THE VIRGIN GROUP
CASE STUDY
QUESTION 1: What examples does the case give of links between Branson’s strategy for Virgin and the environment in which it operates?
The Virgin Group Ltd is a group of separately run British companies with the Virgin brand under the leadership of English celebrity business tycoon Sir Richard Branson. The core business areas are travel, entertainment and lifestyle, among others.
Richard Branson’s strategy comes from his deepest inner beliefs;
“in principle there were no product or service boundries limiting a brand name, provided it was associated with quality products/services on offer”
The corporate strategy of the Virgin Group is to operate like ‘a venture capital firm based on
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To fully investigate what environmental influences have particularly affected the virgin group, it is important to take into consideration just what affects virgin’s business environment. And exactly what is the virgin group is it based as an open or closed business system? The answer is its baseline fact, that Virgin group is a multi international commercial/ profit seeking organisation, it is based as an open system as they, are influenced by environmental influences/changes,
eg to customers and technologies and must respond to these environmental influences.
All organisations operate in a wider environment, and how people understand, interpret and interact with that outside world affects their performance. Each business is unique, so the external forces that affect them (and which they try to influence) will differ between them. For Richard Branson’s Virgin group, the external environment has constantly been affected by threats and opportunities. Environmental forces do not affect the practice of their own accord.
These are the factors from the external environment that could affect the Virgin group business.
There are two methods to determine just in which way Virgin group is bring affected by particular environmental influences:
1. Porters five force analysis
“Five Forces Analysis helps the marketer to contrast a competitive environment. It has similarities with other tools for
The political factor is about how and to what extent a government within a country interferes within their economy. Virgin Atlantics can be affected by policies of the government, political stability, labour law, tax policy, overseas market etc. However, Virgins Atlantics as a part of the airline industry, political factors that are relevant are most times regarding fear of terrorism attack. Terrorism is a serious matter, because of political or ideology that is from the west with some people that is from the Islamic country (Tanguay et. al., 2010). Virgin Atlantic was affected by the September 11 terrorist attack which results in a recession globally with depression of consumers. However, Virgin had lost income and results to a higher operational cost because demand was very low as well as higher insurance costs and increases after the terrorist attack. This had left
Competitive environments are defined by the identity, track record, financial strength and market share of key competitors. Harvard Professor Michael Porter 's Five Forces model can be used to evaluate a company 's competitive position. These five forces are barriers to entry (the ability of new players to enter the market), buyer power (the ability of customers to influence price),
Virgin Atlantic is clearly the cash cow of the Virgin Empire but we have undertaken a
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
When manipulating a business’s strategy, it is important to focus on the external factors in the environment. An external analysis is where a business conducts environmental scanning that present a company with the key external forces influencing the organization. The facets of external forces examined are the business environment, remote environment, or the competitive environment. A business environment is all of the external factors in the general environment that a firm cannot control, but can affect their strategy. The remote environment is the forces that affect most firms. Lastly, a competitive environment is the firm’s specific industry and its entirety. The external analysis is pertinent to a company called Dick’s Drive- In; without it, Dick’s would not be a thriving popular business today.
The external environment affects a firm’s strategic actions. Essentially, if a company decision has created a disaster in the environment, they
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.
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
The first part of this report provides a broad introduction into the business of Virgin Australian by examining its principal sources of revenue, its nature of operating, its competitors, the market share and the regulations affecting its operations. From this, it can be seen that Virgin Australia operates in a very competitive environment and generates revenue by the core business of passenger and cargo transport.
Being in the service sector it is important for Virgin Atlantic to study its marketing mix as it works as an efficient tool, while building up marketing plans. It comprises of the seven P’s which are as follows.
Virgin Australia is Australia’s second largest domestic airline, commenced in operations back in 2000 as a low-cost carrier (LCC) and has successfully survived in the market. Major shareholders include Air New Zealand, Singapore Airline and Etihad Airways. The airline rebranded in 2011 as a part of their 5-year turnaround
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
Porter’s five forces analysis is a tool is useful for us to analyse the threat of competition in an industry. Porter believed that the industries were influenced by five forces; competitive rivalry, threat of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, and the threat of substitutes. Analysing these areas can allow you to see attractiveness of the market and find a competitive advantage.
Considering about the strategy of the Virgin group, their founder has mainly pointed out that the key to success as to being up to date with the things going on with the environment. When considering about analyzing an organization, one of the main concepts is that the corporate rational. This means that the way in which corporate parent will add value for its strategic business units.
3) Does the Virgin Group, as a corporate parent, add value to its businesses? If so how?