In our podcast-series ‘Profcast’, we talk with the professors of the Faculty of Business and Economics. This week, our guest is: Sascha Albers.
Professor Sascha Albers is specialized in international and strategic management.
Sascha: “Critial people would say that it entails everything and nothing. Strategic management is looking at why some firms perform consistently better than others. We try to indentify the causes: what do they do different, or in a different way. What makes more profitable, more efficient or more agile than other firms? We can study a lot of things that are highly relevant for managers and stakeholders of firms.“
Professor Albers likes flying, and he likes researching strategic air transport management.Â
Sascha: “In Europe, airline managers consider that it is important to keep the national brand, even if it would be much more efficient from communication perspective to consolidate everything to just one brand. KLM, Air France, Lufthansa … they all have kept their individual, national brands and still market them. Because people in a country feel an attachment to that brand, and would turn away from the company if it would not maintain the national brand. I think everybody has an attachment to an airline brand, just like everyone has a favorite beer. I have grown up with Lufthansa and I have good relations with Lufthansa. So yes, I like Lufthansa a lot.“
The article ‘Multimarket coopetition : how the interplay of competition and cooperation affects entry into shared markets‘ was written by Sascha Albers.
Sascha: “Many firms meet eachother in several markets. If you look at General Motors and Volkswagen: they meet eachother not only in Belgium, Germany and The Netherlands, but also in many other geographical markets. And also in different product markets: trucks, vans, cars, sport cars … It creates different arenas in which they can play with eachother. If we decrease the price for a product in Belgium, our competitor can react in Belgium, but also in a different market. So, a certain competitive move in one market can lead to reactions in many different market. If you make that choice, you might see impact on many important other markets.”
Listen to the episode with Sascha Albers on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, DS Podcast-app, YouTube or SoundCloud: