Airborne Essay

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Airborne Express Case Study Questions - Solutions 1) How and why has the express mail industry structure evolved in recent years? How have the changes affected small competitors? When the concept of Federal Express, an airline dedicated solely to the express delivery of mail, was conceived by Fredrick Smith (a student at Yale), it was thought of as Humbug and it got him a C grade on his term paper. What the faculty failed to envision is that this very concept would majorly impact and even transform the way mail was delivered all across the United States. The eventual launch of the Airline FedEx, led to a revolution in the mail delivery industry. The capability of delivering mail over night was born. Most of the major players like UPS started off on a small scale. UPS was initially a messenger service. Slowly over the years as the demand from customers changed they reinvented their value proposition, and today are into the delivery of mail and packages (12 million a day – when the case was written), including express mail. Seeing potential in this particular foray, many new players came into the market to compete. The domestic express mail market consisted of the ‘Big Three’ – FedEx, UPS and Airborne Express which together served more than 85% of the market. There were 6 tier two players – BAX Global, DHL, Emery Worldwide, RPS, TNT Express Worldwide and the US Postal Service. There were a number of changes that took place in the industry and they were primarily led by FedEx and UPS. FedEx stirred up the sleeping giant UPS into change. Companies like Airborne Express, lets the bigger try out the new stuff (As said by an Airborne Manager) and then adopts only what it fell would add value. Some of the changes in the industry can be classified as follows – Customer’s needs and trends– Customers have become conscious of the carrier that

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