Contemporary Marketing 16th Edition by Louis Boone,David Kurtz

Exercise 9

When United and Continental Airlines merged to form the new United, the world's largest airline, thousands of systems unique to each carrier had to change. Getting it right would take "several years," according to the new company's CEO, "which I think is surprising to a lot of people."
Determining which airline's coffee service would prevail required months of meetings and taste tests, for example. Managers also had to determine whether to offer first and business class, whether to allow Jet Skis as baggage, which direction dog crates should face during loading, and in what order passengers should board. The two carriers had to merge their flight information services, which track speed, altitude, and arrival and departure times, and decide whether delayed planes should fly faster or arrive late. Both are costly, and United and Continental each had different algorithms for making that decision. Hundreds of employees worked on merging more than 400 in-flight operations manuals to 260 for Federal Aviation Administration approval.
Union negotiations related to the merger are still ongoing. United and Continental had two different seniority scales, and two different sets of uniforms for male and female employees. Yet to be determined are whether baggage handlers will wear steel-toed shoes, and how many different shirt and tie styles male employees will choose from. A new pilots' contract must also be ironed out.
Then there were the two carriers' passenger information systems, with two different databases, websites, and loyalty programs. Although observers say the company's careful planning prevented a complete disaster when the integrated system recently went live, that aspect of the merger was not entirely problem free. Some United employees had too little experience dealing with the Continental system chosen for the merged carrier, and response time was slowed at the same time that call volume was rising. United has since hired 400 new customer service people and says service is back to normal. It's also promising a more user-friendly interface for its agents.
QUESTIONS FOR CRITICAL THINKING
1. The new United admits it may have hurt itself with customers by making too many passenger-service-related changes at once, like reducing the free baggage allowance at the same time it introduced the new passenger information system. Do you agree? Why or why not?
2. On the financial side, the merger is intended to boost revenue and shrink costs. What customer-service goals do you think the new United has? What customer goals should it have?