Strategic Planning for British Airways: Concepts, Theories & Models

This report analyzes British Airways' strategic planning through the application of various concepts, theories, and models. It begins by outlining British Airways' vision, mission, and objectives, followed by an examination of its strategic choices using Porter's generic strategies, including cost leadership, differentiation, and focus. The report then delves into Bowman's strategy clock, highlighting how British Airways balances cost and differentiation to gain a competitive advantage. Furthermore, the marketing strategy of BA is examined using the marketing mix structure which covers 4P's. The implementation and evaluation of these strategies are discussed, emphasizing resource utilization, employee training, and maintaining service quality. The report concludes that by integrating cost leadership and differentiation strategies, British Airways can sustain its brand value in a competitive market. This comprehensive analysis provides valuable insights into the strategic decision-making of British Airways.

BUSINESS STRATEGY

TABLE OF CONTENTS
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
LO4 Application of concepts, theories and models to interpret and devise strategic planning of
British Airways...........................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

MAIN BODY
LO4 Application of concepts, theories and models to interpret and devise strategic planning of
British Airways
Vision: The visual sense of the British Airways is to turn into the world-wide most considerable
in terms of responsible airways. The company is highly able to handle their corporate
responsibility in each and every term.
Mission: British Airway's mission states that they want to become undisputed leader in the world
travel for next millennium.
Objectives
 Build starring place for airline work in London.
 Meeting customers requirements by providing outstanding services to them.
 Developing their presence at global level.
 Development of premium pricing strategies and gaining acceptance of consumers by
providing quality services.
 Strengthening the service portfolio to gain higher satisfaction from consumers.
Strategies
Strategic choices and directions of British Airways has been described with the help of
Porter's generic theory according to which British Airways relative position within the specified
industry determines their profitability statement that whether it is above or below the overall
industry average (Anderson, 2019). The central foundation of above ordinary gainfulness in the
long run is competing advantage. There are two types of competitive advantage i.e. low cost and
differentiation.

From the above pictorial representation it has been identified that the two basic types of
competitive advantage composed with the scope of activities for which the British Airways seek
to achieve and lead to three general strategies in order to attain above average actions i.e. cost
leadership, focus and differentiation.
 Cost leadership: This strategy illustrates the addition of combative vantage by
diminution the expenditure. This is the main general strategy that British Airways uses in
various consumers market. The major objective to utilize this strategy is to sphere the
market leading point through appropriate value chain administration. This strategy helps
the firm to expand their market share by marking the middle class people. The firm
specifically focusing on expenditure and easy availability of its products all across the
world. Apart from this, the airways offer frequent discounts and coupons to achieve their
sales target and handle competitive pressure efficiently (Lavery, 2019). With the help of
this strategy, the British Airways is able to gain quick brand acknowledgement, customer
base expansion, encourage consumption and achieve sales target.
 Differentiation: This is other most usually used scheme to build combative asset. British
Airways uses distinction in accumulation with cost leading plan of action to achieve
maturation verifiable. The firm expand their consumer base by accentuate upon unique
products features along with differentiate themselves by embedding the innovation and
addresses consumers growing health concerns. With the help of heavy investments in
marketing, advertisement and celebrity, British Airways is able to make themselves

different form other brands. Other than all the above, their trade name logo is also used to
set distinction ground because with this they are able to make their unique image within
the market space.
 Focus strategy: This particular strategy explains that this encourages the British Airways
to concentrate on their resources in order to expand in narrow reference segments. BA
adopts this strategy in terms of low outlay by delivering the needs of a recession
marketplace segment at lowest achievable cost and offering top-quality value by fulfilling
the demands of the consumers. In context of product dimensions, BA revises their
branding strategies by continuously changing their offering services to satisfy their
consumers.
Extended model of Bowman's strategy clock
Bowman's strategy is a competitive strategy which helps to attain competitive
advantages. This is more refined approach rather than porters generic as in that model business
has to choose one generic strategy while according to Bowman's, business can be both lost cost
and differentiated at the same time and get success for longer span of time frame.

In above diagram, the number 1 and 2 shows low price strategies through which the firm is
able to position themselves within the competitive market space. British Airways have managed
to cut down their costs by focusing on their nucleus services along with doing online bookings
and secondary airports. However, within this position, it has been identified that lower down cost
is the only way to achieve success.
From number 3 to 5 , companies are highly focused towards offering customized goods and
services as they are designed separately for each consumer, and they are ready to pay premium
prices for that. However, in order to adopt this business need to have powerful brand value to
make sure that the customers are ready to pay for the products. This is the major reason that this
scheme often takes point in lavishness segment (Strategy, 2020). The company British Airways
has strong brand image and customers are extremely interested in their prospective services.
Although sometimes it becomes better for the firms like BA to adopt both i.e. devalued outlay
and distinguished makes them flourishing because it is quite hard to compete against the quality
and value both.
The strategies from 6 to 8 are called risk strategies under which there is a high risk of failure
occurs. Increasing price with low quality might be successful in stage of monopoly but never
gets successful in which various competitors are available. However, the firms like British
airways avoid to their core to adopt such strategies and due to which these become unsustainable
for longer period.
Tactics
Marketing strategy of BA examine the brand with the marketing mix structure which
covers 4P's explained below:
 Product: BA is an airline based in UK which offers high quality services to their
consumers. The services are highly integrated with the latest technology along with
offering of more of sophisticated services to all travel class.
 Price: BA adopts fair pricing strategies and has a policy of pricing that provides
reasonable value to their customers. The tickets are available for varied classes and prices
differ according to the destinations.

 Place: BA serves various locations and having 280 air-crafts all across the globe. The
services are distributed through websites and phone applications.
 Promotion: the airline is extremely competitive and thus ensures that they follow the
straight path for promotion. For this they advertise through TV, newspapers, etc. Their
promotions are classy and offers sophisticated messages in front of their users.
Implementation
The company will focus on making optimum utilization of resources, reducing the
amount of wastage, and training employees related to the way tasks ned to perform. So the
services can be offered to customer at affordable prices with qualitative services. In context of
control, BA ensures that even after offering discounts and seasonal offers, the firm will never
compromise on quality of service basis (Maier and et.al., 2017).
Evaluation
From the above study, it has been evaluated that with the involvement of cost leadership
and differentiated strategy, BA will able to sustain their brand value within the market place in
which various competitive firms are also available.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Anderson, P.L., 2019. Business strategy and firm location decisions: Testing traditional and
modern methods. Business Economics, 54(1). pp.35-60.
Lavery, S., 2019. The UK’s Growth Model, Business Strategy and Brexit. In Diverging
Capitalisms (pp. 149-170). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Strategy, B., 2020. Business performance. Academy of Management Journal, 2. pp.5-24.
Maier, D., and et.al., 2017, May. Integrating innovation into business strategy in the context of a
service-led economy. In BASIQ International conference: New Trends in Sustainable
Business and Consumption (Vol. 31).