Airbus Case Study Essay

Airbus was planning to introduce the A380 in direct competition to Boeing 747 to compete in the large aircraft sector. The rivalry between Airbus and Boeing was already intense. Boeing’s market share reduced from 70% in 1974 to 45% in 1990 while Airbus’s market share had increased from 1% to 34% during the same time (Exhibit 5). Encouraged by this increase in market share, Airbus was contemplating the introduction of A380. Development of new product line is extremely expensive in the Aircraft sector. Following is a quantitative analysis of the project to calculate the risks involved in introducing a new line of Aircrafts.

Boeing pursues Product Differentiation strategy in order to create competitive advantage over Airbus. Boeing differentiates its products by increasing number of seating capacity, engine capacity, innovating new winglet designs and by manufacturing wide range of products in respect to the change in market

This comprises the main reason why Airbus is interested in building the A3XX. It attempts to create a dominant design that the market for large planes may pledge allegiance to, moving from simply product innovations to process improvements for the VLA. It does intend to just replicate the 747s and achieve a jumbo jet with the same capabilities. Rather, it aims to increase the seating capacity and reduce costs for the operators by so much more than what Boeing’s alleged monopoly holds, with the objective of seizing the market

Strategy #1 The aircraft market is extremely competitive, even though there are less than five major players globally. Between Boeing and Airbus, most of the market share for the next generation aircraft has already been solidified. For Bombardier to effectively gain orders it must make the aircraft are more appealing to purchasers in two major ways: cost and performance. In the final cost of an aircraft, a great deal of money is spent on research and development. Boeing has millions invested in new aircraft and wing design, and piggy-backs off its other divisions and aircraft offerings. Airbus receives a great deal of benefit from its govermnet contracts

• High capital requirements to establish +huge set up+ large investments + economies of scale/scope: Boeing having advantage over Airbus in large commercial aircraft sector.

Boeing adopts a very thorough, well planned out process to manage the project. The stages are defined clearly and tasks involved in each stage are carried out sequentially. The first stage of their approach is the project definition phase during which Boeing identified holes in the market not met by existing planes, assessed future airline needs, considered alternative plane configurations, explored feasibility of possible technologies and performed preliminary estimation of costs. During the market assessment, analysts gathered information regarding future needs of airlines by speaking directly to

At that point, Boeing was already in the VLA market with their flagship 747-400. The Board has a goal: “to return Boeing to the top Quartile of companies both in profitability and in total return to shareholders… Shareholder value is the single most important measure of our long term success”. It is too risky to develop a competing super jumbo jet to compete with Airbus A3XX or Boeing’s own 747 which is already in the market. Cutting prices on the 747 will also result lower profit of

Market Share Airbus will launch their new large, long distance plane A380 in 2006. This plane can be a dreadful competitive product to Boeing. If Boeing falls behind regarding innovations, fuel efficiency and other attributes of a long haul airliner, it will soon lose its market share. In order for Boeing to compete in the aviation industry, it is crucial to take on some risk and develop this new 7E7 project. This helps the company to fight against its competitors and recover from the slump in the industry.

In its published Current Market Outlook (CMO), Boeing forecast a much smaller VLA market despite general agreement on overall growth with GMF. Boeing predicts the total market demand for VLA aircraft is 330 over the next 20 years. In addition, the most of the demand for the lager planes would not materialize for at least ten years. If the predicted market demand is true, there is no way for Airbus to reach the breakeven point. It is most likely Airbus will run out of the business if it commits build A3XX. In this case, Boeing could ignore the A3XX and concentrate on its existing product line. That is to say, Boeing had an opportunity to enhance profitability on its existing products while Airbus was tied up developing the A3XX.

Nevertheless, as Boeing gears up for its all-new 7E7 airliner, arch rival Airbus may already be putting 7E7 orders at risk by talking to airlines about a similar plane. Airbus is viewed a having advanced technologies coupled with a conglomerate backing and Boeing has not come up with any new innovative ideas in the last ten

The following analysis identifies the major strategic issues of Airbus and its industry, provides alternatives and a recommendation of the most optimal solution, and details a plan of implementation for the company.

With the company being in the public eye at all times the planners must determine where, when, and how the product will be used before they begin building, testing, and using the new technologies. Since Boeing has become such a large company it has had to continuously evaluating the way it does things to make sure that they are doing the right thing.

The main objective of Boeing's strategy is to analyze the commercial aircraft industry, to understand the demand that is present, and to formulate a solution that will fulfill that segment. Currently, there are only two major players in the global market: Boeing and Airbus. Boeing is widely known as the "free market" champion, while Airbus represents the "not-so-free" approach of the European Union's organized and government subsidized

Developing the World's Largest Commercial Jet In this case, we will be analyzing strategic interaction between Airbus and Boeing, the two leading producers in the global commercial aircraft industry. In particular, we will be considering Airbus' proposed launch of the A3XX, their entry into the intercontinental jumbo jet segment, and Boeing's potential competitive responses to this entry. We will attempt to answer the questions: Should Airbus enter the jumbo jet segment? If so, how?

Weaknesses that Airbus has, is that due to their structure, and having a multi country consortium, they were slow to make decisions. In the 1980’s Airbus experienced difficulties in financing the A-320 project, since all the Airbus partner governments had not approved the program (Carpenter, M. A., & Sanders pg. 613). Airbus was slow in its decision making process because the partners of the consortium tried to safeguard its own interests rather than make decisions that would benefit them as a whole (Carpenter, M. A., & Sanders pg. 613).