Richard Branson CEO of Virgin who is conglomerate specializes in travel and entertainment industries. Strategic management which make Virgin become strong brand names of Virgin they use publicity stunts with do almost anything in promotion and advertisement these are as innovation and creativity. Virgin emphasize on Public Relation almost 25 percent of Mr. Branson time for public relations activity, core strategies of the business empire are travel, leisure, mobile phones, entertainment retailing and personal financial. They create business whose are completely different from the way other doing business such as the creative management which are high quality, innovative, prove good value for the money, be challenging to existing alternative, have a sense of fun in advertise. Mr. Branson put employees first as top of advances within industries, customers and the next shareholder.

The most successful business is Virgin Travel which has segmentation with highly consumer consumption, their very rigorous price cutting strategies and better service. They offer Virgin Atlantic with route London to New York. The strategic nature or expand of Virgin Atlantic are virgin Atlantic cargo, virgin holidays, Air Asia and virgin Australia. For the analysis Porter’s 5 force:

1. The Virgin emergent approach to strategy development has not always proved successful – Virgin Bride and Virgin Cola, for example, remain relatively small businesses. Does this matter? Do all emergent strategies have to be successful?

1 Global Strategy and Policy| Sekar Pratiwi (014201100058)

New entrans is investor continue to create new airlines

Suppliers for airplanes include Airbus and Boeing.  For train manufacturers they include Siemens and Bombardier.  Most airline services lease aircrafts because they are too expensive to own and are a substantial investment than can be depreciated over the years.

Rivalry is high in Virgin Travel because many other airlines offer different service of travel such as passenger airplanes, train, rent a car, hot air balloons, space travel, and cruise line. The competitors are Delta, British Airways, Royal Caribbean, Hertz, and Enterprise.The supplier power is moderate, because there are only a few suppliers as airline manufacturers.

The buyer power is high due to the different choices of consumer transportation.  Consumers have the option to use domestic to take the airline industry.  Different for people that do business abroad, flights are essential and seen as a necessity.  On the contrary, there is a airline services that offer cheap flights for those buyers that lean more toward a cost leader than a product differentiator.  This creates a need for Virgin to be both a cost leader and product differentiator.

Substitutes that exist for international travel include domestic transportation. Virgin’s flying experience is non substitutable.  Virgin relies heavily on providing great customer service to an enjoyable travel

"Emergent strategy implies that an organization is learning what works in practice. Mixing the deliberate and the emergent strategies in some way will help the organization to control its course while encouraging the learning process. "Organizations pursue umbrella strategies: the broad outlines are deliberate while the details are allowed to emerge within them" (Mintzberg, 1994, p. 23-25; Hax & Majluf, 1996, p. 17). The Virgin Group uses business level strategies to gain a competitive advantage in the market by exploiting its core competencies and matching its strengths with opportunities. Their management strategic is a decentralized decision making process, with a focus on independent business-level decision-making and responsibility for their own development (Keiretsu).In other hand Virgin does use the cost-leadership for approach because does not have its own manufacturers. For example, Virgin Active in South Africa, the leading health club chain, is challenged to think of 10 improvements for every new club built. These changes influence customer’s experience of Virgins products and services.

Contrast Virgin Cola and Bride were shut down. First lesson from virgin cola ere in the distributor which are Coca-Cola and Pepsi block Virgin from getting crucial space in half the UK’s markets, in other hand Virgin Cola is double budget of advertising and promotion so they didn’t got break event point , these situation make them loss. Second Virgin bride is one of variety of business ventures. Virgin Bride launch in Northumberland Ave, London in December 1994, but the ventures short-live in December 2007 after suffering losses in the competitive bridal market.

1. Critically evaluate Virgin Group’s strategies over the period of the case study. Was the company wise to spend so much time investing in so many new product areas? What would you have done?

The conclusion are not all the emergent strategic successful because term of condition market like what happen to Virgin Cola and bride, distributor in Virgin Cola which one main tools in the marketing but Virgin can’t handle it and also they lot spend money for promotion. Same what happen with cola, Virgin Bride fail because in fashion need brilliant innovation to keep existing, so critically evaluate for Virgin Group’s strategies are market concern in business long-term rather than sort-term meaning is Richard Branson in nowadays not so much concern about industry-specific expertise, virgin should satisfy needs product and service not only in short-term goal but also long term goal. Brand name depends on Branson, if something happens to him ultimate death, the group biggest asset its brand value will reduce considerably. To be successful leader market virgin should be quick decision making because of changing environment to compete with rival. Hire the skillful employee to get best performance like finance.

2 Global Strategy and Policy| Sekar Pratiwi (014201100058)