An Industry Structural Analysis and Strategy Insights for the Commercial Crew Transportation Industry

4The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, Washington, DC, 2059 Michael Porter’s industry analysis techniques are applied to the emerging commercial crew transportation (CCT) industry to provide insights into strategies operators can take to improve competitive positioning. Michael Porter identified and published his theory of the five forces that shape strategy in 1979. Subsequently Porter has refined and updated his thinking in a series of new publications. This paper is based primarily on Porter’s “The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy” published in 2008. Porter believe competitive advantage arises by offering a unique value proposition, delivered by a tailored value chain, involving trade-offs different from those of rivals, where there is fit among numerous activities that become mutually reinforcing. To create a strategy Porter believes that companies must better understand current competitive forces, anticipate and exploit industry change and the resulting shifts in the forces, and shape the balance of forces to create a new industry structure that is more favorable to the company. This paper uses a Porter five forces industry structural analysis to identify the forces affecting the emerging CCT industry, rates those forces by greatest impact to competition, and identifies some possible strategies that CCT operators may use to improve competitive position.