Case -Southwest Airlines 2001: An Industry under Siege
1. Describe the problems that Southwest Airlines is facing following 9/11. Identify one shortterm problem and one long-term challenge. Provide support for each problem using data provided in the case material.
2. Conduct an external analysis of Southwest Airlines using Porter's Five Forces and SWOT analysis. For Porter's Five Forces, provide support your analysis using data provided in the case material. Make sure to draw conclusions about the industry attractiveness and competitive environment For SWOT, identify at least two items for each category.
a. Porter's Five Forces
b. SWOT Analysis
3. Provide three recommendations for Southwest Airlines moving forward. Be sure to make recommendations that differ from their existing actions (at the time of the case), and help to address the problems you identified in Question 1. Make sure that your recommendations are
consistent with your analysis above. Recommendations must be creative, detailed, and realistic in order to receive full points.
Information on written case assignments
• Use single-spaced, 1" margins, Times New Roman, 12-point font with a maximum of 2 pages per assignment.
• Do not overuse bullet points. Elaborate and support your answers.
• Location of Cases. All cases are found in the course pack, which must be purchased separately as an e-book. The questions for each case are found under the Case Assignments tab in the Connect Course Page.
• Stay in the time frame of the case. Written assignments should present the situation as it exists at the time of the case, i.e., only use the information and data available from the case, not what you know now about the company. No outside research is necessary.
• No pre-review. Instructors will not review cases prior to submission.
• Grading includes quality of argument as well as consistency with answer key. There are right answers to most of the questions. Thus, this is not about your opinion but your accurate use of the frameworks and concepts presented in the class.
That is, look at the case analyses as a practical test of your ability to use concepts to analyze and understand a complex situation. In addition, having the right answer but with a poor argument or incomplete evidence will also reduce your grade.
• Answer the questions provided. In your answer, include both the logic you used and evidence from the case to support your answer. Number your answers to correspond to the question you are answering.