Foundations of Management, Vol. 10 (2018), ISSN 2080-7279 DOI: 10.2478/fman-2018-0012 143 EMPIRICAL VALIDATION OF BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY SUSTAINABILITY IN AN INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENT Jiri DVORAK*, Ilona RAZOVA** University of Economics, Prague, Jindrichuv Hradec, CZECH REPUBLIC * e-mail:
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[email protected] Abstract: This article investigates the applicability of blue ocean strategy in regard to low-cost airlines in the civil airline industry. To do so, the commercial offers of selected airlines were compared to vali- date any attempts to apply the blue ocean strategy concept. This is followed by examining the time lim- itation of the concept in a competitive environment and is illustrated by the changes in the industry for the past 30 years and a comparison of offers from similar companies. The third issue is the evalua- tion of the further contribution of blue ocean strategy when it is recognized as time-limited. The im- portance of first-mover advantage, which could be based on the ability to capture an economy of scale and advantageously shape the market, is also discussed. Keywords: blue ocean strategy, civil airliners, competitiveness, low-cost strategy, first-mover ad- vantage, Ryanair, customer value, value curve. JEL: M16, L10, L21. 1 Introduction Bonsor, 2001; Doganis, 2006). In Europe, the situa- tion began to change with the emergence of Ryanair Air transport experienced dynamic growth in the in 1985 when it entered the European market with second half of the twentieth century, which contin- a low-cost airline concept (Barrett, 2004; Thomas, ued into the early twenty-first century and still re- 2013; Ryanair, 2015a).