Rynair

To gain a competitive advantage, most companies tend to implement a brand strategy. What makes easyJet stand out amongst its competitors is their image of a low-budget airline and no-frills services; this brand strategy is simple but strong. EasyJets’ whole company is recognised by their unique orange logo, this color also forms part of the uniform worn by their staff, which in turn is a strong recognised tool by the consumers.

Ryanair was established in the year 1985 by the RYAN family and has grown from a small airline flying a short hop from Waterford to London, into one of the Europe’s largest carriers. The company expanded and within 4 years it had 350 employees, 14 aircraft, and carried 600,000 passengers a year. It is currently serving to 26 European Countries with 148 destinations. It operates on 794 different routes daily serving by more than 1050 flights in a day. It has totally 169 aircrafts running for different routes with 5986number of employees working in it However, Ryanair’s costs rose drastically and it recorded losses of £20 Million sover four years despite its growth. Although consumers were continuing to fly Ryanair

The strategic plan of Ryanair has been to establish itself as Europe’s leading low-fares airline.” Ryanair aims to offer low fares that generate increased passenger traffic while maintaining a continuous focus on cost-containment and operating efficiencies.” (www.ryanair.com)

Since Ryanair is looming their highest return-on-capital route, it was expected that, not to lose the passengers volumes, both airlines will start to offer lower fares and greater frequency of flights. It is not likely that BA and AL will try to match the exact prices of Ryanair because they have other factors that would influence their customer base to remain loyal. Also, the majority of their costs are fixed, making it difficult for them to quickly reduce their operating expenses without significant financial losses. Not only will BA and AL have to figure out ways to lower their costs, they will also need to reassess the limitations they have on their tickets. Ryanair is offering tickets without any restrictions, so even if BA and AL came close to their price, the customer may still choose Ryanair if the others do not make policy changes. They offer a variety of classes of service, from first to economy, while Ryanair has less complicated offer - one class on one type of plane. BA and AL were assuming that the deregulation of the airline industry, particularly in the United Kingdom, will allow them to expand their routes and cover more of their significant overhead. Some expected

RyanAir pledges simply to get its customers safely from A to B, on time and at the lowest price. The company does indeed have one of the youngest fleets in European aviation, and an impressive record for on time arrivals. Some of its seats are sold for as little as £1 or 1. But if your RyanAir flight is delayed, do not expect free refreshments. RyanAir is similarly tough with its own employees. Their working hours often get close to the legal limits, and their trade unions receive no official recognition.

Ryanair is one of the most profitable low-cost and low-fare airlines in the world. Even though it was merely bankruptcy in 1991, it could stand up and become very successful by 1999. An issues was what led Ryanair to huge losses in 1991, how did it re-gain its position, and what lay ahead in the next century.

4.4. Price As a budget airline, Ryanair applies low price as the core factor of its marketing strategy (Clark, 2005). Price is the only tool in the marketing mix to earn revenues directly while the rest components are costs (Jobber, 2007). Although the aviation industry requires huge expenditures, Ryanair is still able to provide the cheapest air ticket to

This report will prioritise to address clearly how to analyse and evaluate the findings of two questions. The selected company that will be used when completing this task is Ryanair which is known as 'the low cost fare airlines'. (Seminar Case Study, 2013).

In spite of the cost deduction planning, Ryanair also has designed other plans to maximize its profit and expand the market share of the company. On 1st February 2003, Ryanair announced that it was acquiring Buzz, the loss making budget subsidiary of KLM, based at Stansted. Ryanair purchased the loss making company Buzz, as it was a golden opportunity to pick up a ready- made bundle of take -off and landing slots at Stansted Airport, where there is intensifying competition for space. This would not only increase Ryanair‟s share of slots in Stansted from 33 to 49.5 per cent but also produce profit by the fiscal year end of March 2004. Ryanair also aimed to increase its sales through ancillary services in conjunction with its core airline

• Ryanair is in general benefiting from the crises in the airline industry that are occurring at the moment. The company is young and does not face problems in adapting to new environments at the same level as the flag carriers.

Ryanair is Europe’s largest low-fares, no-frills short-haul carrier. The organisation was founded in 1985 as a conventional airline but re-launched itself in 1990/1991 as a low-cost carrier, replicating American Southwest Airlines’ business model. Since then Ryanair has grown

Ryanair positioned itself as a low cost airline, which delivered services equivalent to that of British Airways and Aer Lingus. In terms of service quality, they positioned themselves in the same category as the aforementioned airlines, but at the same time, charging a relatively low price when compared to British Airways and Aer Lingus. Their strategy was to deliver first rate/ good quality customer services and offer meals and amenities comparable to that of British Airways and Aer Lingus. The second strategy was to charge a single fare ticket of I£98 on it Dublin-London service, which was very low when compared to British Airways and Aer Lingus’s rate of I£208 or I£99 if booked in advance.

We concluded that perceived quality is the most significant dimension for creating brand loyalty, followed by brand association and brand awareness. The low-cost airline should plan marketing strategies and allocate marketing investments and focusing on perceived quality first and has the highest priority to build the customer loyalty which, it will affect to increasing the profit and market share. It means the brand has a competitive advantage and be the leader in the market. However, the low-cost airline must produce their product and service with the best quality and make diverse marketing strategies for creating a brand association especially the good image of the airline and consumers recognize the airline’ name depends on creating awareness to arise in the consumers’ mind. Thus, the airline should always investigate brand equity dimensions for building a strong low-cost airline brand in Thailand market. Further research should focus on other variables such as emotional branding, brand performance, brand preference and brand identity because they might have a significant influence on low-cost airline market share in

Valuable is measure through the ability of the business in implementing strategies that improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the business operation. In the Ryanair Holdings case the business are valuable since they are able to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their business by using a primary method of the cost control that used a single model of the aircraft that allows minimizing of training and maintenances cost, efficient management of spare part inventory and more flexible scheduling of flight crew. By using a single model that have been widely used, the flight crew are more readily available for hire. This will reduce the cost of training since the company does not need to provide their flight crew with any training and also ensure that they flight crew ability to handle the flight and reduce the possible number of defect. Besides that, the effectiveness of Ryanair Holding customer services that deliberately reduce the services in some area such as free checked bag, meals, flight to major airport and raising the services in other area such as on-time departure and arrival and also fewer bag lost has attract more customer since they believe that the customer will endure discomfort and indignity as long as they get to their destination cheaply and with their suitcase on time. This valuable aspect will assure the competitive advantages of Ryanair in the long run since them able to attract customer with effectiveness and

1. In-depth environmental analysis of the European Airline industry and discuss the implications for the budget sector and especially for Ryanair. 2. An integrated understanding of the functioning of a company – its human and technical operations, leadership, customer relationships and financial structure. 3. Implications of the internal functioning to create viable strategic positioning and discuss any changes to Ryanair’s approach to ensure an improved sustainability 4. Evaluate the strategic leadership style of Michael O’Leary