Green Retailing: Factors for Success SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Organizational Development
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Green Retailing: Factors for Success
Green retailing, generally viewed as the incorporation of environmental protection measures into retail operations, has become a common phenomenon. Despite an increasing interest among practitioners, there is a lack of understanding about what green retailing is and what the success factors are for its implementation. This article examines the practices of leading green retailers, shedding light on the different coordinator roles of retailers between suppliers and customers in greening their value chains. It identifies three broad dimensions of green retailing-internal-improvement, external-coordination, and supportive-development-and notes the critical capabilities required for firms to achieve success. It also presents a strategy loop with practical steps to help retailing executives incorporate green practices.
Swot Analysis of "Green Retailing: Factors for Success" written by Kee-Hung Lai, T.C.E. Cheng, Ailie K.Y. Tang includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Green Retailing facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Green Retailing: Factors for Success case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Sustainability and Organizational Development.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Green Retailing: Factors for Success casestudy better are - – geopolitical disruptions, wage bills are increasing, increasing energy prices, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing transportation and logistics costs,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Green Retailing: Factors for Success
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Green Retailing: Factors for Success case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Green Retailing, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Green Retailing operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Green Retailing: Factors for Success can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Green Retailing: Factors for Success case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Green Retailing
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Organizational Development field.
4. Making a Organizational Development topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Green Retailing
Strengths Green Retailing: Factors for Success | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Green Retailing in Green Retailing: Factors for Success Harvard Business Review case study are -
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Green Retailing has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study Green Retailing: Factors for Success - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Green Retailing in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Green Retailing has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Green Retailing has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Green Retailing has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Green Retailing is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Green Retailing: Factors for Success are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Green Retailing: Factors for Success Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Strong track record of project management
– Green Retailing is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Digital Transformation in Organizational Development segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Green Retailing digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Green Retailing has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Analytics focus
– Green Retailing is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by Kee-Hung Lai, T.C.E. Cheng, Ailie K.Y. Tang can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
High brand equity
– Green Retailing has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Green Retailing to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- Green Retailing is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Green Retailing is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Green Retailing: Factors for Success Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Green Retailing are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Weaknesses Green Retailing: Factors for Success | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Green Retailing: Factors for Success are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Green Retailing has some of the most successful products in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. firm in the HBR case study - Green Retailing: Factors for Success should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Green Retailing: Factors for Success HBR case study mentions - Green Retailing takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Green Retailing: Factors for Success, in the dynamic environment Green Retailing has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Green Retailing has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Kee-Hung Lai, T.C.E. Cheng, Ailie K.Y. Tang suggests that, Green Retailing is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Green Retailing: Factors for Success, is just above the industry average. Green Retailing needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Green Retailing is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Organizational Development segment. Green Retailing needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Green Retailing to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Green Retailing: Factors for Success, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Organizational Development strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Green Retailing has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Lack of clear differentiation of Green Retailing products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Green Retailing needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Green Retailing: Factors for Success HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Green Retailing has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Green Retailing has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Opportunities Green Retailing: Factors for Success | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study Green Retailing: Factors for Success are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Green Retailing has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study Green Retailing: Factors for Success - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Green Retailing to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Green Retailing can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Green Retailing can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Green Retailing: Factors for Success suggest that firm can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Green Retailing can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Green Retailing operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Organizational Development sector.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Green Retailing to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Green Retailing to increase its market reach. Green Retailing will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Green Retailing can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help, as suggested in case study, Green Retailing: Factors for Success, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Green Retailing can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Green Retailing in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Organizational Development segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Developing new processes and practices
– Green Retailing can develop new processes and procedures in Organizational Development industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Green Retailing has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Green Retailing has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Green Retailing to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Green Retailing: Factors for Success case study. Green Retailing can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Organizational Development industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Green Retailing can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Green Retailing can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Threats Green Retailing: Factors for Success External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Green Retailing: Factors for Success are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Green Retailing demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Green Retailing.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Green Retailing: Factors for Success, Green Retailing may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Organizational Development .
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Organizational Development field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Green Retailing can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Green Retailing can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study Green Retailing: Factors for Success .
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Green Retailing high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Regulatory challenges
– Green Retailing needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Organizational Development industry regulations.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Green Retailing is facing in Organizational Development sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Green Retailing needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Organizational Development industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Green Retailing can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Green Retailing business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Green Retailing: Factors for Success Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study Green Retailing: Factors for Success needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study Green Retailing: Factors for Success is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study Green Retailing: Factors for Success is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Green Retailing: Factors for Success is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Green Retailing needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
