Essay Example: Southwest Airlines SWOT Analysis

Performing a SWOT analysis is an effective way of researching the future of any given company. It is important to find out the strengths, weaknesses, of the company at any given moment so that the chances of development of the company are improved. The opportunities that the company has and can utilize are also identified when the SWOT analysis has been done. A SWOT analysis focuses on the organizations strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. SWOT analysis points out the risks, or threats that Southwest Airlines is likely to face. At the same time, a SWOT analysis enables the weaknesses and threats of the company to appear as strengths and opportunities. The company is one of the biggest world-class air transport company in the United States of America. Despite being among the largest, it has certain weaknesses based on their mode of operation. Of importance here is to explain the weakness that the company faces and the threats it is likely to face due to the weakness.

In the modern world, most of the operations are done online through the website of the company. It is however unfortunate that the company does not have an option of online booking on its website. All the bookings are either done through the agents distribute all over the United States and the countries in the North America (Mead, 2016). The weakness with the company is that it does not have an online ticket booking option for its customers and with the continuing technological innovation in the world, especially in North America, the company is under threat of losing some of their potential customers. They are therefore likely to be beaten by their potential competitors and peers like the Virgin America, United Airlines and JetBlue Airline companies which have availed their tickets for online booking. However, as the vice president of the company, I would lead research in the company to realize the many hidden importance of not availing our companys tickets online for booking. From our research, we would be able to establish that our company is also not allowing hackers to get access to the ticketing system as the agents have to manually verify their details before giving the tickets to the customers. Most of the customers who are genuine are likely to get their tickets from the agents as online verification is involving. It entails a lot of scanning and may even fail if the site has been tampered with by website hackers. We are also able to get the detailed comments from their customers as the agents get enough time to perform oral interview to their customers when they come to buy tickets, unlike online booking where most customers would not bother giving review on our services once they have received the tickets. Online booking is also suitable for urgent traveling and hence may inconvenience the customers with leading businesses and need to travel urgently to attend to their issues (Zafar, 2016).

The Southwest Airline is likely to get ranked higher in the market because of the security measures they have utilized restricting the sales of their tickets to agents only. They are also saving much of their income and do not need to allocate money for consistent online ticket selling updates. The illiterate clients would also refer being assisted to get their tickets from the Southwest Airline agents so that they are not get inconvenienced. Most of the customers would prefer getting their urgent tickets from agents as they are normally flexible and convenient for urgent traveling. Southwest Airlines would also have the opportunity to focus and direct many funds to market research purposes when their competitors are still trying to fix their booking websites when their systems have been interfered with by the website hackers (Antico, 2016). The management of the Southwest Airlines would also be able to get the detailed report on the comments and adjust their weak points to create more opportunities over the competitors who will not provide detailed information about the customers. Southwest Airlines is less likely to have situations where is varying client details and criminals have used scanned details of other people to get access to the tickets as the agents also do manual verification of the details that the client uses to acquire a ticket.

Southwest Airlines is therefore likely to establish faster as their agent ticket booking method keeps their ticketing safe for genuine clients only. Their ticketing system is also easier since the customer only needs to identify an agent. Agent booking also reduces the possibility of financial loses. Travellers who require urgent tickets also prefer using Southwest Airlines due to their flexibility. The company has a better opportunity of attending to their customers demand due to their close contact with customers through the agents.

References

Antico, C. C. P. (2016). pscc2016. Centro.

Mead, N. R., & Woody, C. (2016). Cyber Security Engineering: A Practical Approach for Systems and Software Assurance. Addison-Wesley Professional.

Zafar, Z. I., Anjum, G. A., Anjum, N., Iftikhar, N., & Manzar, S. (2016). An Environmental Evaluation of School Transport in Islamabad: A Case Study of Sector H-8. Pakistan Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences.