Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats Analysis for AirAsia
Strengths
The first phase of the swot analysis is the strengths analysis for Air Asia. There are some unique strengths of Air Asia that others company could not defeat them. First and foremost, Air Asia has a very cooperative and strong management team with strong connections with the government and the airline industry leaders.This is partly contributed by the diverse background of the executive management teams which consists of industry experts and ex-top government officials. For example, Shin Corp (formerly owned by the family of former Thai Prime Minister - ThaksinShinawatra) holds a 50% stake in Thai AirAsia. This has helped AirAsia to open up and capture a sizeable market in Thailand.With their strong working relationship with Airbus, they managed to get big discount for aircraft purchase which is also more fuel efficient compared to Boeing 737 planes which is being used by many other airlines.
Besides that, air asia management team is also famous in strategy formulation and execution.The strategy thatthey have formulated at the beginnings was a clever blend of proven strategies by other low cost airlines is US and Europe. They are Ryanair’s operational strategy (no frills, landing in secondary airport), Southwest’s people strategy (employee comes first) and Easyjet’s branding strategy (linking with other service providers like hotels, car rental). On the other handAirAsia’sbrand name is well established in Asia Pacific. Besides the normal print media advertising & promotions, AirAsia’s top management also capitalised on promotions through news by being very “media friendly” and freely sharing the latest information on Air Asia as well as the airline industry. Their partnership with other service providers such as hotels and hostels, car rental firms, hospitals (medical tourism), Citibank (AirAsia Citibank card) has created a very