United Airlines
United Continental does not have a mission statement or a vision statement, either on its website or in its annual report (10-K). Cochran, David and Gibson (2008) argue that the mission statement is a critical first step in the strategic management process. It sets the framework for what the firm's strategies are supposed to accomplish, especially in conjunction with the vision statement. When a company lacks these things, it can lack strategic focus. Elements of the strategy can lack coherence, and be a poor fit with one another. A mission statement is also the most visible and public element of the strategic plan, so without it the company is not communicating its plan to the public. Nor is the mission communicated to employees, when there is not one.
A mission or vision statement can be simple and vague, but provide a sense of direction. It can also be very specific (BRS, 2012). In the latter case, the company may already have a general sense of what it is and what it wants to be. This might be the case with United Continental. The company operates only in one business, and probably has a fairly good sense of what it wants to do within that business. Thus, management may feel that the mission and vision are implicit, and therefore to state them explicitly is somewhat pointless. That is not the case, however. Considering the U.S. airline industry, there are a number of similar competitors and at some point United Continental needs to define what makes it special, and the mission statement can convey this for both the internal and external audience.
Mission and vision statements are especially valuable for companies like this that have just undergone a major merger. Employees and customers of both companies (United and Continental) will benefit from having the sense of unified mission and guidance that comes from having new mission and vision...
United Continental I agree that the first two are good. For the third, the weakness would be that United Continental has cost control problems, which is the same as #2. A weakness the company has is its customer satisfaction scores. This is a weakness for two reasons. One is that it makes it more difficult for the company to earn new business when it has a bad reputation. The other reason is that
4). The return on this modest investment was impressive: "We saw that mobile is five-to-ten times more effective than online advertising" (Butcher, 2009, para. 4). The contest also increased visitors to the company's WAP site (Butcher, 2009). 7. Description of Location The same location will be used for the envisioned marketing campaign as the "Back for a while" initiative which targeted Hispanic males and females ranging in age from 27 to 45
Continental Bankruptcy How can one tell if a company is about to go under? There are at least two ways to answer that. One answer (which is usually not terribly precise) is the long-range one. The other is the (usually far more precise) short-term one. This paper provides at least both long-term and short-terms analysis of the Continental Airlines bankruptcy in 1990, relying for the former on an analysis of the
It is not clear whether this lawsuit will find its way to the courts. UAL has been undergone some major financial restructuring since filing for bankruptcy in 2002. The company has since talked of merging with American Airlines, Northwest Airlines, and most recently Continental Airlines Inc. In May of 2010, the merger between UAL and Continental was officially announced, and plans for the merger are currently being carried out (Moreno,
Airline Industry Analysis This report aims to present a summary of findings for a research study regarding the airline industry. The objective of this project was to first, gain new experience in the analysis process of an entire industry from an economic and business perspective as well as an environmental and social viewpoint. Secondly, the research attempts to provide direction for potential employment opportunities within the various aspects of the direct
S. are seeing modest improvements in economic indicators. The social environment is favorable for air travel. The mode still holds tremendous cachet with consumers and is favored when consumers can afford it. There is some consideration that the airline business is a major contributor to greenhouse gases and therefore global warming, but as of yet the industry has not come under serious public pressure as it is generally viewed by the
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