Easyjet: Business Model Analysis

Easyjet: Business Model Analysis Easyjet.com EasyJet.com is one of the top travel web sites on the Internet. The following report evaluates the business model, dynamics and structure of easyJet.com. It also outlines the factors responsible for the company’s success including business focus, target market, corporate structure and e-business model. In doing so, the author also hopes to find out what are some of the important aspects of e-business that differentiate and benefit corporations in setting up e-commerce sites such as easyJet.com. Online travel sites have flocked the Internet in the recent years making travel much easier than before. With the number of online visitors rising every year, the travel market in Europe is estimated to reach Euro 20 billion by 2006 (Europemedia 2002). Success in this market is inherent in deliberate strategic e-business and e-commerce modelling. This is evidence in the following report on easyJet.com. Building e-business focused web content requires deliberate business as well as technological considerations. These range from the site outlook to the usability and structure of the web site (Dietel, Dietel and Nieto 2001). easyJet.com in terms of an online travel resource is a comprehensive web site designed to deliver a host of services without redundant graphics or advertisements to distract its visitors. This is because easyJet.com knows its audience: online visitors living in the continent of Europe looking for cheap, comfortable and comprehensive real time travel related deals without the hassle of third party agents. To serve this type of audience easyJet.com has designed a web site that has all information easily available in all the dominant languages of the region and segmented under different tabs of accommodation, car rental, travel insurance, airport related transport and flight booking to allow the visitor to go directly to required service. It also has sub tabs for easy access to schedules, timetables and rates etc. in real time. Each of these sections and sub sections are governed by moderate graphics to represent the services easyJet.com has to offer and links to the different web pages within its web site. Moderate use of text eliminates time wastage yet at the same time conveys accurate message to the audience to guide them to various links based on logical visitorâ₠¬â„¢s usage. For example a visitor booking a flight will first insert the date of travel, destination, and check for its availability; then moves on to make the final booking/purchase. There is enough information on each page to support the requirement of the visitor without abstract marketing banners to detract real buyers. Unlike its competitors web sites like www.lastminute.com or www.bahn.de, easyJet.com concentrates on usability and reliability of information (Nielson 1994) rather than visibility and colourful display alone. However, this is not to say that the web site lacks colours. The use of orange colour throughout the web site is consistent with easyJets own corporate colour code so that clients can associate with easyJet the airline company, which is a critical aspect of web site development (Nielson 1994). easyJet is a no-frills airline and it targets at the business and the leisure consumers. Likewise, easyJet.com also targets the business and leisure consumers who are not interested in dealing with third party intermediaries. The target audience is keen on saving time and money. For the business and frequent fliers, easyJet.com provides easy access to booking, scheduling of flights, accommodation and transportation. Amenities like choice of airport lounges or airport parking are important in making the process of travel booking complete. Realizing corporate need for discounted and group travel easyJet.com has reserved a section of its website for B2B transactions which offers unique packages especially for the business to business customers. On the other hand for the leisure individual travellers, easyJet.com also serves them with daily flights, hotel, insurance, airport transportation and such services and at the same time updates them with offers of the week, seasonal packages, and weekend deals which the consumers may avail whenever they like. Based on these target audiences and the kind of services offered, easyJet.com could be considered to be an ideal re-intermediation where the manufacturer/service provider (easyJet) is in direct contact with the consumers communicated through an electronic medium (Internet). This form of intermediation reduces cost through agency intermediation, customer service, networks and help in transforming the business to e-business corporate structure. Consequently, the company uses technology mediation to sell its products and services and create business value. The purpose of setting up an online business is to ensure growth, efficiency, competitive advantage and leverage over competitors. More importantly an e-business structure helps in deciding the direction of the business. easyJet.com initially followed an â€Å"e-manufacturer† business model as it had been the provider of online airline ticketing for UK residents (EasyJet Profile 2003). A manufacturer business model in e-commerce sense refers service providers who may or may not be in direct contact with the consumers. Being an e-manufacturer meant that easyJet.com has been able to cut down its supply chain to deal with its consumers directly. This is evidence in the fact that easyJet had sold approximately 90% of its flights online (EasyJet Profile 2003). However, as the company evolved its e-business model also changed to have become a travel related service â€Å"merchant†. This is evidence from the expansionary steps taken to include hotel and apartment booking services, car rental, airport lounges as well as parking services which are out of bound of easyJet.coms core product category. By subletting services of hotels, car rental and the like easyJet.com has become the intermediary and has been able to generate more profits, add value to its product offering and target more customer base (Afuh and Tucci 2002). easyJet.coms success could be attributed to management understanding of its business model and its function to the organizational structure. Given the constantly evolving business environment of today, easyJet and other businesses need to understand the dynamic nature of their organization and anticipate future business needs. Understanding and adopting business models are critical endeavours that enable the business to develop competitive advantage and add value to products and services (Eckersley, Harris and Jackson 2003). Understanding ones business model helps in reducing inefficient functions, redundancies and untargeted markets. It helps in designing and adopting new business model(s) that may be more attuned to the requirement and needs of the market by creating niches or segmentation. Especially on the internet, business models need to be evaluated constantly to match with the consumer demands and business environment need to sustain competitive edge (Bloch, Pigneur and Segev 1996). A flexible company or entrepreneur would be able to understand the need in keeping its e-business model dynamic and be able to anticipate change management as and when required. In the authors opinion this is critical for the success of any business whether online or offline because change management is important. Organization today have to take into consideration transaction cost, budgets, organizational design and its implications as well as the impact of change on the organization (Jones 2003). Considerations to these aspects mean that the entrepreneur or the management of the company needs to be flexible enough to react and implement change as required not for the benefit of being flexible but also for profitability’s sake. For example easyJet.com initially started out as a no-frill airline at the domestic level but it has been fast in adapting to the new e-business model of merchant/retailer for travel related services without compromising its core product and service. Co nsequently, it has been able to gain competitive advantage in the no-frill airline business before other organizations have been able to forecast its emergence. Thus, in my opinion organizations that do not capitalize on opportunity cost inherent in flexibility lose out in competitive advantage and therefore fail to add value to the products and services that they have to offer. Ultimately, it will lose out in the competition. The above report reflects easyJet.coms dynamic strategy for its online business model. Through its web site, easyJet has been able to secure one of the top positions among travel related web sites. Not only this but the structure, design, usability and usefulness of the website have enabled it to secure leverage over its competitors. More importantly, easyJet.com has incorporated flexibility in its e-business model which enables it to foresee change and develop strategies to counteract accordingly. Consequently it has become one of the most successful web sites on the Internet. References Afuah, A. and Tucci, C. 2002, Internet Business Models and Strategies: Text and cases, 2nd edition, McGraw Hill Author not available, 2002, Europeans flock to online travel sites. Europemedia. Amsterdam: Feb 14, 2002 Issue. Author not available, 2003, EasyJet Profile, BizEd, Accessed on 7-11-2005 from: http://www.bized.ac.uk/compfact/easyjet/easyindex.htm> Bloch M, Pigneur Y, Segev A 1996, ‘Leveraging Electronic Commerce for Competitive Advantage: a Business Value Framework’ 9th International Conference on EDI-IOS Bled, Slovenia. Deitel, Deitel Nieto, 2001, e-Business and e-Commerce: How to program, Prentice Hall. easyJet Official Website, Accessed on 7-11-2005 from: www.easJet.com> Eckersley, P. M, Harris, L. and Jackson, P. 2003, E-Business Fundamentals: Managing Organisations in the Electronic Age. Routledge: New York. Jones, G. 2003, Organizational Theory, Design, and Change, Fourth Edition, Prentice Hall. Nielson, J. 1994, Ten Usability Heuristics. In Nielsen, J., and Mack, R.L. (Eds.), Usability Inspection Methods, John Wiley Sons, New York, NY. Available at: http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html Phillips P. 2003, E-Business Strategy, McGraw-Hill. www.bahn.de www.lastminute.com

Immanuel Kant: Duty and Reason Essay

The action of an individual is said to depend on lots of factors. The value of these actions is weighed based on the different point of views of humans. Immanuel Kant, a philosopher, classifies the moral worth of an action through the use of two concepts; duty and reason. Acting based on duty and reason can be better understand by looking at these cases from Kant’s point of view and by means of thoroughly analyzing the arguments presented to consider an acts moral worth. Considering the case that a husband loves his wife because he loves her such that he has an inclination to be faithful to her, Kant’s view for this example will be that this case has no moral worth. For Kant, the foundation of morality is duty. The factor that causes human to be moral beings is their duty and the factor to be considered in determining the moral of an act is the persons will to follow his duty. (www. ipf. edu, n. d. ) On the other hand, a husband’s act to remain loyal to his wife as a matter of duty, although he finds it decidedly unpleasant will be considered by Kant to have a moral worth. A moral action has a moral worth not because of the effect of the action itself but because of the value that the action done according to duty that was set by the society. (Abbott, 1907) For Kant, the fact that the action is done only for duty alone is in itself makes the action to contain a moral worth. (Herman, 1981) It refers mainly to duty being implemented through the law that makes an action of moral worth. (www. philosophypages. com, n. d. ) The moral worth of both cases can be better understood through differentiating acting in accordance with duty and acting from duty. Acting in accordance with duty has no moral worth since it is just an act that conforms to duty as guided by self-interest. Acting from duty, on the other hand, is an act that is done because the duty is requiring it. It means that actions will only have a moral worth if they are performed from duty while those actions that are taken as caused by self-interest that accords with duty for whatever reason, have no moral worth. In the example of a husband that loves his wife due to two reasons, we can say that the first case, which is loving the wife because the husband has an inclination to love her is considered by Kant to be of no moral worth since the husband does not love his wife from duty. He just loves the wife because it is his self-interest that motivates him to love her. In that way, he loves according to self-interest that just so happen to be in accord with loving from duty. Thus, he is loving his wife in accordance with duty and is thus it has no moral worth. For the second example of loving which is loving his wife because it is his duty as a husband even if he finds it unpleasant, this act has moral worth for Kant because the act is done out of the need to follow duty. The husband loves his wife because it should be his action towards his wife as it is set by the laws and rule of the society. Even if he will not gain self-pleasure from it, he is still doing it because it is his duty as husband to love his wife. Thus, he is acting from duty and his act contains moral worth for Kant. Upon understanding Kant’s philosophy, I can say that he has a good point on why he believed that the moral worth of an act is based on the duty that forces a person to commit such act. The good thing about his account of moral worth is that an act can be considered to have a moral worth if that is done without self-interest but is done only as dictated by duty. His philosophy is good in a sense because it can assess the moral worth of a person in terms of the responsibility that he should carry and not only acting as a result of his own decision in order to gain pleasure from it. However, I disagree with him. I believe that if an act is done whether for the sake of following your duty or the laws implemented by the society as based from their reasoning, an act can still have a moral worth depending also on its effect on the society. For me, I think that what Kant is trying to say is that the moral worth in different cases that we have to make a decision or an act lies on the will to follow the duty itself. It only means that the one of moral worth is the ability to follow duties or the rules and not the act itself. If we are doing something even if we can just derived pleasure or get something out of it, as long as we don’t step on the rights of others and can contribute to our society, our acts can still have moral worth. In line with this, I can say that acting from duty is morally right as well as acting according to duty as long as our interests do not conflict with the violation of the rights of another people. I think that pursuing self-interest that will lead to the good of other people, as in the case of Mother Teresa, is morally worth. The self-interest in that sense does not conflict with the violation of the rights of others, but instead, it leads to the good of the needy. Hence, it still has its moral worth. For example, a lifeguard is saving the lives of drowning people, even if he doesn’t want too and what he is doing is just a burden for him has a moral worth. Also, a lifeguard that is saving the lives of drowning people and expecting in return that he will receive a word of thank you from the people that he saved still has a moral worth. This is because, I think, that no matter what motivates you to do an act as long as it can help others and does not bypass human rights, that act has a moral worth. In the case of a lifeguard, saving people as caused by duty and saving people as caused by an expectation to receive a word of thanks are both morally correct. It is because the fact that the lifeguard has saved a life no matter what is the reason that makes me considered it to have a moral worth. I also believe that morality is subjective depending on a person’s bringing up, culture, experiences and way of thinking. One act can be of moral value to a person but for some, may be the same act has little or no moral worth at all. That is, morality lies on each one of us and that the effect that it can make to ourselves and especially to our society will greatly dictates its moral worth. Different societies may evaluate the same act to have a different moral worth. A way to explain this is by looking at the case of Eskimos. For Eskimos, offering their wives to have sex with a guest is a polite action as a way of entertaining a visitor. In their way, their act has a moral worth because they are acting from duty. However, if a wife from other country will ask his husband that she wants to have sex with their guest as a way of entertaining the guest, the action is resulting from self-interest and not from duty that is dictated by the culture. Thus, it does not have a moral worth. This explains that the value of moral worth is subjective to culture, and to the specific society itself. Thus, in conclusion, I can say that the first case of loving a wife that was mentioned, which is loving as motivated by inclination, has moral worth because he is still doing his responsibility or duty even if he really wants to do it as directed by his emotion. The second case, which is loving because that is dictated by duty, also contains a moral value, although lesser than the first one. For me, it’s moral worth is less than the first because he is not loving his wife whole heartedly but only loving her because he is required by his duty. I think that in general, Kant’s theory is good but is lacking in a certain aspect that greatly affects the action of human, which is emotions. This is because aside from intellectual reasoning, we also have emotions and that these emotions can also dictate us on how we are going to act. Whether we act from duty or we act in accordance with duty as directed by self-interest which is controlled by emotions, our action can both have moral worth. Thus, in summary Kant had contributed a view about the reason for one’s act in terms of the assessment of the action. However, it is limited and there must be other factors to be considered in assessing the moral value of one’s act, in which his theory must contain. Works Cited Abbott, T. K. (1907). Immanuel Kant Duty Is Prior to Happiness. Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals. Retrieved November 22, 2007 from http://books. google. com/books? id=Y2oIobRXrWIC&pg=PA92&ots=lqnR0qrkHw&dq= On+the+Va lue+of+Acting+from+the+Motive+of+Duty,&ei=wT9FR63gI4KktAPBgYXbBg&sig=Z8 QYGzRw_L9lc eC8Xkj1_JOZjKA Herman, Barbara, (1981). On the Value of Acting from the Motive of Duty. The Philosophical Review. Volume 90, No. 3 pp 359-382. Retrieved November 22, 2007 from http://links. jstor. org/sici? sici=0031- 8108(198107)90%3A3%3C359%3AOTVOAF%3E2. 0. CO%3B2- B www. ipfw. edu. (n. d. ). Retrieved November 22, 2007 from http://209. 85. 173. 104/search? q=cache:_3cincyqJb0J:www. ipfw. edu/phil/faculty/Esteve z/Kant. ppt+Duty+and+Reason-+immanuel+Kant&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us www. philosophypages. com. (n. d. ). Kant: The Moral Order. Retrieved November 22, 2007 from http://www. philosophypages. com/hy/5i. htm.

Floods in India and Its Control Essay

Countries irrigated by an adequate river system are in many ways blessed. These rivers not only help agriculture, but they provide a cheap and efficient transport system for the development of internal trade. The saying goes—land divides, seas unite. But waterways bring also a good deal of misery to the people by causing devastating seasonal floods In India, for example, the sub-Himalayan regions of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Bengal and Assam are heavily flooded by the rivers of the Gengetic basin and the Brahmaputra, almost every rainy season. It brings untold sufferings to the people of these low-lying plains. Millions are rendered homeless; men and cattle die in large numbers; the damage to property including standing crops is incalculable. Besides, floods affect the health of the locality and increase the incidence of cholera, typhoid and other water-borne diseases. In 1922 and 1998 flood in North Bengal left a trail of devastation, essentially in Malda, Murshidabad areas. Floods are caused by an excessive flow of water in rivers during the rainy seasons, due mainly to torrential rain in catchment areas. This may be due to two natural causes. First, the melting of ice in glacier on the mountains may thus supply a river with volumes of water much in excess of its containing and carrying capacity. Secondly, heavy rains on the mountains cause an excess of water supply. In either case, the excess water overflows the embankments and submerges the low-lying plains. Bursting of dams and also Bridges in protective embankments lead to inundation. This causes large-scale deforestation. As for example, in the Terai regions during the war, floods destroyed the natural embankments of a river. Occasionally earthquakes, by changing the course of a river, or by raising its basin or choking and silting the riverbed cause flood Another contributory cause is the construction of railway bridges without leaving provision for the natural outflow of flood-water. Of course, floods in an agricultural country have often been looked upon as a blessing in disguise. Floods leave behind on the submerged areas a rich alluvial or silt-deposit, which greatly increases the fertility of the soil. This soil on either side of the Nile owes its fertility to the annual flooding of the area, which submerges large regions, even after the construction of Aswan Dam in Egypt. Nehru used to say—give unto the river what naturally belongs to her, i. e. homesteads should not be built on riversides or on temporary char lands. That is a sure preventive measure, better than steps to resist after-effects. Men have tried from the earliest times to build protective embankments against the incidence of floods. Ordinarily these can be made sufficiently strong to resist the usual type of floods. A system of canals to irrigate the low-lying plains affords considerable escape route for the excess water caused by a normal rainfall. But these embankments should have to be maintained properly. Modern river engineering and hydro-dynamics, however, have led to a fundamental change in the principle. It is now realised that effective control of flood should begin at the source. Flood control, therefore, in these days has moved upstream. This includes the building of adequate reservoirs in the head stream area and the application of the principle of multipurpose river control. The building of a sufficient number of reservoirs is a long-drawn and costly process. Public sentiment may not take kindly to it; for it necessarily causes large-scale displacement of population as has been noticed in the Narmada Banchao movement of Sm. Patakar. For taming the turbulent Damodar, the age-long ‘river of sorrow’, by constructing the Tilaya, Mython and other dams across her, many Bihar villagers had to be shifted, and this was not liked by the local population. The future, no doubt, belongs to successful working of multi-purpose schemes. So petty objections, raised by individual or local interest, must give way before the larger needs of the people. In recent years, the rainy season has brought heavy floods all along the sub-Himalayan plains. The overflow of the tributaries of the Ganges and the Bramhaputra has caused untold sufferings to the people of these localities. Embankments have been broken, bridges have been washed away; villages have been waterlogged, cutting off all communications for days together. The utmost damage has been caused to the towns and villages of Assam by the Brahmaputra floods. The government must put up protective embankments; help the easy drainage of water by removing artificial obstructions, and by adopting local remedies for particular regions. It has been rightly said, â€Å"Rivers that overtop their banks and flood the adjacent lowlands offer a challenge to the people who must be ready to protect their fields from inundation. â€Å"

Employee Satisfaction at the Later Stage of the Career of Employees in Hong Kong Free Essay Example, 15000 words

The researcher has highlighted and explained important concepts and theories related to the research topic under investigation. The literature review provides the researcher with a basic understanding of the concepts associated with the research study. Apart from this, the literature review allows the researcher to identify important variables and the conceptual framework in order to come up with the hypothesis for the research study. Different authors have a different perspective regarding Employee Satisfaction. It refers to a constructive positive aspect of an employee attitudes behavior to his work. Employee satisfaction is the extent to which an employee shows their attitudes towards work either positive or negative. It is also a leading contributor for building employee morale, motivation and goal achievement (Balkin Griffeth, 1993). Employee satisfaction could be defined as the level of happiness that an employee has with the current job as well as the working conditions. T his indicates that for job satisfaction, it is necessary that an individual to have an experiencing job along with the favorable working environment in which the employee can cultivate and move forward (Price, 2007). According to Hoppock (1935), job satisfaction is a combination of factors such as physiological, psychological and environmental situations on behalf of which an employee feels satisfied with the job. We will write a custom essay sample on Employee Satisfaction at the Later Stage of the Career of Employees in Hong Kong or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/page