Research Proposal: Analyzing EasyJet's Issues and Solutions

This research proposal aims to study the issues EasyJet is facing and identify strategies to overcome them. It begins with an introduction outlining the objectives, research questions, and background of the airline industry, particularly focusing on EasyJet's position as a low-cost carrier. The rationale explains the importance of the research, highlighting challenges such as rising fuel prices. The proposal includes a literature review that examines the airline market's evolution, EasyJet's business model, and its competitors' strategies. The research methodology section outlines a deductive approach and discusses the research strategy, including qualitative and quantitative methods. The proposal also includes a timescale for completing the research and provides a list of references. The research seeks to analyze EasyJet's current challenges, determine effective strategies for improvement, and recommend techniques to minimize potential issues, contributing valuable insights for the airline's future.

Research Proposal

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Aim..................................................................................................................................................1
Objectives........................................................................................................................................1
Research questions...........................................................................................................................1
Background......................................................................................................................................1
Rationale..........................................................................................................................................1
Literature Review.............................................................................................................................2
Research Methodology....................................................................................................................5
Timescale.........................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

Aim
To study the issues, easy jet is facing and various strategies which can be used to
overcome it.
Objectives
 To analyse the issues easy jet company is facing.
 To determine the strategies that can be used to overcome it.
 To recommend other techniques that can be used to minimize the issues .
Research questions
Q1. What are the issues easy jet airlines is facing?
Q2. What strategies can be used to overcome it?
Background
Air travel has been considered as one of the largest industries that help the country in getting
a huge amount of revenue rates. The demand for the airlines increased in order to increase
the business as people nowadays want to get comfortable journeys, whether they are meant
for business purpose or holidays. Also, for time saving purpose, people got even more
dependent on the airlines and easy jet has been on the top and successful of all the airlines.
Rationale
The research is being done in order to analyse the issues the easy jet airlines is facing.
Although the forte of easy jet is to provide services to the customers that are rare available in
case of airlines. Also, their motto is that they can be able to satisfy more and more customers as
they provide low cost services for a better and standard quality of the journey. As the fuel prices
increased, there has been some issue start rising in the easy jet airlines (Anderson, 2013).
Because of which the company can face various further complications and delayed flights as
well. As the company focuses on serving the best to its customers at fewer rates, it became quite
difficult for the airline company to compensate with the rising fuel price. So, the topic is
important to study so that what methods and strategies can be used which can help the airline
company to resolve these issues.
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Literature Review
According to Wheelen,and Hunger, 2011, airline market was an industry that was totally
regulated and controlled by the government in past. This thing was a new technological
phenomenon in early years of the 20th century and the government has the bigger role in the
airline segment and to avoid a disorganised market and to have better control of the safety rules
as many air accidents were reported at the beginning of air industry. But after the liberations and
privatisation of this industry things became change as there were entry of many players who
started their services in this this industry. There was time when the travelling through flights was
considered as an expensive and it was only that the upper class people might has afford this
services. But with the change in time there were also change in perception of people and the
services reached to the middle class people also. There was entry of very few players who started
the services for the middle class people who wants to take the flight service in suitable prices.
EasyJet Airways was some of the companies who started their services through adopting low
cost carrier model (Myers, 2013).
. It is the company who operates domestic and international scheduled services on over 820
routes in more than 30 countries. They employees 11000 people which comes normally from the
European countries and most of them are from UK.
This organisation has gone through combination of acquisitions in order to grow
themselves and base opening fuelled by consumer. EasyJet has 28 bases across Europe and
it was the year in 2014 that the airline carried more than 65 million passengers. They have
the revenue of £4.669 billion and an operating income of £495 million. They had been
successful in earning a net income of £427 million in year 2016. There has been increase of
10% in the revenue of the company in last 10 years. They use certain strategy like one use
one type of airplane, point to point short haul travel, no in fight meals, the company is
winning a huge profit with 478 million pound before tax in 2013 despite of the really low
ticket price (Meredith Belbin, 2011). The so-called Full Services Carriers are the airlines
who gives a wide range of services which include on-board services; drinks and meals
depending on the duration of the flight. After entry of the low cost carriers like EasyJet and
they follow a price leader strategy and focus on cost reduction. They give less services both
pre-flight and on-board. They don’t give any free drinks and meals on board, no difference
in the class and a free seating plan. EasyJet don’t allow much luggage in the plan and they
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allow only one luggage that is hand bag consisting 10kg weight. They are looking for the
options which can be adopted by them to reduce the operating cost or deliver of the services.
Most of their fleets are young and is medium sized fleet which decrease their fuel cost,
decrease in the cost of the maintaining and the staff. Now they are looking forward to
increase their seating capacity and less number of toilets so that they can bring or
accommodate more number of customers so that people can avail their cheap services which
will bring down the unit cost in the production and services. On the other side they are also
looking forward to use the small size and secondary airports who charge lower airports fees.
With the free seating plan makes sure that the passengers to be on time and sit in the plan
quickly thus making it ensure that boarding process is quick and therefor delays can be
avoided. The competitors of EasyJet have the duty to make sure that they sustain their places
in the market through practicing different strategies (Gold, Seuring. and Beske, 2010). Most
of their competitors follows the same strategy for cost reduction and this may be fast check-
in and quick turnaround at the airports. EasyJet has been successful at smaller secondary
airports and they have shown that the concept of low cost is not applicable in the all market
but the Asian market is can be seen as the growth competitors and moist of the people in this
continent are middle class people.
EasyJet has been successfully running their business but there are certain factors which is
impacting their business at international level. It sometime becomes difficult for them to
maintain their model of low cost as there might be chances that the other new airline coming
in the industry decrease their market share. There is almost zero competition in European
market as there is no such airline group who can compete with but with the entry of the
Asian players they fear that they will lose their market (Trkman., 2010). The reasons behind
this is that Asia is the Continent where people are generally having lower income limit and
are from the middle calls people. It can be seen that as there are lots of chances that the new
airlines groups can impact the growth the of the organisation so it becomes challenging for
them to deliver best services at limited resources and to also ensure that they no resources
are wastage., Resources if properly utilized will yield better results and outcomes and all the
things has happened due to the business strategy made by the company’s management. It is
the duty of the EasyJet to ensure that they analyse the internal and external environment of
the airline industry thus conducing SWOT and PESTLE analysis of the airline industry. This
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will give them the brief idea about the things which has to be taken care of and if any areas
of the company have certain loopholes through it they can promise long term productivity
and profitability. Every area of the business and company has to be taken care of as there are
chances that each of them might have certain issues which needs to be taken care of thus
impact their policy of cost reduction (Luthra and et. al., 2011). They are going to implement
the model of cost cutting with the use of cost cutting techniques and tools. They will be not
selling connecting flights or providing complimentary snack on board and they are also not
giving free lunch. The key points of the business model are high aircraft utilisation, quick
turnover times and charging for extras services asked by the customers. All these things
keep their cost low and at the employees’ part they are ensuring that they maintain and
control with union involvement.
EasyJet keeps on adopting different ways which ensure that they maintain their policy of low
budget flight and it becomes difficult for them to stick to the policy. A lot of efforts needs to
be done for these activities and they also take help of the certain market experts who tells
them that what strategies, techniques and tools they can adopt to increase their profit
margins but it is the final decision of the management of the company that what path has to
be adopted by the organisation so that the long or future terms goals can be achieved. The
reason behind their success they go for those activities where there are chances that new
customer travel to through their flights (Storbacka, 2011). For future they can target the
business travel which ensures them lots of people from one country to another for the
business performance so at that time it is the duty of the management to come out for the
business travel thus starting their flights to popular destination. Those who frequently travel
will looking for the flights who are offering fares travel thus this will fix their particular
customer. Most of the people will prefer out those places where they can visit and look for
the business activities out there. The other strategy which can help them in increasing their
profit and maintain their good image of the flight which offers air services in low rate thus
expanding their market share (Ajmal., Helo,and Kekäle, 2010). For this they have decided
that they will only be flying at the places or air routes where they can get lot of customers.
Flying at the busy routes ensure that they have more number of profits and they can also
increase the fares. On of the most important techniques which can be highlighted here or can
be used by EasyJet is that they can ensure that their designs of the aircrafts in a way that
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they introduce more seating and decreasing the places for other like they can reduction of
the area for lodging. They will design the crafts in a way that more people can seat in them
and enjoy their journey. This all literature review which is an account for the problem faced
by EasyJet to expand their business.
Research Methodology
Research can be termed as a sort of investigation that is being done in a very systematic
manner and which can help in studying all the factors of the topic. A research method is
considered as a proper plan that can set the guidelines for exploring the project efficiently and by
including all the important details as well. Essential aspects of the research methodology are
discussed as under :
Research approach
The research approach is considered as a pre plan that can be used to set the ways and
decide whether the research is being done either as inductive or deductive. In thi research, the
researcher will make use of the deductive approach as the topic is lengthy enough and deductive
approach can help the researcher in understanding the issues, easy jet is facing, clearly.
Research strategy
Research strategy involves various methods that can be used for easing the whole process
of the research. It is being done by including some short cuts that can help in analysing the data
properly. It can be done either qualitatively or quantitatively. The researcher will make use of the
qualitative data as the primary data from different surveys can help the researcher in getting
proper data as compare to the quantitative one.
Research design
The designing of the research is considered as the methods for the collection of the data
and information regarding the issues of the easy jet and various strategies that can eb used by the
researcher. It is classified in five types such as the descriptive, co relational, experimental, semi
experimental and review. The researcher will make use of the descriptive type as the topic
involves a longitudinal case study.
Data Collection
The data can be collected by two sources, either the primary or the secondary sources.
Primary data is considered as the data that is being collected for the first time and it can be
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collected by surveys, focused groups or interviews, whereas secondary data is the data that is
being already collected by some external body which includes the information from books,
online, journals etc. In this research, the researcher will make use of the primary data as the data
which will be collected from interviews and surveys seems to be more effective for the whole
research as compared with the quantitative data.
Research Limitations
Research limitations are considered as some factors that can be unavailable at the time of
research. Like if the researcher focuses on increasing the time of the research just to make it
more effective, they researcher should ensure that if it is being done, then it may take use of
more resources which can utilise more cost as well. So, it is better for the researcher to complete
the research in the particular deadline so that resources and cost cannot act as the limitations for
the research.
Timescale
Basis Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8
Analysis of
the issue
Aim
determinati
on
Setting of
the
objectives
Based on
themes,
information
and data is
collected
Research
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methodolog
y’s
implementa
tion
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REFERENCES
Books And Journals
Anderson, V., 2013. Research methods in human resource management: investigating a business
issue. Kogan Page Publishers.
Wheelen, T .L. and Hunger, J.D., 2011. Concepts in strategic management and business policy.
Pearson Education India.
Myers, M .D., 2013. Qualitative research in business and management. Sage.
Meredith Belbin, R., 2011. Management teams: Why they succeed or fail. Human Resource
Management International Digest. 19(3).
Gold, S., Seuring, S. and Beske, P., 2010. Sustainable supply chain management and inter‐
organizational resources: a literature review. Corporate social responsibility and
environmental management. 17(4). pp.230-245.
Trkman, P., 2010. The critical success factors of business process management. International
journal of information management. 30(2). pp.125-134.
Luthra, S and et. al., 2011. Barriers to implement green supply chain management in automobile
industry using interpretive structural modeling technique: An Indian
perspective. Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management. 4(2). pp.231-
257.
Storbacka, K., 2011. A solution business model: Capabilities and management practices for
integrated solutions. Industrial Marketing Management. 40(5). pp.699-711.
Ajmal, M., Helo, P. and Kekäle, T., 2010. Critical factors for knowledge management in project
business. Journal of knowledge management. 14(1). pp.156-168.
Zott, C. and Amit, R., 2010. Business model design: an activity system perspective. Long range
planning. 43(2). pp.216-226.
Rosemann, M. and vom Brocke, J., 2015. The six core elements of business process
management. In Handbook on business process management 1 (pp. 105-122).
Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Neck, H. M. and Greene, P. G., 2011. Entrepreneurship education: known worlds and new
frontiers. Journal of Small Business Management. 49(1). pp.55-70.
Head, B. W. and Alford, J., 2015. Wicked problems: Implications for public policy and
management. Administration & Society. 47(6). pp.711-739.
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