LONGITUDINAL STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT STUDY RECENT PAST
INTRODUCTION
Virgin Group limited is a venture capital conglomerate founded in 1970 by Sir Richard Branson with interest in transportation, travel, mobile, financial services, media, music and fitness. It employs about 50,000 people in more than 30 countries, comprising of 300 companies and brand, with 11.5 billion pounds in revenue as at 2009, (Virgin website). (Adapted from Rob Abdul, 2001)
It started as a mail order business and gradually moved in retailing and
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This new territory caused the first major shift in the strategic thinking of Virgin as the airline was capital intensive and by 1985 airfares price war and the investment needs of virgin Atlantic (the airline) had taken its toll on Virgin finances with the result that publicly listed to raise more equity. Virgin’s music, retail, and vision business was brought together to form the Virgin Group and 35% of its equity was listed. Branson was not happy with this new arrangement because of the control that shareholders would hold on direction and this was not in keeping with his nonconformist style and also that he felt that his organization was misunderstood and undervalued by so called experts. The organization culture at Virgin was also at risk in this new arrangement and he seized the opportunity presented by the 1987 stock market crash to buy out external shareholders. Back in private hands Virgin continued to grow using funds realized from Virgin Atlantic and loans to seek out new market around the globe with the Virgin megastore in such diverse countries like United States, Netherlands, Japan, Spain and Australia using joint venture strategy with Blockbuster Corporation. The 1990s saw similar expansion with the launch of Virgin Lightships, West One Television, Virgin games, Vintage
Threats: http://excellence.qia.org.uk/VLSP4/pdf/tour_resources_d.pdf http://www.datamonitor.com/companies/company/?pid=C00F1CDB-4C6F-4BA5-997B A82D60E1071C Intense competition: The airline industry includes a large number of players; with many of them having worldwide operations. There are many large airline chains such as BA, Cathay Pacific, and Lufthansa. Furthermore, a large number of independent airlines especially in the European region provide acquisition opportunities to large chains. Merging in the airline industry would strengthen competition and result in loss of revenues. Intense competition threatens to wear away the group’s market share and reduce its profitability. http://www.datamonitor.com/companies/company/?pid=C00F1CDB-4C6F-4BA5-997B A82D60E1071C *7) *INTERNAL ANALYSIS* OF VIRGIN ATLANTIC: *STRENGTHS & WEAKNESS Strengths Strong financial position: The Company has witnessed strong financial performance during the last few years. Its revenue increased at a CAGR of 9.5% to reach £2,140 million in fiscal 2007 as compared to £1,630 million in fiscal 2005. The net profit of the company increased at a CAGR of 32.5% to reach £46.8 million in fiscal 2007 as compared to £20.1 million in 2005. Moreover, the net profit margin of the company also increased from 1.2% in 2005
Virgin is a U.K-based company led by Sir Richard Branson and is one of the three most recognized brands in Britain. The company has a vast history of brand extensions – one of which is their launch of a wireless phone service in the USA. Dan Schulman has been appointed CEO of the Virgin
From 1968 to 2007, Richard Branson leads the Virgin group to become a conglomerate of more than 200 companies with business in music, airlines, rail transport, soft drinks, radio broadcasting and etc. (Grant 2005a:309) The Virgin Group followed many other companies during the 1950 to1980 period in adopting diversification as a mean for corporate growth. The boom of unrelated diversification of the early 1960s and 1970s was halted abruptly however by the failure of many large diversified companies (Grant 2005b:447). The simple action of bringing various businesses together under a single ownership itself was clearly not sufficient in creating shareholder value. The following years
Dissimilar sources plan altered steps involved in the planning process, but in this case I will discuss on seven steps that are involved in the entire process. The first step is goal setting. This basically involves coming up with the main objectives and goals that the company wishes to establish within a particular period of time. It is a very important section because the company will operate with a view of the goal in mind, if it is not clearly established, and then the business could lose direction along the way. After goal setting, we have development of the planning premises, where the plans are prepared and any underlying conditions defined. This is where there is an assessment of the environment and any constraints or
This brand aims to differentiate itself away from its competition through repositioning and transforming the company as a first airline choice that is committed to doing more for consumers. Virgin Australia’s main objective is being innovative in its loyalty membership program through enhancing the opportunities that are available to consumers through establishing new partnerships, new benefits and offerings that will benefit
Global airline alliances in another issue included in Virgin’s external environment. Alliances benefit airlines in many ways as they enable them more market access, convergence of technologies and even help overcome legal barriers (Anon., 2009). One weakness for Virgin therefore is not being part of an alliance such as Oneworld Alliance (Anon., 2009), in order to take full advantage of its potential Virgin should look into adjusting their market strategy and look into joining an alliance, if not form its own.
Virgin Mobile will sell directly to consumers through retail companies such as Wal-Mart, Target, Sam Goody, Circuit City Media Play, Best Buy, and Virgin Mega stores. The idea is to remain accessible to youth and be in the areas where they shop the most.
Virgin Australia is a rival airline to Qantas. Virgin Australia started in the aviation industry in the year 2000. The current position of the airline is better than the previous financial year of 2014. This report will focus on current financial results and position, the capacity, network and pricing, current equity structure and future direction.
Virgin Cars, an internet car retailer, was launched in May 2000. Virgin predicted that they would sell 24,000 cars within the first year. That however was not the case as they only sold 12,000 vehicles by 2003. (Russell, April) Virgin Cars ceased operations in 2005. In another attempt to take on a giant in an industry, Virgin launched Virgin Pulse and Virgin Digital, which were to take on the iPod and iTunes.
I identify Richard Branson as one of the most distinct and famous leaders among the contemporary business leaders for this paper. There may be more famous, wealthy, and renown business leaders around or may be leading with many different leadership styles of those who are CEO’s and founders, but I chose Richard Branson and I would like to analyze and evaluate his unique leadership approach and his natural gifted/talents of leading people to grow and become successful.
Any price war is likely to create an immediate change in customer preferences, in particular Virgin’s target customer (15- 29 years) is likely to be strongly affected given their traditional high sensitivity to prices change (price elasticity typically high).
The purpose of this report was to provide a strategic evaluation of the company Virgin Australia. The report begins by conducting a strategic analysis of Virgin, including an analysis of the external environment and an internal analysis of competitive strengths and weaknesses. The report then identifies the strategic direction and objectives of Virgin Australia, including the vision, mission, strategic objectives and stakeholders of the company. The report moves on to explore strategic choices of Virgin Australia by identifying the key broad business level and
‘Virgin Media was created by the merger of NTL Telewest and Richard Branson’s Virgin Mobile, Virgin Media is a subsidiary company of Liberty Global PLC that is the worlds largest international cable corporation, the formation of Virgin Media formed the first ‘quad play’ provider’ (Virgin Media case study)
The most important inputs are craft and technology, aviation fuel, and skilled labour. Due to the reasons of political and economic, the fuel price is subjected to fluctuate. Also, the technology suppliers and craft suppliers are very limited and Virgin brands solely relies upon the supplier for them to supply very fast and aircraft that is well designed and fast. Boeing and Airbus are the two leading manufacturing aircraft that supply Virgin. The Virgin Group is constantly being technologically developed by suppliers with its touchscreen seat back entertainment, Wi-Fi accessibility, health club maintenance, cutting edge smart phones, and new space
His business activities showed much sign of lacking entrepreneurial vigor. In financial services, Virgin Money was in the process of a major expansion of its UK retail presence through acquiring the government-owned Northern Rock with its 75 branches, 2,100 employees, and one million account holders. In health clubs, Virgin Active, boosted by its acquisition of rival Esporta, was expanding into new markets in Asia and Latin America. In healthcare, Virgin was using its acquisition of Assura to establish itself in primary healthcare services in the UK. In communications Virgin’s initiatives included the launch of Virgin Mobile in Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Poland, and Oman and cloud computing services for corporate customers in the UK. Meanwhile, in the travel business, Virgin continued to be a pioneer: the Virgin Galactic spaceship service was undergoing test flights and selling seats at $200,000 each. Yet despite Branson prominence as Britain’s best-known entrepreneur and one of its richest