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Case Study

FlyBaboo: How high can it fly?

By Benoit F. Leleux, Dinos Constantinou and Henri Bourgeois

21 pages

July 2005

Reference: IMD-3-1526

The story of Flybaboo, a niche airline start-up in a crowded market, provides students with the opportunity to examine topics such as market entry, competitive strategy, product differentiation and positioning, branding, and entrepreneurship. Flybaboo is a fascinating example of a new entrant in a mature industry undergoing radical change, where the usual challenges facing entrepreneurial activities are compounded by a complex regulatory environment and potential competitive threats from both an established (but declining) incumbent and rival start-ups. The founder of the company cleverly combined fairly well-established business practices into a new customer “value proposition” with high appeal to a service-minded client niche. In other words, the case supports the concept that a novel value proposition can be created without “unique” components, with the perceived value coming mostly from a unique combination of non-novel components. The case serves as an ideal base for discussing the issues such as: 1) conducting an industry analysis in a rapidly changing environment, 2) understanding the elements of a customer value proposition, 3) establishing and maintaining a competitive advantage.

Keywords

Start-up, Market Entry, Competitive Strategy, Customer Value Proposition, Branding, Airline

Settings

Europe, Switzerland
2003-2004

Type

Field Research

Available Languages

English

Related material

Teaching note, Video

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