Introduction
Success in innovations only comes about as a result of keen examining of the needs of the consumer and coming up with a product that matches these needs in order to win a competitive advantage on the market (Midgley, 1977: 11). The Southwest Airlines Company is one of the most innovative companies and this paper is going to carry out a discussion about this company.
The Southwest Airlines
This company is among the leading first twenty innovators in the “The Innovation Index” (Dalal, 2009: 1). It provides in overall terms, the excellent value airline travel services at low cost.
Recent innovations, causes and success
One of the major recent innovations of the Southwest Airline Company is the service referred to as DING. The cause of the innovation of this service was to create a direct link between the company and its customers by availing the information to the customer’s desktops.
This service was introduced in the year 2005. It is a communication service that shows the fare specials in a direct manner to the customers through their computers. It is only the DING clients who can derive advantages from these special offer fares. In the year 2006, DING service was upgraded in order to allow the customers to obtain special fare offers from a maximum of ten of their well-liked airports.
The Southwest Airlines Company was the first to come up with customer relationship through creating direct connection with the clients through their computer desktops (Dalal, 2009: Para 17).The DING service has been quite successful since over one hundred and thirty million dollars in fares associated with this service have been booked from the time the service was introduced (Dalal, 2009: Para 19).
Another important innovation by the company is charging their customers lower prices making it to be a leading most low fare sale airline all through the year and even in most cases, during the peak travel season. It behaves in a contrary manner to what other airliners do. While other airlines consider the peak seasons as a season to maximize the profits, this company takes the lead by making an offer of low fares to encourage customers to travel on a more frequent basis (Gittell, 2005: 20).
More so, the Southwest Airline Company has come up with new nonstop flight services. Those people who travel by air want to travel on a nonstop basis from one city to the other. Therefore, the Southwest Company has sought to solve this problem through innovation and providing freedom to these customers by enabling them to travel on a nonstop basis at an affordable cost. Such strategies have seen the company develop effective external and internal networks thereby boosting revenues (Bridgewater & Doyle, 1998:11).
The Southwest Innovation culture
The Southwest Airlines Company has an innovative culture. According to (Smith, 2004: 26), there is encouragement of innovation and creativity in the Southwest Airlines Company in order to bring about improvement in the company’s effectiveness. The main driving force that enables the company to engage in innovation is the desire to offer services to customers at the lowest prices possible especially those who travel over short distances.
The innovations developed in this company give preference to the domestic air travelers, especially those who could drive but then because of the affordable fares, they resolve to flying. The key barrier to the innovation efforts by this company is the need for a strong workforce that is also supposed to be stable. This is quite necessary especially putting in to consideration that the company has grown greatly and there is still need for further growth. If this barrier is overcome, the company will continue growing in the coming years.
Reference List
Bridgewater, S., & Doyle, P. (1998). Innovation in marketing. New York: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Dalal, S. (2009). Creativity and innovation driving business: Innovation Index. Web.
Gittell, H. J. (2005). The Southwest Airlines way: using the power of relationships to achieve high performance. New York: McGraw-Hill Professional. ISBN: 0071458271, 9780071458276.
Midgley, D. F. (1977). Innovation and new product marketing. London: Croom Helm Ltd. ISBN: 0-85664-260-6.
Smith, G. (2004), An evaluation of the corporate culture of Southwest Airlines. Measuring Business Excellence, ISSN 1368-3047, Vol. 8 No.4, pp.26-33.