The Business Environment Of Virgin Group Ltd.

Virgin Australia was established in early 2000, with operations comprising of two aircrafts flying one route and 200 employees. Since this, the company has greatly expanded its operations embracing a true national domestic network and then further expansion into the international flights by 2009 (Virgin Australia, 2012). Today Virgin Australia operates under the chairman of the Virgin group Sir Richard Branson and is owned by Virgin Blue Holdings, formally Virgin Blue Airlines. Under the brand name is V Australia and Pacific Blue, from which Virgin Australia flies its main aircraft

Richard Branson is the CEO and founder of the Virgin Group composing of 200 different companies.

One of the business areas of Virgin group is the airlines business. It has been 16 year Virgin Airlines entered in the aviation market of the Australia but in this short period it has achieved great success and formed as the second biggest airlines in the Australian aviation market. In 2011 AD it has lunched the new brand Virgin Australia. It has created a great brand image in the mind of the National and International customer in 21th century. Virgin Group believes in making the difference with great customer service experience to its client.

Virgin Atlantic is a major British success story. From our first leased jumbo to the UK's second largest long haul airline, we've come a long way, and there's still much more to do! Take a look at our story by clicking on the links below...

Virgin Group limited is a venture capital conglomerate founded in 1970 by Sir Richard Branson with interest in transportation, travel, mobile, financial services, media, music and fitness. It employs about 50,000 people in more than 30 countries, comprising of 300 companies and brand, with 11.5 billion pounds in revenue as at 2009, (Virgin website).

Sainsbury’s Supermarket Ltd. (SBRY), located in the United Kingdom, is the second largest organisation (The Guardian, 2015 [Online]), out of four major players, in the supermarket industry. It was founded in the year 1869 by John James Sainsbury (Sainsbury’s, 2015 [Online]) and has been growing since 2005 due to “expansion into broader food and non-food markets” (IBIS world, 2015 [Online]). Although Sainsbury’s main objective is to sell food, in recent years it has also begun to expand into other markets of the retail sector. Examples include clothing retail and homeware. This has been done in order to widen Sainsbury’s consumer base.

Virgin Australia is Australia’s second largest domestic airline, commenced in operations back in 2000 as a low-cost carrier (LCC) and has successfully survived in the market. Major shareholders include Air New Zealand, Singapore Airline and Etihad Airways. The airline rebranded in 2011 as a part of their 5-year turnaround

‘Virgin Media was created by the merger of NTL Telewest and Richard Branson’s Virgin Mobile, Virgin Media is a subsidiary company of Liberty Global PLC that is the worlds largest international cable corporation, the formation of Virgin Media formed the first ‘quad play’ provider’ (Virgin Media case study)

Virgin Airways or Virgin Australia is a member of Virgin Group which was established by Richard Branson in 1970 with various sectors such as mobile telephony, transportation, travel, financial services, media, music, fitness and tourism. Virgin Australia was first put into operation on 31 August 2000 by the first flight DJ214 from Brisbane to Sydney. On that date, the company just had one route, two aircraft and a team of 200 people. Neil Chatfield, who has an extensive experience across a range of industries, is an Independent Non-Executive Chairman of Virgin Australia. There are eight different directors who are co-responsible for the Board with Neil Chatfield and John Borghetti – the current Managing Director and Chief

Meaning: - The term Business Environment is composed of two words ‘Business’ and ‘Environment’. In simple terms, the state in which a person remains busy is known as Business. The word Business in its economic sense means human activities like production, extraction or purchase or sales of goods that are performed for earning profits. On the other hand, the word ‘Environment’ refers to the aspects of surroundings. Therefore, Business Environment may be defined as a set of conditions – Social, Legal, Economical, Political or Institutional that are uncontrollable in nature and affects the functioning of organization. Business Environment

The Virgin Group, is a British international corporation conglomerate founded by entrepreneurs Sir Richard Branson and Nik Powell in the 1970. Today, the Virgin Group, operates in 13 regions internationally, in seven industries with a net worth valued at $4.9 billion (Virgin, n.d.). Although, the Virgin Group is made up of several largely diversified companies, for the general purpose of this assessment, we will concentrate on the airline sector of the Virgin Group. Virgin-branded airlines include: Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Galactic, Virgin Australia and Virgin America. In this analysis, we will take an in-depth look at the external, internal and SWOT analysis for Virgin America Airline.

Virgin America, not to be confused with Virgin Atlantic, is a United States-based low-cost airline founded in early 2004. After beginning service in August 2007, Virgin America completed its IPO in November 2014. Virgin America markets itself as a low-fare, high-quality service for long-haul flights across the United States. Though the airline’s main hub is in San Francisco, focus city hubs are operated in both Los Angeles and Dallas. Commonly confused for Virgin Atlantic, Virgin America, while initially the idea of Richard Branson, Virgin Group’s owner, is a United States airline with only the legal maximum of 25% owned by the international Virgin Group firm. Virgin Group also licenses the Virgin brand to Virgin America. Virgin America is under no obligation to cooperate in any means, though it does, with other Virgin Group companies.

Virgin Group Ltd is a British multinational corporation venture capital conglomerate and this company was founded by Richard Branson and Nik Powell in 1970. This group has over 200 business organizations and this is a large network of organizations which cover many areas in the business world (Campbell, et al., 2011).

I believe the Virgin Group, as a corporate parent, does add value to its businesses. The main way in which it adds value to the strategic business units is by the use of their brand name and image. This is very prominent and well recognised world-wide, and therefore gives each business unit instant recognition within their industries and therefore gives each business a strong external image to benefit from. Research shows that the Virgin brand was recognised by 96% of consumers in the United Kingdom, and 95% were able to associate Richard Branson's name with the brand. The brand name is also known for a huge variety of different businesses which shows the name has proved to be very versatile and can probably be put with most fields and brings an element of success.

Read the Sir Richard Branson, Chairman, Virgin Group, Ltd. case study located in Chapter 11 Describe Branson’s leadership style in terms of the leadership models addressed in Chapters 10 and 11.