Corporate Strategy - Air France

Sujet du devoir

Hello, I'm a  graduate student in International Business.

We have an assignment to do in our corporate strategy course for this MONDAY. We chose to study "Air France" and we would like some help.
Here's the question:

"What is the dominant technological design or standard of the industry? What is the role of standard in the focal industry?"

Thanks in advance for you help.

Où j'en suis dans mon devoir

This question is more difficult for some industries than others. If the firm is Ford Motors, then internal combustion is a dominant design for the automotive industry. What if your firm is Walmart? Maybe “bricks and mortar” could be seen as a dominant design in retailing. The essential thing is to find out what is the dominant standard or norm in the industry, regarding the product features, technological properties, or design attributes. This standard can be agreed upon by a majority of firms in the industry (such as the wintel standard), or imposed by the government bodies (for instance EU decided that GSM will be the standard for mobile). This can be an area where you can demonstrate some creativity. Reflect on how other industries may influence yours or discuss events that are happening in other industries that could spur changes in yours with some creative business models. What will be the role be for custom-designed clothes or cars, for example, that are realistically becoming available in areas where mass production has been the standard for decades. While we often think of standards as digital, DVD, MP3, and so on, they actually transcend more industries than we expect. The size of clothes or shoes is a different standard in the U.S. than in much of the rest of the world.

However, these points are hard to define for a company such as Air France, which sells Services and not products...