案例---创造竞争优势---联邦快递.doc

FedEx---Creating Competitive Advantage I. Case Study: Federal Express almost single-handed created the express-package delivery industry as we now know it. Founded in 1973, the company got off to a slow start---it took time to educate the American public about the value of overnight delivery. However, building doggedly on the advertising promise, “when it absolutely, positively has to be there on time,” made possible by the company’s innovative and now much-copied “hub-and-spoke” distribution system, FedEx went on to become one of the fastest start-ups in American history. After three years of losses, it grew explosively. At a compound growth rate of more than 40% per year, annual sales reached $1 billion by 1983, $5 billion by 1989, and almost $8 billion by 1993. And despite strong challenges from a glut of imitators over the years, Federal Express remains the undisrupted market leader. It now commands a 45% US market share, comfortably ahead of major challengers UPS at 25%, Airborne at 14%, and the US Postal Service at about 8%. Staying atop the overnight package delivery business will require a well-designed and well-executed competitive strategy. Although the market is large and growing, competition is torrid. Federal Express is now streetfighting with competitors on price, looking for ways to boost productivity in order to stay price competitive. But FedEx is not, and may never be, the lowest-priced express-delivery service. Federal Express traditionally has differentiated itself not by luring customers with low prices, but by giving them unbeatable reliability and service. Even in the face of cutthroat pricing by competitors, the company has been careful not let cost-cutting undermine its main source of competitive advantage---superior quality. At Federal Express, quality goes far beyond slogans and idle talk. In 1987, it established a formal Quality Improvement process, which set simple yet lofty quality goals: 100 percent on-time deliveries, 100 percent accu