The Marketing Strategies Of Ryanair

The SWOT analysis is commonly known as a tool for business analysis. Its main use is for looking at strengths and weaknesses to do with the organisation, current or future opportunities and possible internal and external threats. These can then be dealt with to make them into a positive.

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

Cathal Ryan and Declan Ryan have started Ryanair since 1985. For nearly a year, Ryanair had operated a 14-seat turboprop between Waterford and Gatwick Airport on the outskirts of London. The airline targeted low-fare segment market. It initiated service from London’s secondary airports. In terms of competition, Waterford and Gatwick didn’t pose any challenges.

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)

Summary: Ryanair was founded in 1985 by the Ryan family to provide scheduled passenger airline services between Ireland and the UK, as an alternative to the then state monopoly carrier, Aer Lingus. It started out a full service conventional airline, with two classes of seating and leasing three different types of aircraft. However, despite growth in the passenger volumes financial problems were of a growing concern.

Ryanair, originally an Irish low-cost airline and established by the Ryan family in the year of 1984 starting off with only 25 members of staff. Replicating the American Southwest airline business model and then officially relaunched in the year 1990. It has vastly grown from being a single-aircraft family operation into one of the world’s top leading airlines. Now Ryanair has reached 11,458 employees. The airline carries over 131 million passengers per annum on over 2,000 flights daily, from 86 different routes, flying to more than 205 destinations in 33 countries.

The airline industry has always been a fiercely competitive sector. Since the invention of low-cost carriers, also known as no-frills or

Ryanair spends very little on advertising. They do not subcontract advertising facilities. Ryanair uses a very common form of advertisements, mostly black and white print ad in a newspaper, with the focal message of "lowest fare". Even the company’s logo is very simple and straight forward which reads ‘Ryanair; the low fares airline’ in blue and white. However customer attention is captured through stimulating images or unpleasant comparison to other airlines.

Prior to 1991, Ryanair had suffered from continuous losses from 1985 to 1989. The first reason that put it into this situation was that it tried to position itself as a low fare airline with the first rate services. It tried to keep low and unrestricted fare, while keep focusing on the best customer service and relationship. This mixed model was proven inefficiency. The low price could lure number of

The aim of this report is to carry out a strategic analysis of Ryanair. This will involve investigating the organisation’s external environment, to identify opportunities and threats it might face, and its strategic capability, to isolate key strengths and any weaknesses that need dealing with. Finally, a SWOT analysis will be carried out to assess the extent to which Ryanair’s strategies are suitable to what is happening in its task environment.

Ryanair, the leader of low-fare carriers in Europe, will expand its business throughout the world. This report discusses the strategies which Ryanair entre the Chinese market. Through PESTEL analysis and SWOT analysis to have sophisticated understandings of the Chinese market situation and the civil aviation environment, then after a series of considerations, eventually, Ryanair makes the decision to cooperate with China Southern Airlines in the form of a joint venture. Based on this, Ryanair has set up

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

For many years up to 1990, the financial performance of the company which was negative, dramatically changed with the appointing of the new Chief Executive Officer Michael O’Leary. The new management vision was to restructure the company based on the Southwest Airlines prototype business model with a culture of low-cost / low fare. Thanks to the European Union deregulation air transport in …, the company opened new routes and bases, increase its market share and became the first airline in Europe to carry over 100 Million international customers in a calendar year (Ryanair,2016) due to its low cost competitive advantage.

Now I am going to discuss Ryan air’s (RA) current strategic position by analysing its macro (external)and micro (internal) environment.

The objective of this report is to appraise and evaluate the external environment, internal capabilities of Ryanair and assess the competitive environment. This project report also evaluates the marketing focus deployed by Ryanair in the year 2009 when the airline achieved a benchmark by being Europe’s largest carrier by passenger numbers and market capitalisation.