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 2008, Southwest Airlines had more clients than any other United States airline, and it was the only United States airline making consistent profits. In July 2008, the airline reported record quarterly revenues, making it the 69th consecutive quarter of profitability, high passenger traffic on the flight and record load factor (Arthur and John 402). Considering the number of domestic and international passengers by Air Carrier, in the first quarter of 2008, Southwest Airlines was the leading carrier in the United States with a total of 24,724,000 on domestic flights followed by the American Airlines and Delta Airlines with 17,724,000 and 14,307,000 domestic flights respectively (Arthur & John, 402). The growth of the company has been consistently due to the best strategies developed by the management to foster the company’s growth concerning profitability, market share, and asset management.
Strategic Planning
Since the establishment of the Southwest Airlines, the company has been pursuing one major strategy of low-cost, low-price, and zero frills. Its establishment of low fares for its clients has been the most successful strategy because it has made air travel in the United States affordable for a large number of the United States population. The establishment of simple fare structures with low, unrestricted, and unlimited everyday coach fares has made the fare options, flexible for its clients (Arthur and John 414). In 2008, its highest unrestricted fare was 399 dollars for one way for the longest flights, but there was a provision for low fares available for the short and medium distance flights. The company also provided strategic discounts for the seats purchased by clients online via the company’s web site.
Apart from the low-cost and low-price strategies adopted by the company, other strategies include the gradual expansion of the company operation into new geographic markets. Southwest Airlines has added one or two new cities to its route schedule in every year to increase its market share (Hill, Gareth and Melissa 112). However, it embarked on saturating the already available market before entering new markets to ensure that it has a strong market base for its operations. The management of the airline has also established numerous flights flying the same routes for the convenience of the business passengers who may be forced to catch another flight if they unexpectedly get late
Marketing Research
Southwest Airlines has continuously engaged in rigorous market research to establish the best marketing and promotion strategies for its products and services. Its marketing strategy has been seeking to position the image of the product strategically in the minds of the air travelers. Many of its print ads and billboards are specifically designed to provide a fun loving and a combative image for the products and services offered by the company. The low-fare airline and the all-time on time airline services provide the basis for the promotion of the market reach of the company (Ferrell, Odies, and Michael 146). Most of the company advertising billboards promoted the frequency of the company’s flights and adoption of the gold, orange, and red colors for their planes, which signified fresher and brighter carriers.
One of the popular promotional ads used by the Southwest Airlines include billboards with statements such as "Can you name the airline with low fares on every seat on every flight, everywhere it flies". Such slogans portray the outstanding nature of the products and services offered by the company. The Southwest airline has continuously engaged in promotional activities to ensure that its products’ reputation is gained throughout its domestic and international markets (Ferrell, Odies and Michael 148). The marketing strategies of the Southwest Airlines seek to guarantee the clients about the company's commitment towards providing good customer service to meet the customers' needs and satisfy their needs and expectations.
Leadership
The Southwest Airline developed new executive leadership between 2001 and 2008. The company engaged in aggressive leadership development to respond to the anxious concerns of the investors about the company’s leadership succession plans. The leadership strategy adopted by the company sought to address the transfer of power and responsibilities from Herb Kelleher aged 70 years to two of his trusted colleagues; James Parker aged 54 and Colleen Barrett aged 56. James Parker became the Chief Executive Officer of Southwest Airlines between the year 2001 and 2004 while colleens Barrett became the Southwest Airline President between 2001 and 2008. James Parker was replaced by Gary Kelly from 2004 to the present and was described as one of the brightest, well respected, and well known over a decade within the industry (Hill, Gareth and Melissa 117).
Successes
Kelly leadership and development of work ethics for the Southwest Airlines has contributed to the current success of the company through hiring great people and treating them as a family, taking care of the customer, keeping fares and operating costs low, and being strategically prepared for bad times in the economy (Aaker and Erich 103). To maintain these success factors, the CEO established numerous strategic objectives, which include making Southwest Airline the best place to work, making it the safest, most efficient, and most reliable airline in the world. Others include offering convenient flight schedules for customers, offering the best travel experience, and doing things in a manner that maintains the low costs of operation and the ability to offer low flight prices.
Organizational Structure
The Southwest Airlines had a comprehensive organizational structure with a Chief Executive Officer assisted by other senior level offers that form the senior level executive. The CEO Garry C. Kelly served on the executive with the Chief People and Administration Officer, Jeff Lamb, Chief Operations Officer, Michael Van De Van, Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer, Ron Ricks, Chief Marketing Officer, Dave Ridley, Chief Finance Officer Laura Wright and Chief Technology Officer Bob Young (Arthur and John 426). According to this functional structure of management, all the decisions about the management of the company were made at the senior level of management; hence, these officers were responsible for decision making.
Creativity
The company portrayed a high level of creativity in its operations through engaging in the continuous innovation of new ways of operations. Through the innovation, excellence in the information technology department, the company achieved operating excellence, which is a source of the company’s pride (Aaker and Erich 112). It emerged as the best airline company offering most reliable, affordable, safe, and flexible flight services around the world.
Conclusion
Work Cited
Aaker, David A., and Erich Joachimsthaler. Brand leadership. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012. Print
Arthur, Thompson and John,Gamble. "Southwest Airlines in 2008: Culture, Values, and Operating Practices. SSRN Electronic Journal n. 2008. Print
Ferrell, Odies C., and Michael Hartline. Marketing strategy, text and cases. New York: Nelson Education, 2012. Print
Hill, Charles, Gareth Jones, and Melissa Schilling. Strategic management: theory: an integrated approach. Stamford: Cengage Learning, 2014. Print
