Case Study Description of JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport
To maximize their effectiveness, color cases should be printed in color.The case explores a deicing capacity expansion decision made by JetBlue at Boston Logan International Airport in the summer of 2010. The need for capacity expansion was driven by significant challenges faced during the previous winter combined with substantial scheduled growth for the upcoming winter.
Swot Analysis of "JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport" written by Douglas Fearing, Robert S. Huckman includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Deicing Logan facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Business processes, Financial management, Manufacturing, Marketing, Personnel policies, Strategic planning, Time management and Technology & Operations.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport casestudy better are - – wage bills are increasing, geopolitical disruptions, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing commodity prices, there is backlash against globalization, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Deicing Logan, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Deicing Logan operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Deicing Logan
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Technology & Operations field.
4. Making a Technology & Operations topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Deicing Logan
Strengths JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Deicing Logan in JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport Harvard Business Review case study are -
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Deicing Logan in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Organizational Resilience of Deicing Logan
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Deicing Logan does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High brand equity
– Deicing Logan has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Deicing Logan to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Deicing Logan in the sector have low bargaining power. JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Deicing Logan to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Deicing Logan has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Deicing Logan has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Deicing Logan has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Deicing Logan are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Ability to lead change in Technology & Operations field
– Deicing Logan is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Deicing Logan in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Strong track record of project management
– Deicing Logan is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Learning organization
- Deicing Logan is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Deicing Logan is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Deicing Logan has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Digital Transformation in Technology & Operations segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Deicing Logan digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Deicing Logan has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Weaknesses JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport HBR case study mentions - Deicing Logan takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport, is just above the industry average. Deicing Logan needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Deicing Logan is planning to shift buying processes online.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport, in the dynamic environment Deicing Logan has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Deicing Logan has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Deicing Logan is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Technology & Operations segment. Deicing Logan needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Deicing Logan to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Deicing Logan 's lucrative customers.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Deicing Logan has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport, it seems that the employees of Deicing Logan don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Deicing Logan, firm in the HBR case study JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Deicing Logan has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Deicing Logan is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Opportunities JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport are -
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Deicing Logan in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Technology & Operations segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Deicing Logan can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Technology & Operations segment.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Deicing Logan can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Technology & Operations industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Deicing Logan can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Deicing Logan can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Deicing Logan to increase its market reach. Deicing Logan will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Deicing Logan can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Deicing Logan operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Technology & Operations sector.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Deicing Logan is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport case study suggests that firm can utilize new technology to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Deicing Logan can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Deicing Logan can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Deicing Logan has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– Deicing Logan can develop new processes and procedures in Technology & Operations industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Deicing Logan to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Deicing Logan has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Deicing Logan to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Threats JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport are -
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Deicing Logan has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Technology & Operations industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Deicing Logan needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Technology & Operations sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Deicing Logan business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Deicing Logan demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Deicing Logan in the Technology & Operations industry. The Technology & Operations industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport, Deicing Logan may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Technology & Operations .
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Technology & Operations field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Deicing Logan can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing wage structure of Deicing Logan
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Deicing Logan.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Deicing Logan in the Technology & Operations sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Deicing Logan with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Deicing Logan will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Regulatory challenges
– Deicing Logan needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Technology & Operations industry regulations.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of JetBlue Airways: Deicing at Logan Airport is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Deicing Logan needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
