Competitive Advantage Of Airborne Express

The three main competitive strategies are cost leadership, differentiation, and price strategy. Cost leadership focuses on acquiring raw material of the highest quality at the lowest price. In return this company can lower production cost with the goal of being the company with the lowest production cost in the industry. Differentiation strategies allow companies to make their products stand out from the others. Differentiation can be actual or perceived. Actual differentiation occurs when the company creates products that are not available elsewhere. Perceived differentiation takes a lot of marketing and advertisement to convince the consumer that this company’s product is superior. Price strategy includes a variety of strategies that cause a particular product to be marketed at the lowest price possible. Price strategy includes skimming where companies set a high initial price only to turn around and lower it. Bundle pricing occurs when several products are offered for one price. Promotional pricing allows other incentives to buy such as buy one get one half off. Using the pricing strategies causes many consumers to actually purchase more believing that they are receiving a “deal” while the company is still profiting. Competitive strategies are always used by companies and are often used together. Companies that understand how to combine competitive strategies fare much

Thompson, Peteraf, Gamble, and Strickland (2012) found that competitive strategy depend on whether a company’s target market is narrow or broad, and whether a company is seeking competitive advantage through low-cost or product differentiation. These two factors reveal five generic competitive strategies. The five strategies are Overall Low-Cost Provider Strategy, Focused Low-Cost Strategy, Broad Differentiation Strategy, Focused Differentiation Strategy, and Best Cost

Jobber and Chadwick (2013) discussed that the main two sources of gaining an advantage over competitors are by offering different benefits of the product or deliver it at lower cost than the competition.

There are two different types of competitive advantage: low cost and differentiation. We will develop them in this part I.

The express companies delivered tremendous amount of packages. The big three players, Federal Express, UPS, and Airborne Express, collectively delivered more than five million

1.How and why has the express mail industry structure evolved in recent years? How have the changes affected small competitors?

The company I chose to research is Delta which is in the airlines industry. Delta is one of the world’s largest global airlines that assist more than 160 million travelers get to destinations around the world. The company started in 1924 as a small aerial crop dusting operation known as Huff Daland Dusters. In 1929 Delta had its first passenger flights that went from Dallas, Texas to Jackson, Mississippi. This flight was taken on an airplane that carried 5 passengers and 1 pilot. Delta has been offering its service to customers for 85 years. For four consecutive years, Delta has been ranked No. 1 in the Business Travel News Annual Airline survey. This is a huge accomplishment because it is a first for any airline. It is important

Launched just 8 years ago, today, the Jetstar Group consists of a network of value-based air carriers that deliver high quality air passenger services for budget-minded travelers across Australia, New Zealand and the Asia Pacific region. Beginning with just 400 employees, the company currently employs more than 7,000 people and carries about 20 million passengers a year. To gain some insights into how the Jetstar Group achieved this impressive growth in such a short amount of time, this paper provides a review of the relevant literature concerning the air passenger industry in general and the business strategy used by the Jetstar Group in particular. A summary of the research and recommendations for this company are provided in the paper's conclusion.

Fourthly, The Airborne maintained low prices, provided tailored services and achieved higher efficiencies and lower cost in order to long run and remain competitive in the market. So, Airborne targeted business customers who shipped frequently and was able to better serve them through repetition and experience including using customization codes to provide tailored service to specific large business accounts. Moreover, Airborne had a high concentration of customers in metropolitan area and a high percentage of afternoon and second day deliveries, permitting it to use ground shipping more often than its competitors and save up to two-thirds the cost of air shipping (Exhibit 8). Finally, Airborne had total control of its airport hub, which is design as per the needs and expand to enclose warehouse space for its business customers. Furthermore, Airborne achieved greater efficiency in its shipping by utilizing 80% of shipping space therefore; Airborne lowered cost not having retail service centers, using independent contractor van services and it was more efficient by picking up and delivering more parcels per stop than FedEx. Hence, Airborne becomes a stronger competitor in the market due to low prices and provided excellent service to the customers.

A Competitive Advantage is a peculiarity for an organization between it's competitors . It's achieved either by lowering prices or by greatening the value of the product or by offering luxury service and benefits to cope with high prices .

Competitive advantage is that a company has better ability in earning profit and profit growth compared to its competitors for the same group of customers in one industry.

Competitive advantage(CA) is an advantage competitors gain by providing or offering customers or consumers greater value for their money through product and service differentiation or through lower prices. Maintaining competitive advantage is crucial to many businesses or organizations' success in order to survive in the market. Competitive advantage is characterized by superior performance which could be an attribute to outperform the competitors whether current or potential; or gaining a higher market share in a particular industry thereby ensuring market leadership; or ultimately, maximization of profit.(JOBBER 2010)

Competitive strategy is the moves and methods that the firm has taken and is taking to appeal buyers, improve its market position, and to endure competitive pressures. The strategy is about what a firm’s capability to try to knock off competitors and attain competitive advantage, which can be offensive or defensive. There are three approaches to competitive strategy, which are low-cost leadership strategy where struggling to be the overall low-cost manufacturer in the in industry. Moreover, pursuing to distinguish one’s product offering from competitors (differentiation strategy), and the last one is focus or niche strategy where aiming on thin portion of the market rather than the whole market (Porter, 1998).

Competitive advantage is explained by Mahoney and Pandian (1992) as the function of industry analysis, organizational governance and the firm’s effects in the form of resource advantages and strategies. In order for a firm to be competitive it must adapt to the volatile business environment and through strategic management decisions establish a competitive advantage that will ultimately produce superior performance relative to its competitors (Akimova 2000).

convenience of location’ (Queensland government, 2016). As Resource-based view (RBV) theory holds that the competitive advantage and superior performance