Evaluate the links between an organisation's characteristics and its success in gaining competitive advantage and achieving its aims

by hamzy_usmanhotmailcom (student)

D1 evaluate the links between an organisations characteristics and its success in gaining competitive advantage and achieving its aims

A company needs an aim to be successful; theses aims help a business build their organisational and financial characteristics. However there are other factors those organisations need in mind to keep stakeholders happy and be successful. They need to keep in mind is being environmentally and ethically responsible an example of this Emirate airline is very ethically responsible as they have their own charity called ‘The Emirates Airline Foundation’ this is a non-profit charity and is actually funded by Emirates Airline but anyone make a donation on the charity website. The charity helps disadvantaged children by providing them with food, education, housing and health care, this charity, this gives Emirates competitive advantage as they have their own charity and makes them stand out from other airline who don’t have their own charity. To be environmentally responsible the airline is investing in new economically efficient aircrafts which produce less CO2 and are a lot more environmentally friendly, one of these planes is the Airbus 380 which is a very efficient plane and has a fuel consumption low as 3.1 litres per 100 passengers per kilometre, organisations need to do this as there are lots of people who care a lot about the earth’s environment because of global warming and they believe the reason behind this is greenhouses gases caused by planes, cars and other things that cause pollution of CO2. However these environmental and ethical responsibilities can give the company somewhat competitive advantage as people who care about ethics and the environment will choose to travel with them, but however other people who just want cheaper fare might not be bothered about what the company does to be ethically and environmentally responsible.

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Another factor would be to be responsible to stakeholders an example of this: Emirates have many different stakeholders like customers and shareholders. Emirates has to be responsible to its customers because they are paying for a good service to be provided by the airline and also the company will make its money of its customers so they have to keep their customers happy or it will have be a loss for the company. A very important Stakeholder the company has to be responsible to is the shareholder as they are the people investing in the business so the company have to keep them happy and give them the correct amount of profit and if shareholders are not happy it can have a negative impact on the company because the investor might stop investing in the business. Emirates have different teams that keep different stake holders happy and satisfied for example dedicated customer service to solve any issues that customer might be having.

Now these are only some of the factors companies need to do to be successful but the key aims are financial aims, the image of the company and the product or quality of the service they will be providing. Financial aim is the most important aim for a company as it needs to figure out where they will get investments to run the business and how will they a profit, sometime` what companies do when they are short on money is sell share or become partners with another competitor on the market for example First Choice and Thomson merged together in 2007 to become one big company they both still kept their name but were owned by one organisation which is Tui Travels, and because of this merge their share on the stock market increased by 10% and led to approximately £100 million increase in profit. But to achieve this, the company needs to have a good image in the market so that customers will instantly be attracted to them rather than going to other competitors. However merging can have negative effect a main one is there is no competition which means you have wiped out a large amount of the market which means there is no competitor, Merge can also create negative competition between employees and lead to violence between co-workers. However a merger has negative effects for consumers as there are no competitor so the company can charge high prices and the consumer will not have anywhere else to go. The image of the company mostly relies on their customer service for example if your staff is helpful and give customers the best value for their money the customers will automatically come back to you rather than going elsewhere next time, but if your customer service is poor there is no chance that customers will buy from your company. Now to make that a company’s customers services is good as it can be the business should train their staff to the best standards possible and also send their staff on daily training courses couple times of year to teach new technique of appealing to the customer so that they buy their product or service. A company definitely needs to sell a product or provide a service to achieve its financial aim because that where they are going to make their money from so the company should know everything about their product or service, they need to know what type of audience their service or product is aimed at for example a romantic honeymoon in Maldives package will be aimed at newlywed couple compared to a 5 nights partying in Las Vegas which will mostly be aimed at a younger audience aged between 18-22.

Once the company has achieved the factors above they need to figure out methods to gain competitive advantage one main factor most organisations use is price all of the business are in competition with each other customer mostly go to the business who is cheaper for example if an high street travel agent is selling a holiday package for £800 and a different travel agent sells the same package online for £750 the customer is most likely going to buy from the travel agent online, it might only be £50 cheaper but nowadays money is short and customers try to save every single penny. However with technology developing using a website is also a very common way to promote the business as it makes it easier for customers to get a quick quote and they can also book online which is easier rather than going to the travel agent.

However the overall success of a company will depend on its organisation which means that CEO, director, manager, coordinator and supervisor. The leadership team needs to use opportunities to gain competitive advantage for example First Choice can offer holiday packages at a cheaper price as they are a larger organisation and they sell directly to the customers and a smaller organisation can’t offer the same price so this is an advantage that first choice have over other tour operators. If a business is organised properly and has good characteristics it will help the organisation meet its financial aims. As the leadership team makes all the decisions for the organisation it is their responsibility to make sure the business is successful, so they have to make sure that the decision they make will have a positive impact and make a profit instead of a loss. So for example if Emirates launch a new route they need to be certain that it will be successful but first they need to do promotion of that route in the correct place, that’s how they will make it successful and all of this is down to the leadership team.