1. What is Southwest’s competitive strategy? What are the sources of its success? How does it make money?
Competitive advantages of Southwest Airlines can be explained from four aspects, location, time, money, and people. First of all, Southwest focuses on choosing secondary cities near metropolitan areas such as Midway in Chicago. Instead of choosing airports in major cities for its departure and landing, Southwest greatly decreases its potential costs of flying. Secondly, Southwest uses standardized aircrafts, Boeing 737, to fly short-term and point-to-point routes. This strategy contributes effectively to Southwest’s on-time departures and lower rate of flight delays. In the third place, with regard to money, low fare is probably the most competitive strategy of Southwest Airlines. By offering competitive price of short-haul trip tickets, Southwest successfully attracts domestic travelers and is able to make profits from frequent flights and increasing volume of passengers. Finally, satisfied customer service is also a competitive advantage of Southwest. Customer-oriented concept is deeply rooted in every employee’s mind and Southwest’s organizational culture as well. Southwest’s emphasis on customer enables it sustainably receives positive feedbacks from passengers and has the fewest number of complaints from their customers. An important factor of Southwest’s success is productivity of its employees. Motivated workforce results in great efficiency in Southwest Airlines’ operation process.
2. What are the foundations of Southwest’s