Assignment

1.Case Study Review

Access and read the following Harvard Business Review case study: 

• Porter Airlines (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Chatterjee, 2010) (HTML webpage file/Adobe Acrobat PDF file)

Porter Airlines is a regional airline operating out of Toronto City Airport in the Toronto Islands of Ontario, Canada. Porter operates only Bombardier Dash-8 Q400 turboprop aircraft and has flights to destinations in Canada and the United States. It targets business passengers that find the Toronto International Airport unattractive. Since its inception, Porter Airlines had successfully navigated the first few years of its existence and disproved many who thought it was doomed to failure. It tapped into unmet customer needs with a unique strategy. However, a critical question that needed to be addressed was whether this particular business model, successful thus far, would remain viable going forward. Additionally, Porter needed to decide how to expand and how aggressively it should position itself upon entering new, highly competitive markets.

Case Study Analysis

Prepare your response, addressing the following items:

1. 1. How did Porter Airlines take advantage of a transitory business opportunity in an otherwise difficult market to mitigate several critical forces that could have prevented its success?
   2. Identify Porter Airlines' target customer market(s) and the desired customer outcomes.
   3. What are the critical forces that Porter Airlines faces and how are they mitigated? Use the Five Forces Model of Competition to explain your answer.
   4. Identify critical resources and activities that are leveraged to meet desired customer outcomes.

Case Study Review

Access and read the following Harvard Business Review case study: 

• OurPLANE (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Grasby and Saunders, 2009) (HTML webpage file/Adobe Acrobat PDF file)

Graham Casson, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of OurPLANE, sat down with his chief financial officer (CFO) and chief operations officer (COO) to debate the future direction of their London, Ontario-based fractional aircraft ownership company. North Americans (and most of the world’s economies) were currently wrestling with an economic financial crisis, the worst in 25 years, which had negatively affected almost all companies and individuals in Canada and the United States, including OurPLANE. This same crisis had presented Casson with an opportunity to purchase several more aircraft, at deeply discounted prices, almost doubling OurPLANE’s current fleet size. With an economic recession approaching, designing a growth strategy and marketing plan to deal with the current economic state were the Casson team’s priorities. In particular, Casson was eager to develop a marketing plan for OurPLANE’s fractional aircraft ownership service, which was OurPLANE’s largest and primary revenue stream.

2.Case Study Analysis

Prepare your response, addressing the following items:

1. Prepare an industry analysis for OurPLANE. Was the time right for OurPLANE to expand?
2. Assess the competition. Could OurPLANE compete successfully, given its competition? If so, how?
3. Perform a consumer analysis for fractional aircraft ownership. What do consumers use as buying criteria when purchasing a share of a plane? Do these criteria differ between corporations and individuals, or between American and Canadian consumers?
4. Briefly discuss OurPLANE’s potential acquisition of Eclipse’s fleet. Did this growth strategy make sense for OurPLANE, knowing its corporate capabilities, the industry and the consumers?
5. Critique OurPLANE’s marketing strategy for its fractional aircraft ownership service, placing emphasis on pricing and promotion. What could be done better?