Airborne Express Case Study
Airborne Express Case Study
Evaluation of Business Leading to Sustained Superior Performance
September 24, 2010
J401
Airborne Express’ Strategy:
Value Mix
Airborne considers itself as “the flexible, solution-oriented express carrier” with an ability to tailor its services to the needs of particularly large business customers - providing low cost, next day, and second day deliveries. In this way, Airborne has asserted itself using a Cost-Leader strategy (please see appendix 1). Continually, Airborne’s costs have been substantially lower than the industry norm, which has allowed it to supply their services at a lower price to the consumer.
Customer Group
Early on, Airborne targeted the business customer that regularly shipped a large volume of urgent items, primarily to other business locations. A typical customer was Xerox, which had to deliver parts daily from central warehouses to repair technicians, who were spread throughout the United States. In 1995, Ray Berry, Vice President of Field Services Administration indicated the reasoning behind this approach, stating:
“There’s an advantage in our being selective about the customers we serve and the services we offer. The customer needs we have targeted to fill are what we are best at. If, for example, we had large mail-order customers requiring nothing but residential delivery, we might not be able to serve them as well as we know how to serve IBM or Xerox. Since we can’t be all things to all people, we pick our kind of customer deliberately.”
This statement fully represents Airborne’s desire to serve a specific customer base and its commitment to ensuring this group was served well. Other Airborne customers include; Nike, Compaq, and Technicolor. Shippers and recipients of Airborne parcels are concentrated in major metropolitan areas, which are consistent with the customer objectives portrayed by Ray Berry’s statement. In identifying these large clients who coalesced with the objectives
Evaluation of Business Leading to Sustained Superior Performance
September 24, 2010
J401
Airborne Express’ Strategy:
Value Mix
Airborne considers itself as “the flexible, solution-oriented express carrier” with an ability to tailor its services to the needs of particularly large business customers - providing low cost, next day, and second day deliveries. In this way, Airborne has asserted itself using a Cost-Leader strategy (please see appendix 1). Continually, Airborne’s costs have been substantially lower than the industry norm, which has allowed it to supply their services at a lower price to the consumer.
Customer Group
Early on, Airborne targeted the business customer that regularly shipped a large volume of urgent items, primarily to other business locations. A typical customer was Xerox, which had to deliver parts daily from central warehouses to repair technicians, who were spread throughout the United States. In 1995, Ray Berry, Vice President of Field Services Administration indicated the reasoning behind this approach, stating:
“There’s an advantage in our being selective about the customers we serve and the services we offer. The customer needs we have targeted to fill are what we are best at. If, for example, we had large mail-order customers requiring nothing but residential delivery, we might not be able to serve them as well as we know how to serve IBM or Xerox. Since we can’t be all things to all people, we pick our kind of customer deliberately.”
This statement fully represents Airborne’s desire to serve a specific customer base and its commitment to ensuring this group was served well. Other Airborne customers include; Nike, Compaq, and Technicolor. Shippers and recipients of Airborne parcels are concentrated in major metropolitan areas, which are consistent with the customer objectives portrayed by Ray Berry’s statement. In identifying these large clients who coalesced with the objectives