Identify Southwest Airlines’ product, target market, and whether they are providing superior customer value and offering the customer desirable benefits.
business
Description
Southwest Airlines
Internal Analysis
Part 1:
Capabilities Assessment
Current Market Profile
Identify Southwest Airlines’
product, target market, and whether they are providing superior customer value and offering the
customer desirable benefits.
Sources of Competitive Advantage
Identify specific cost, product,
and service attributes that would make customers choose Southwest Airlines over other
airlines.
Organizational Capabilities
Identify Southwest’s organizational
capabilities and competencies (routines and processes)
that lead to a competitive advantage.
Strategic Importance of Core Capabilities
Rank
the organizational core capabilities (found in Step 3) in order from most
important to least important.
Key Core Competencies and Capabilities
Based on your rankings, what are
Southwest’s key competencies and capabilities?
Strengths
and Weaknesses
Identify Southwest’s strengths and
weaknesses for each key core competency or capability, using the criteria to
judge organizational strengths and weakness, Figure
4.5 on page 107.
Part 2:
Financial Assessment
Past
Performance Trends
1. Provide a historical financial analysis
Graph/Chart (two years of data).
2. Provide the comparative financial ratios for
the last two years (Current Ratio, Acid
Test, Debt-equity ratio, Return on Equity (ROE), Return on Assets (ROA), Profit
Margin). How do they compare? For instance, are liquidity ratios going up
or down?
3.
What do the data say about Southwest’s use of its resources and capabilities?
What
are the indicators of internal strengths for an identified core competency or
capability? Weaknesses?
Specific Goals
or Targets
How does Southwest’s
Performance measure up against its stated goals? (Note that you were required
to find out company goes in the first section of your comprehensive case
analysis.) What strengths and weaknesses
can be identified?
Comparison Against
Competitors
How well is Southwest doing compared to at least two
other top competitors in the industry? (Fortune, BusinessWeek, Morning Star,
business or general news articles, and investment research companies are some places
you may find this information.) What strengths and weakness can be
identified?
