Quantitative Techniques in Business

Objectives and Brief Description of the Companies

Running a business is not an easy task to manage appropriately and this statement is nearly impossible to debate. Business requires intelligence, creativity, being rational, sometimes risky, and even friendly (speaking about efficient team work). Meeting all aforementioned these requirements means to obtain a wide range of various skills, appropriate and effective use of which is important to achieve any success in a certain sphere of business. By different occasions of using these skills, a particular experience is formed. Taking this into consideration, it is needless to say that skills and experience are important to the performance of the company. Consequently, a profitability rate of the company depends on these factors. These aspects can be regarded as internal ones, while there are a lot of factors, which do not belong to the company, but still can affect the profitability and quality of the performance of the company. It may be economical instability, inflation, strong level of competition, unpredicted problems with logistics, political situation in the country, and so on.

Therefore, there is a link between experience and skills and external factors. It is obvious that experienced and skilled management is more able to resist any outer influence. In order to identify how two companies of the same sector should plan their strategy, a short survey has been carried out among the employees of both companies. The survey has been held in a form of a questionnaire and has been aimed at distinguishing how strong the employees opinion about importance of skills and experience in coping with external pressure on the company is. The results of the survey will be discussed further, but first it is necessary to give a brief description of the companies under analysis.

The first company is Lufthansa that is a well-known German airline famous for being the biggest airline in Europe. It is regarded as an experienced company in this sphere due to its long history and route network, which has spread all over the world. Actually, Lufthansa is powered by national industry enterprises, so it saves costs on export and customs taxes, and estimates accurate demand. Thus, it is reasonable for the German industry to support this airline. Furthermore, Lufthansa has developed a rational strategy about division of sections inside the company. Lufthansa Cargo, Austrian Airlines, and Germanwings are not the same company, though belonging to Lufthansa, but they perform their business separately from each other. Such a structural approach helps the management to see clearly how each segment of the enterprise works.

In addition, it is necessary to say that the company is a member of the Star Alliance, which includes as well such airlines as Air Canada, Scandinavian Airlines, Thai Airways International, and United Airlines. It is to be regarded as an intention to establish reliable international partnership, which has anyway put Lufthansa on the right side of this field of business. It is needless to say that the company does not accept the challenge to take power over other airlines and set the monopoly because any monopoly sooner or later leads to losses. In such a way, by sacrificing its chances to obtain the monopoly in the sphere, Lufthansa has a sufficient number of partnerships and has kept itself going for many years.

Speaking about one of the strong competitors of Lufthansa that is famous for its commercials with Lionel Messi and Kobe Brayant, i.e. Turkish Airlines, it is worth saying that this company has an advantage of location. Turkey is regarded to be one of the popular resort countries, especially during holiday seasons; hence, the airline has a lot of customers. In addition, Turkish Airlines provides its clients with various services connected to the travelling and resort infrastructure like hotels, restaurants, and so forth. Moreover, Turkish Airlines has launched a series of advertising videos with a football star Lionel Messi and an NBA famous player of Los-Angeles Lakers Kobe Brayant. The commercials have produced a huge impact on the target audience and actually affected Turkish Airlines achievement of the title of the airline number one in Europe.

Withal, both companies have to get advice for the further and more apt development because even though they obtain beneficial positions in this section of business, it is important for both of them to keep thriving. It is needless to say that there is no universal model for a constant strategy, so it is necessary to develop new strategies in order to remain on the leading positions among other airlines.

Conceptual Model

Before developing a certain model for each of the companies, it is necessary to design a conceptual model, which will reflect general approaches according to the coincidences and differences of the surveys carried out. To begin with, it is worth mentioning that the diagram has a higher coincidence character. In other words, employees of both companies have similar viewpoints to some extent. This similarity is not crucial, but it is distinct; so, it would be reasonable to take it as a basis for a conceptual model. In contrast, it is necessary to explain what a conceptual model is in order to understand its significance for developing models for the companies.