Mehrad's Blog

The New York based jetBlue Airways has chosen not to merge with Southwest Airlines in an effort to remain independant, hoping to grow more profitable without combining with a bigger company. The CEO of the company stated “growing too fast through an acquisition could jeopardize JetBlue Airways Corp.’s financial stability; and, that grow through merger may be bigger, but they’re also distracted by their own integration issues, and they usually take their eye off the customer. This gives us another opportunity to win by playing our game even better.”
Now I have never heard of jetBlue before until reading the article about their solo stalemate. But how successful can they become by choosing to stay that way and not joining a bigger company?
JetBlue strives to be known as a discount airline, yet when we think about discount North American Airlines, jetBlue does not come into our minds. It seems they have not positioned themselves well enough in the market as what they liked to be known as as well as their competitors such as Southwest Airlines and their subdivisions. Their income is becoming less and less as the bigger airline companies are profiting more and more.
On a different note, we can judge their logo on how appealing it might be compared to the other airline companies. (I have attached the logo) Seems very bland and lacks and significant flashy looks that could arouse the consumer’s interest (if they were ones to be swayed by appealing logos).
What they think is their point of difference (discount airline) is not very well positioned in today’s market. In fact, it is more like a point of parity. If they were to flourish as an independant company, they will need to work on positioning themselves better in the mind of the customers and come up with an original point of difference to make them a stand-out airline company.

Link to the article:
http://www.canadianbusiness.com/markets/headline_news/article.jsp?content=b4669108