An Analysis of a Strategic Transformation Plan: The Case of Alaska Airlines

Paul Caster and Carl A. Scheraga

Journal of the Transportation Research Forum, 2013, vol. 52, issue 01

Abstract: In 2003, amid the turmoil of the U.S. airline industry in the post-9/11 environment, the senior management of the Alaska Air Group announced a “strategic vision” entitled “Alaska 2010.” The pronouncement articulated positions with regard to cost leadership, product differentiation, and growth. This study empirically assesses the efficacy of this decision with regard to the major network carrier of the air group, Alaska Airlines. The analysis focuses on the period beginning with the announcement and ending in 2010. The implementation of such a strategic protocol is dynamic and inter-temporal in nature. Therefore, it is often difficult to assess the effectiveness of changes in strategies, particularly since such effectiveness is often a function of the confounding forces of organizational strategy and market conditions. Thus, this study utilizes the multi-period methodology of the strategic variance analysis of operating income. This methodology decomposes operating income into three components: (1) growth, (2) price recovery, and (3) productivity. This is of particular interest from a strategic planning perspective, as the price component evaluates a company’s product differentiation strategy while the productivity component evaluates whether an airline’s low cost strategy was successful because of efficiency gains.

Keywords: Public; Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/207334/files/2013v52n1_02_AlaskaAirlines.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:ndjtrf:207334

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.207334

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of the Transportation Research Forum from Transportation Research Forum
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().