Competitive Strategy for Qantas Airlines: Strategic Development Tools

QANTAS AIRLINES
Competitive Strategy
Strategic Development Tools
8/13/2018

COMPETITIVE STRATEGY 1
Competitive Strategy
Competitive strategy guides a business to operate and stay in an industry and attain a
competitive advantage. If a business does not possess a competitive advantage, it will not be
able to identify a successful spot that could be used to manage a competitive advantage to
survive in any specific industry (Evans, 2017). This paper will discuss the use of strategic
development tools that support business in planning competitive strategies so that it can deal
with different factors that affect its performance. The paper will involve Pestle Analysis,
SWOT Analysis, Porter's Generic Strategy, and Porter 5 force framework as the strategic
development tools and their support to Qantas Airlines in attaining competitive advantage.
Overview of Qantas Airlines
Qantas Airways is the Australian flag carrier and the biggest airline in terms of fleet size,
international destinations, and international flights. It is one of the World’s oldest airlines
after Avianca and KLM have been established in 1920. The name of Qantas originates from
‘QANTAS”, an abbreviation for its real name, ‘Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial
Services,” and it is designated “The Flying Kangaroo.” (Qantas, 2018)
SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis is a structure utilized to measure the competitive position of the company by
recognizing its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Precisely, SWOT analysis is
an initial valuation model that evaluates the performance of the business and its potential
threats and opportunities (Hashemi and Samani, 2017).
Strength talks about the areas where a business excels and separates itself from its
competitors. Some of the strengths of Qantas Airlines are:
 Emerging worldwide existence through a partnership
 Tough dominance in the market of Australia
 Strong public and marketing relations
Weaknesses stop a business to perform with its maximum efforts. Some of the weaknesses of
Qantas Airlines are:

COMPETITIVE STRATEGY 2
 Gap in the increase of capacity and demand in the market
 Decreasing cost base will include layoffs and anxious industrial relations
 Decrease in non-core assets
Opportunities mean the positive external factors that a business can utilize to attain a
competitive advantage. Some opportunities of Qantas Airlines are:
 Qantas Airlines can make use of digital marketing and loyalty programs for increasing
market base
 Partnership with different international airlines for the joined service offering to
consumers
Threats are the factors that have power to destroy a business. Threats that are faced by
Qantas Airlines are:
 Increasing competition from Asian competitors
 Instability in fuel prices and foreign exchange
 Governing concerns affects business expansion (SWOT & PESTLE, 2018)
Source [(Shaw, 2017)]
Pestle analysis
Pestle Analysis is a tool, which is utilized by the marketers to evaluate and observe the
macro-environmental factors that influence the organization performance. The outcome of
this tool is utilized to recognize weaknesses and threats that are used in SWOT Analysis. The
letters of Pestle Analysis stands for Political, Economic, Social, Technological,
Environmental, and Legal (Rastogi and Trivedi, 2016).