AirAsia Assets Case Study Paper Example

Customer Based Assets

AirAsia is a Malaysian low-cost airline whose headquarters are located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It is the largest airline in Malaysia in both fleet size and destinations. It operates scheduled international and domestic flights to more than 165 destinations that span over 25 countries. This provides a wide customer base. AirAsia was established with a dream to make it possible for everyone to fly by establishing low-cost flights. This strategy helps to establish a direct relationship with customers and plays a key vital to the success of the company. Since its inception, AirAsia has expanded its domination in the airline market by increasing the number of routes and destinations in the various regions. Its network currently covers Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, China, Macau, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Hong Kong among others (Guan, 2009).

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AirAsia establishes stronger customer relationships through its low-cost flight strategy as it provides a wider customer base. However, incidences such as the accident that happened in March 2014, where flight MH370 was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and vanished mysteriously provide it with a bad reputation. Customers mostly react strongly to service failure, therefore it's critical that AirAsia should establish strong and effective recovery efforts. It should decide whether the consumers are satisfied with their performance or not to deliver the maximum levels of service quality (Sukri, Abdullah & Waemustafa, 2014). The company improves its customer experience by expanding on its product and service delivery. Other products and services offered include car rentals or airport transfers, package holidays or hotels, travel insurance, Wi-Fi, and land or island transfers among others.

Internal Support Assets

AirAsia believes in the low cost flight prices to attain high passenger loads, profitability and market share as indicated by its slogan "Everyone can fly". This requires a high level of efficiency in its operations to minimize its operational costs while ensuring customer safety and security in the process. It does this by implementing customer reservation systems, management systems, and enterprise resource planning systems among others to minimize inefficiencies or high operational costs. Moreover, it maintains its profitability by eliminating costly in-flight services, selling tickets directly to passengers and minimizing labour and overhead costs.

The company utilizes information systems and technological methods to establish e-ticketing processes and bypass traditional travel agents. This not only saved AirAsia the costs of issuing physical tickets but also eliminates the need for large and expensive booking systems and agent's commissions. AirAsia has partnered with Salesforce to provide personalized customer service to its clients (Tan, 2018). The company selected Salesforce as its strategic technology partner and part of its efforts towards establishing a faster and more personalized customer service. Salesforce solutions include Community Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Service Cloud.

The company has established programmes that expand its market coverage and customer base i.e. the Freedom Flyer Programme that enables members to level up their membership statuses basing on their flight frequencies (Sepang, 2018). The more they fly the more the benefits. It aims at focusing and optimizing their services with the latest technologies through mobile app features and ventures. It has also started using facial recognition technology to replace boarding passes, making the process time saving and more efficient (Lin, 2018).

Supply Chain Assets

The company maintains proper relationships with its suppliers and customers. as a low-cost carrier, it has come up with value added services to the customers such as the internet check in service that enables the customers to print their own boarding pass online and provides other financial services such as insurance, booking services for hotels, holiday packages, Citibank and car rentals among others. All these factors contribute to the pockets of strength, ensures the security of supply and enhances uniqueness in its service delivery. They enhance the distribution networks and relationships between AirAsia and its customers. However, the customers experience problems with regards to booking online tickets due to the failure of the system to update flight delays or cancellations. Some time cards are also not accepted by the system as a means of payment distorting the supply chain. The company makes use of engines from general electric as it values customer safety.

Alliance-Based Assets

AirAsia established a strategic partnership with Jetstar and recorded as the world's first low cost carrier joint venture on the Asia-Pacific market (Maslen, 2010). According to Toney Fernandes (AirAsia CEO), the strategic alliance with Jetstar would lower the costs of both airlines and enable AirAsia to conserve its fleet and serve new indian destinations during 2010. The decision was more about cost saving than about scraping the competition. The company also entered into a partnership with Salesforce to revamp its customer care services across eight countries (Mitchell, 2018). The strategic alliance aimed at establishing a shared technology between the company and its customers. Part of the revamp ensured that AirAsia deploys Salesforce Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, and Community Cloud to establish a 360-degree assessment of the customers' cases for easy analysis by its service agents. The cloud-based software would be presented in eight different languages and would provide guests with self-service options established on the basis of a knowledge database.

References

Guan, G. (2009). Branding an Airline: A Case Study of AirAsia (1st ed., pp. 1-10). Research Gate. Retrieved from http://file:///C:/Users/ADMIN/Downloads/JPMM20200920KHOR20YOKE20LIM20RAMLI20MOHAMED20AZEMAN20ARIFFIN.pdf

Lin, J. (2018). AirAsia has started using facial recognition technology to replace boarding passes. Retrieved from http://uk.businessinsider.com/AirAsia-using-facial-recognition-technology-to-replace-boarding-passes-2018-2?IR=T

Maslen, R. (2010). AirAsia - Jetstar: A Perfect Partnership?. Retrieved from https://www.routesonline.com/news/29/breaking-news/62466/AirAsia-jetstar-a-perfect-partnership-/

Mitchell, V. (2018). AirAsia uses Salesforce to revamp customer service and marketing. Retrieved from https://www.cmo.com.au/article/634410/AirAsia-uses-salesforce-revamp-customer-service/

Sepang, S. (2018). AirAsia wins Best Use of Technology at 2018 Loyalty Awards | AirAsia. Retrieved from https://www.AirAsia.com/nz/en/press-releases/AirAsia-wins-best-use-of-technology-at-2018-loyalty-awards.page

Sukri, S., Abdullah, F., & Waemustafa, W. (2014). Customer satisfaction and loyalty in the Airline industry: A CASE STUDY OF MALAYSIA AIRLINES (MAS) AND AIRASIA (pp. 1-10). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Waeibrorheem_Waemustafa/publication/292845240_Customer_satisfaction_and_loyalty_in_the_airline_industry_A_case_study_of_Malaysia_Airlines_MAS_and_Air_Asia/links/56bfdff008aeedba0562fa54/Customer-satisfaction-and-loyalty-in-the-airline-industry-A-case-study-of-Malaysia-Airlines-MAS-and-Air-Asia.pdf

Tan, J. (2018). AirAsia partners Salesforce to offer personalised customer service. Retrieved from https://www.marketing-interactive.com/AirAsia-partners-salesforce-to-offer-personalised-customer-service/