Airbnb and other home-stay accommodations have experienced exponential growth globally over the past few years. On December 10, 2020, Airbnb went public with a valuation of over $100 billion making it one of the largest IPOs of 2020. Their market capitalization is more than the three biggest publicly traded hotel chains (Marriott, Hilton, and Intercontinental) combined. Yet, Airbnb has been faced with a number of challenges including the pandemic and the subsequent decline in the travel industry.

Your goal in this case is to perform a strategic analysis of Airbnb by identifying key challenges faced by the company and providing your recommendations on how they should address these challenges. The analysis should follow the format specified below:

Introduction/Executive Summary

Outline of the major issues and your recommendations for AirBnB.

External analysis (use General Environment analysis and Porter's 5 forces)

What are the opportunities and threats in the external environment for AirBnB?

What is your assessment of the key competitive forces in the industry?

Internal analysis (use Value Chain Analysis or Resource-based view)

What are AirBnB's resources and capabilities?

How is AirBnB positioned to respond to the challenges in its external environment?

How well do airBnB's financials reflect its resources and capabilities?

Business strategy identification (Specific strategy of the firm such as cost leadership, differentiation, combination, focus, etc.)

What is AirBnB's competitive advantage?

Is their advantage sustainable?

Recommendations

How would you change AirBnB to respond to the key challenges it faces today?

the following factors relates to the changes that AirBnB would to respond to the key challenges it faces today,

Cost

you must have insight of these items because are items that pertains to the cost that you gather because on the information system that you have and used to gather data regarding the cost that would incur an effective risk management strategy and supply chain management and these would be your basis on how you would launch your products and services related to the outsourcing in order to attract and retain your customers and also if you decide to do those thing it could be a basis for your marketing plans and effective risk management strategy that you want to do.

supply chain management would help you have the standard cost that you must consider in order to conduct business plan and those marketing ideas which refers to direct labor which pertains to the money that you will pay to your workers, direct materials which pertains to the cost of the materials that you must purchased for your business and marketing campaign, overhead which is about the expenses the you must incur to put up your business and marketing add. cost needs to be one of your first considerations when running and assuring your business would succeed and the making marketing plans.

Perceived Value

Customers are willing to pay what they think something is worth and don't really care about the price based on the information system for your customer list and previous product sold. It would be up to you to see and produce the insights for your effective risk management strategy based supply chain management on what would be the best option to attract customers and serve them the best product and quality of service best fit for your effective risk management strategy you can provide to increase your customers and also marketing ad that would push your product above their perceived value, they simply buy it instantly. If the perceived value is much higher than your price, they'll happily pay a price that gives you a huge margin. While perceived value is mostly in the customer's mind, you can influence the perception by increasing your levels of service or positioning yourself as a higher-end brand by having a good marketing campaign.

Competition

you must always assure that you are above the competition related to effective risk management strategy and supply chain management the only way of doing that is by studying and using your information system to gather data related to your effective risk management strategy about your competitors and latest market trend and knows who are your real competitors that would really post a treat to your company and also when putting a marketing campaign in your product you must take into consideration the competition you are into because it is another key factor in marketing activities and running your business at the best potential of it. Open and free markets are very price-sensitive, while monopolies have virtually unlimited power to raise their prices.

The more you can differentiate yourself, the more power you'll have to set monopoly-like prices because it will make your product more appealing and enticing to the consumers so that you could have more attention from them. Even with commodities, such as gas and groceries, you can still find differentiators such as being on the right side of the road during the evening commute.

Loss Leaders

You don't need to earn a profit on every item you just have and proper business plan based on your information system would help you see and make a strategy that would best fit in assessing the status of your product and company based on your effective risk management strategy and supply chain management that you would provide those things together with your staffs to study and also a marketing activity but to assure that the customer will definitely recognized your product and you will make a marketing campaign that would put your product for your new venture to earn future income that must be able to cover up all the expenses that you would incur and would give you an income that could also cover up the losses that you would incur when there are items that you failed to sold.

supply chain management would advice you some items that can be listed at a loss to because there would also be moments that your product would not sell and you must be prepare for that and make necessary plans and strategize to counter it and as part of your marketing campaign in order to drive customers to your store in the hope that you would be able tp make up for the loss when they purchase additional, higher-margin items.

Economies of Scale

Early-stage companies have the problem on how they would promote their products related to effective risk management strategy in relation to supply chain management because in order to gain sales and not having the enough marketing power to attract customers and the target market and you would always be consulted by the company owners regarding these matter and your information system would help you do that. You have two options in this situation. The first is to keep a marketing campaign where the prices are above costs knowing that your higher prices may make it harder to pick up market share for your new venture and then reduce prices as you scale production. The second is to set your price based on your projected break-even point and take a loss on early sales in a more aggressive push to gain market share.

Bundling

your outsource services must help you retain and increase sales, and take care of some problems and you must always come up with ways to have your effective risk management strategy and supply chain management for the company to grow on a constant and sustainable manner and one of it is bundled pricing that is one can help increase your average sale and overall profits for your new venture when customers might otherwise be inclined to only purchase one item at a time. Your information system would show you based on your product record what are the best product combination. This is one the strategies to eliminate slow moving item where you would put these items for sale for a price of one.

Psychological Pricing

Sometimes, the price isn't about the actual cost but how consumers view it and you must consider how the consumer would view and accept your product for your effective risk management strategy according to their preference and perspective would be based on the marketing strategy and activity that you would conduct. This data can be gathered and analyze by the used of the information system that you have for your new venture. This is why car dealerships do make marketing campaigns like to negotiate based on monthly payments rather than the full sale price. The key is that pricing is just as much in the presentation as it is in the actual numbers.

Goal

The biggest question to answer is what end goal do you want to achieve is one of the few questions you must answer when putting a business strategy for your new venture and in your product because this what would drive you to take care of your business and the marketing strategy that you think would help you achieve your goal based on your information system that have all the company records and data about your company for your new venture that you can used as reference. Are you trying to build market share, put competitors out of business, maximize profits, raise quick cash to survive another month or position yourself as the low-cost alternative? Your end goal will guide what pricing strategy you pursue and how aggressively you follow it.