumen in the fledgling automotive industry on a small, financially troubled New York company called Maxwell Motor Corporation. The one-time automotive vice president was installed as president of Maxwell Motor Company. The man’s name was Walter Percy Chrysler. In short order, Walter Chrysler brought the Maxwell Motor Corporation out of bankruptcy. The financial improvement was due in large part to Mr. Chrysler introducing a new Maxwell model- the Chrysler Six. This car was very well received by the automobile buying public and went on to sell 32,000 units in its first year, generating a profit of over $4 million for the Continue reading
Case Study: The Rise and Fall of Nintendo Wii
Nintendo was founded in Kyoto, Japan, in 1889 under the name of Nintendo Koppai by Fusajiro Yamauchi. They made decks of playing cards, known as Hanafuda, in Japan. The cards were made by hand originally and became very popular. As demand soared, Yamauchi hired assistants to mass-produce his cards and he opened up a second shop in Osaka. Nintendo took off as one of the largest card makers in the world and maintained that status until the 1950’s. In 1963, Nintendo Playing Card Co. became, simply, Nintendo Co. Hiroshi Yamauchi, unimpressed with the limitations of the playing card industry, began to seek out other ventures. Their line of Disney themed cards had given the company a large cash injection, and risks could be taken. In the short period between 1963 and 1968, Nintendo opened and shut down unsuccessful ventures ranging from love hotels to taxi services to a TV network. Continue reading
Case Study: Toyota Prius Marketing Strategies
Toyota manufactures cars, which has a wide coverage from economic minibus to luxurious cars, SUV. The brand on sell includes Crown, Reiz, Vios, Corolla, Coaster and Prius. And Prius is the brand or car that Toyota has made a significant success in American market. It is a hybrid vehicle. What are the characteristics of it? Hybrid vehicles have both a gas engine and an electric motor. When starting up or at very low speeds (under 15 mph), the auto runs on the electric motor. At roughly 15 mph, the gas engine kicks in. this means that the auto gets power from only the battery at low speeds, and from both the gas engine and electric motor during heavy acceleration. When starting up and operating at low speed speeds, the auto does not make noise, which seems eerie to some drivers and to pedestrians who don’t hear it coming! Toyota Prius Continue reading
Case Study: Business Innovation Lessons from Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com was founded in 1999 by Marc Benioff. A former executive at Oracle, he dreamed up the concept while on sabbatical in Hawaii and India. After noticing the success of consumer websites like Amazon.com, he saw the potential for the Internet to be a goldmine for business consumers and set out on his plan to create his own startup business. After considering a human resources endeavor, his first venture was Customer Relationship Management (CRM), with an idea that his software would be easy to use and inexpensive, a vast improvement over similar items already on the market. Salesforce.com has become a platform for business owners and managers to buy subscriptions for software that has many business applications, like service and support, marketing and, of course, sales. Competitors like Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, etc. that dominated the enterprise software market, locked in almost all the large companies in the world with their Continue reading