Internal Environmental Analysis Report: Booking.com Case Study

This report presents an internal environmental analysis of Booking.com, a leading online travel agency. The analysis delves into Booking.com's key resources and capabilities, evaluating them through the VRIN (Valuable, Rare, Inimitable, Non-substitutable) and VRIO (Valuable, Rare, Imitable, Organized) frameworks. It examines the company's strong brand image, global presence, supply chain management, marketing strategies, and human resource management. The report assesses the competitive advantages derived from these elements, highlighting both sustainable and temporary advantages. The analysis includes references to relevant academic literature and provides a comprehensive overview of Booking.com's strategic positioning in the competitive market.

INTERNAL ENVIRONMENTAL
ANALYSIS OF BOOKING.COM

RESOURCE CAPABILITIES AND CORE COMPETENCIES
• Booking.com gains competitive advantage in the competitive market through
strong market efforts and brand name
• Booking.com have their presence in the entire worldwide since the year 1996
through online booking techniques and the site is available in 43 languages
(Booking.com. 2019)
• Overall ability to see the potential new markets which helps them in becoming
more unique in their approach
• The system of payment is unique and patented for the convenience of the
customers in the market
• Ease of use and ability to select the hotels at the own rate from the Booking.com
site
• Availability of various ranges of rooms, flight tickets and sight seeing which
meets the demands of customers as per their affordability

VRIN ANALYSIS
Valuable
•Strong Brand Image and Global Presence is valuable which helps them in growing
customer base and a strong reputation for marketing their products and services to customers
•Supply Chain Management is valuable as the managed SCM helps in sourcing the various
services of hotels which enables them in delivering great quality
•Marketing Strategy and Human Resource Management are the other resources which
assists them in increasing popularity for retention of the customers (Mudambi and Puck
2016)
Rareness
•Strong Brand Image and global presence is rare and this is a competition for other brands
•Supply Chain Management is not so rare as this is not difficult in achieving strategy and
investment
•Marketing Strategy and Human Resource Management is not so rare as the HRM
strategies are same in all the companies and this is easy to be copied by them
Imitability
•Strong Brand Image and global presence is hard to imitable and this helps in improving the
brand image
•Supply Chain Management is imitable as the supply chain activities of MakeMyTrip is similar
•Marketing Strategy and Human Resource Management is not imitable as there are different
kinds of strategies which will improve their overall efficiency positively
Non-Substitutable
•Strong Brand Image and global presence is not substitutable and this helps them in increasing
brand image
•Supply Chain Management is substitutable as all the other travel agencies perform similar
actions appropriately (Seo, Park and Choi 2016)
•Marketing Strategy and Human Resource Management is substitutable and this affects their
brand image

VRIO ANALYSIS
Resource or Capability Valuable Rare Imitable Organized to Exploit Impact on Competitive
Advantage
Strong Global Presence Yes Yes Yes Yes Realized Sustainable
Competitive Advantage
Human Resource
Management Aspects
Yes Yes No Yes Realized Sustainable
Competitive Parity
Customer Relationship
Manager
Yes No No No Realized Temporary
Competitive Advantage
Marketing Strategy Yes No No Yes Realized Temporary
Competitive Advantage
Supply Chain
Management
Yes No Yes Yes Realized Permanent
Sustainable Competitive
Advantage

REFERENCES
• Booking.com. 2019. Booking.com: The largest selection of hotels, homes, and vacation rentals.
[online] Available at: https://www.booking.com/ [Accessed 11 Jan. 2019].
• Mudambi, R. and Puck, J., 2016. A global value chain analysis of the ‘regional
strategy’perspective. Journal of Management Studies, 53(6), pp.1076-1093.
• Seo, B.G., Park, D.H. and Choi, D., 2016, August. Innovative service concept generation based on
integrated framework of design thinking and VRIO: the case of information supporting system for
SMEs in Korea. In Proceedings of the 18th Annual International Conference on Electronic
Commerce: e-Commerce in Smart connected World (p. 23). ACM.