Strategic Analysis of Ryanair: Approaches, Leadership, SWOT, and Porter's Five Forces

QUESTION ANSWER

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Analysing strategic development approaches adopted by Ryanair:............................................3
Evaluating the strategic leadership of Ryanair's CEO:................................................................5
With the help of SWOT Analysis, evaluating the effectiveness of Ryanair's operational
activities and growth rates:..........................................................................................................5
Critically assessing the strengths and attractiveness of the airline sector Ryanair is currently
operating in:.................................................................................................................................7
Critically analysing Ryanair's competitive strategies and the sustainability of AGB plan over
the time:.......................................................................................................................................9
b. Using Ansoff Matrix for assessing the growth strategies by Ryanair:..................................11
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................13
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................14

INTRODUCTION
Strategic management is ongoing planning, monitoring and analysis of the requirements
so that attaining the objective of proper working criteria can become possible. In current era,
having strategic management is important as it helps in gaining the competitive performance by
developing reliable course of action which can uplift its overall performance. The current study
is based on Ryanair airline which is one of the successful company operating in the aviation
sector by offering the lower prices services to its client. Recent report will pay attention on
approaches adopted and strategic leadership of Ryanair’s CEO. This will give emphasis on
having the effective insights about the company's performance by using SWOT and response to
major changes in macro environment. Current report will concentrate on using Porter's five
forces model so that competitive environment faced by it can be analysed. Recent report will
give focus on analysing its competitive strategies which is helpful for the company to get
significant information in turn accomplishing the depth insights can become possible. Ansoff
matrix will be applied in current report so that reliable growth strategies adopted by the
company can be analysed for gaining the deeper information about the highlighted subjected
matter.
MAIN BODY
Analysing strategic development approaches adopted by Ryanair:
Ryanair is said to be the first and largest European airlines to experience an impressive
amount of growth rate due to its strategy of low cost and better financial performance which
made them confident about their “Always Getting better” plan and encouraged them to adopt
various strategies and their aspects to achieve success (Rotondo. Corsi. and Giovanelli. 2019).
The perspective of Ryanair about their customers was wrong which led them to change their
way of providing services which marked the rise of “Always Getting Better” in order to rise
above its competitors and to attain higher customer retention rates. Thus, the company
incorporated various kind of strategies such as prescriptive and emergent to recognize the need
of setting required objectives. Eventually, the company was proved out to be unsuitable to either
of the strategies or to the functions because of its these strategies are mainly suitable for those
organizations whose operational activities are carried out as a whole and have common
objectives. For Ryanair to adopt such strategies is not favourable as the company is divided into
different parts in accordance to its size and each part has different goals and objectives to
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achieve. As already stated above, the company does not follow any of the strategies mentioned,
and possess their own area of strategic development that is suitable to their area of operations
and about which they think is the unique option for the achievement of the needs and objectives.
However, if evaluated, their way of forming the strategies and the development of strategic
decisions is not unique as it does not match with the common aim of customers but only focuses
on their individual needs and demands. For the prescriptive approach, that is the opposite of
emergent approach, states that there should be proper establishment of strengths and
opportunities for the firm to identify the challenges that will be help them to survive in the long
run.
As it is described that Ryanair provides the largest international air carrier, it adopts the
strategy of low cost and low fare model to attract more number of passengers and potential
audiences to increase the rate of its success. To simply put, Ryanair's business model and
strategic development process was inspired by the US based airline Southwest that claims to be
a straightforward model that targets customers who have more than one option for mode of
travelling for their convenience. Though the company has a low perspective about its customers,
it still manages to form effective and parallel strategies to increase its brand image in the
industry. Over the past few decades, Ryanair made an effective use of the straightforward
strategies that did not have much attention to its customers satisfaction rates. The CEO of the
company clearly mentioned that the company only focuses on the profitability rates and their
position in the industry (Abdul-Kadir. Sadat. and Sadick. 2020). This resulted in turning a blind
eye towards the customers who are the main source of its income led to the initiation of a three-
year plan called “Always Getting Better” to reform the company's strategic development as the
company faced huge challenges in the form of customer relations which in return affected their
equity and brand image in the industry. To resolve the issue evolving against them, the company
proposed another plan known as AGB plan that focused more on the customer needs and
satisfaction. It included on providing customers with the improved travel and digital experiences
that also focused more on the convenience of the passengers during and after their journey. This
balance between the prescriptive and emergent approaches could have been adopted by the
company initially, to attain maximum satisfaction from customers to gain competitive advantage
and success rates.
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