Analyzing British Airways: SWOT, Key Drivers, and Operational Impact

This report presents a SWOT analysis of British Airways, highlighting its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats within the global business environment. The analysis identifies key drivers such as the changing economic environment, social influences, and technological forces, and examines their operational impact on the airline's functional departments, particularly marketing and operations. The report emphasizes the role of the marketing department in promoting technological advancements and managing customer awareness, while also addressing how the operations department adapts to social influences and ensures safety measures. The impact of Brexit reforms, rising labor costs, and increasing competition are also considered, providing a comprehensive overview of the challenges and opportunities facing British Airways. Desklib offers this and other solved assignments to aid students in their studies.

Global Business Environment

TABLE OF CONTENTS
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Presenting the SWOT analysis for British airways.....................................................................3
Analyzing the operational impact of the key drivers..................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

MAIN BODY
Presenting the SWOT analysis for British airways.
British airways is the second largest UK airline that is most popular among the people
living in different parts of the country. However, the company has certain strengths and
weakness that could be shown through the SWOT analysis which as follows:
Strengths
Brand presence: British airways has the strong brand presence globally and has almost 150
international destinations across the 6 continents. Thus, this is very helpful for the successful
running of the business over long period.
Safety: Company has very less number of safety incidents and is continuously ranked among the
top safest airlines all over the world. Moreover, this had helped in maintaining the overall
competitive advantage for the firm (Janjić, Bogićević and Krstić, 2019).
Sustainability : The firm is also putting focus on becoming more sustainable brand so that
international network and technology could be improved that will provide better customer
experience.
Weakness
Issue with HR: Though the company is active in delivering best of services but in recent times
airline pilots went for the strike that further created legal dispute. Also, the worker motivation
was highly affected that also impacted organization productivity.
Dependent on local market: The company revenue is mostly depended on local regions but due
to the recent times of 2. Intense competition means limited market share for British Airways.
COVID and Brexit reforms the sales were highly affected (Tallman, Luo and Buckley, 2018).
Competition : Upcoming of various new airlines in UK would limit the market share of the
company and thus company might generate very fewer revenues.
Opportunities
Technological advancement:
With fast growing technology the company has various new opportunities to create endless
opportunities for the airline so that better developments could be made.
Expanding into international markets: This will help the firm in generating extra revenues and
would also help in increasing the number of customers for the future. Also, spreading into
international route system would enable the firm to introduce new services in existing system.

Alliances: sharing the business with other successful global airlines would also help the firm to
grow in better terms.
Threats
Rising labor costs: It is known that with the growing number of population the labor costs have
been increased in various regions due to which British airways prices would also rise (Hampden-
Turner, Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 2020).
Brexit reforms : This has created lot of economic uncertainty due to which various things need to
be complied by the business thus creating a lot of pressure on the working operations.
Competitors: Number of competitors are rising on high level and thus the firm has high chances
of losing the market in certain areas.
Rising fuel costs: This might also affect the company as it would decrease the profitability for
the business on very shorter period.
Thus, from the above findings the certain key drivers for the quoted firm would be
changing economic environment in which currently the business is working, social influences of
the people and technological forces that help the firm to stay ahead in the competition in long
run.
Analyzing the operational impact of the key drivers.
It is known that various departments such as marketing, finance, operations etc work
together in coordination to fulfill certain goals of the business and thus from the above identified
key drivers it can be said that certain changes in these would impact quoted firm functional
departments. Moreover, operational impact of such key drivers could be briefly described as
follows:
Marketing : This department plays a major role in making consumers aware about the various
services that are offered by the company and also helps in increasing the revenue for the firm
through its business policies (Shekshnia and et.al., 2018). Also, when any key driver such as
technology is updated or introduced in the British airlines than role of marketing department is to
ensure that people are aware and are influenced by the company services so that customer base
could be increased. Moreover, the impact of such key driver is that company need to increase the
investment in organizing various marketing activities that will make people realize about the
better technological services offered the firm than the competitors. Also, marketing department is
highly impacted when any technology is introduced in the market as it needs to optimize the

resources so that best results are achieved in specific time frame (da Silva Lopes, Lubinski and
Tworek, 2020). Also, all the marketing activities would be directed towards promoting the new
technological advancement launched by the company so that total costs incurred could be
covered through the sales. Thus, marketing of any activities is crucial and highly effective factor
in any organization.
Operations department: This sector of British airlines is responsible in handling all types of
training and background checks and also discuss with the in flight departments about certain
matters. Thus, certain changes in key drivers like social influences among the people might
affect the working of firm on large scale. Moreover, it can be understood through the new Brexit
reforms and event of Covid that has increased the ground checks of the people so that safety of
the people could be ensured (Sharma and et.al., 2020). Also, with the social influences this
department might need to occur additional costs so that working of the business is also not
impacted in any manner. Furthermore, this department is impact in manner that it needs to ensure
that proper communication is maintained with the lower and higher levels of the firm so that
certain social changes occurring in the business environment could be analyses and evaluated in
regular manner. Moreover, this department is highly impacted through key driver social
influences as people do not wish to avail the services of those airlines that have not ensured
enough safety measures during the hit of pandemic. Moreover, there is also constant pressure on
the airlines to analyses the changing needs of the people through various surveys and analyses so
that competitors are not able to enter into market.

REFERENCES
Books and journals.
da Silva Lopes, T., Lubinski, C. and Tworek, H. eds., 2020. The Routledge companion to the
makers of global business. Routledge.
Hampden-Turner, C., Trompenaars, F. and Hampden-Turner, C., 2020. Riding the waves of
culture: Understanding diversity in global business. Hachette UK.
Janjić, V., Bogićević, J. and Krstić, B., 2019. Kaizen as a global business philosophy for
continuous improvement of business performance. Ekonomika. 65(2). pp.13-25.
Sharma, P. and et.al., 2020. Managing uncertainty during a global pandemic: An international
business perspective. Journal of business research. 116. pp.188-192.
Shekshnia, S. and et.al., 2018. CEO school: Insights from 20 global business leaders. Springer.
Tallman, S., Luo, Y. and Buckley, P. J., 2018. Business models in global competition. Global
Strategy Journal. 8(4). pp.517-535.