British Airways is a United Kingdom’s flag carrier airline. The company is headquartered in London, and its hub is at Heathrow Airport. The company is known to be second biggest airline in United Kingdom in terms of passengers and fleet size, first is easyJet. British Airways is listed among top ranked international airlines across the globe. Its major operations are in Europe and US. The company carries around 32 million passengers around the globe. It operates in both passenger travels and cargo destinations (British Airways, 2020).
VRIO analysis framework is a marketing tool used for internal analysis of the companies. Companies must analyse their resources and capabilities in order to gain competitive advantages. There are four components: Value, Rarity, Imitability and Organization. Here is the detailed VRIO analysis of British Airways.
Value
The first and most important thing for the company is valuable resources. Resources and capabilities help the company in enabling the implementation of the strategies effectively. This further leads to achieving competitive advantage. British Airways is a flag carrier airline company operates internationally. The company has successfully developed its strong position in the UK airports specially at Heathrow airport. BA has sustained to maintain the prominent position which helps it in scheduling more flights for passengers.
This helps the company in earning more revenue. Moreover, the ability of British Airline of forming new alliances in order to grow assets is valuable, as it helps in gaining more market share (Janed, 2015).
Rarity
The second component of the VRIO model emphasize on the rarity of the resources and capabilities. Resources which are acquired by few companies are rare. If the resource is easily available in the market, every competitor will use it accordingly for exploiting the opportunities. To maintain its position in the market, British Airways has introduced different services and provide the comfortable travel experience to its customers.
British Airways was Amont he first companies who introduce the usage of mobile phones on flights. The company’s brand reputation as being a national flag carrier is one notable resource for the company. It is also managing and achieving the marketing and sales synergies (Caseturbo, 2020).
Imitability
Although the rare and valuable resources of the company help in implementing the strategies, but it is necessary the resources must be difficult to duplicate. Or else the resources of the company will not be able to bring the competitive advantage in the company. Either the resources must be difficult to imitate or hard to find alternative for. British Airways is one of a leading company in UK, but its competitors like Virgin Airways are beginning for challenging the company’s monopoly at Heathrow airport.
The differentiated strategies and customer experiences are not that difficult to imitate for the companies as whenever BA will start utilizing its bespoke services, competitors will copy it within short span of time. However, BA is successfully buildings strong alliances with different international airlines like Iberia to offer transatlantic flights for customers (Janed, 2015).
Organization
This is the fourth and last component of the VRIO model. The companies have to organize their resources and capabilities in accordance with the value, rare, and imitability to gain competitive advantages for long run. British Airways work hard in organizing the company’s policies and procedures to maintain its market positions.
All the employees are fully aware of reporting structures, hierarchy, and company environment. British Airways motivates its employees and provide the good working conditions to keep them motivated. Its corporate strategies are according to the objectives and goals of the company, and it works hard to mitigate the threats of the associated risks (UK essay, 2018).
Conclusion
British Airways is an airline company widely used across the UK, Europe and USA. The company is serving in around 300 destinations. It works hard in achieving the VRIO components to achieve the competitive advantage and retain its leading position, as man competitors are now challenging the position of BA.
| V | R | I | O | ||
| Market reputation | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Sustainable advantage |
| Leadership | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Competitive Parity | |
| Marketing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Sustainable advantage |
| Service quality | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Sustainable advantage |
| Talented HR | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Competitive parity |
References
- British Airways, 2020. [Online], Available at: https://www.britishairways.com/en-us/information/about-ba?source=BOT_about_ba, [Accessed on: 25th March, 2020].
- Caseturbo, 2020. VRIO Analysis of British Airways: A Journey in Procurement Transformation Case Study Help. [Online], Available at: https://caseturbo.com/london-business-school/british-airways:-a-journey-in-procurement-transformation/vrio-analysis.php, [Accessed on: 25th March, 2020].
- Janed, K. 2015. British Airways Strategic Analysis. [Online], Available at: https://prezi.com/grp1wq-dyfya/british-airways-strategic-analysis/, [Accessed on: 25th March, 2020].
- UK Essays, 2018. British Airways: Strategic Analysis. [Online]. Available at: https://www.ukessays.com/essays/management/british-airways-strategic-analysis-executive-management-essay.php?vref=1, Accessed on: 25th March, 2020].