Under this option, Southwest Airlines is able to identify the factors that it wants to rise well above the industry’s average in its own settings and operations. These factors include, for example, obsolete technology, mundane operational processes, and stringent human resource policies. With elimination, Southwest Airlines identifies and shortlists the factors through which a given industry has competed over a long period of time, and which may be eliminated now. Southwest Airlines breaks the tradeoff through four simple strategic processes and ways – highlighted as the four actions in the four action framework. The four strategic actions for developing new buyer value curves Southwest Airlines has also been able to break this tradeoff by challenging the strategic formation, foundation and logic of the industry – thereby challenging the industry boundaries and working at large. However, when a new value curve is created, companies typically face a trade-off between differentiation and low cost. The Southwest Airlines Company has made use of the four actions framework in reconstructing or developing new value curves or strategic profiles for the company and its various offerings in uncontested market spaces. The four actions framework by Southwest Airlines has helped the company explore and refine buyer value more intricately. When Southwest Airlines adopts the blue ocean strategy, it changes the rules of the game and eradicates the competition – rendering them unimportant, and irrelevant factors of the environment.
In doing so, Southwest Airlines has been able to experience rapid growth as well as enjoy increased profits. By doing so, Southwest Airlines has been able to create new demand, rather than fight over and encroach existing competitive space. With Southwest Airlines, the blue ocean model and framework has allowed the company to explore new market spaces that have not been competitive, or actively utilized by players existing in the present business environment. Under the blue ocean model and framework, the industry structures are assumed to be flexible, and not rigid. Through the blue ocean strategy, industry players like Southwest Airlines are able to reconstruct the market boundaries as well as the industry structure through their strategies and actions. The blue ocean strategy focuses on creating demand in the uncontested market space, and by doing this, it makes the competition unrelated and irrelevant. The blue ocean strategy seeks to bring differentiation to organizations and brands like Southwest Airlines to create awareness and presence in a new market place and create demand amongst consumers.