Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Organizational Development
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry
Reggae music has swept the world. From its origins in Jamaica, it can now be heard in clubs and bars from Senegal to Samoa. It has also influenced music from other countries, such as American rap. In the late 1990s, annual sales of reggae recordings were estimated to be $1.2 billion, of which Jamaican musicians, producers, and songwriters earned about $300 million, plus another $50 million from live performances and ancillary product sales. Describes the evolution of Jamaican musical forms, the development of the country's music industry, and the industry's structure in the early 21st century; introduces the concept of industrial clusters--localized groups of firms that grow around a single industry and include all the necessary supporting companies required by the industry; and asks how industrial clusters provide benefits to participants, how they can be grown, and how a developing country can build an industry.
Swot Analysis of "Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry" written by John McMillan includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Reggae Music facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Economic development, Emerging markets and Organizational Development.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry casestudy better are - – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing energy prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , technology disruption, increasing commodity prices,
there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Reggae Music, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Reggae Music 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 Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Reggae Music
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 Reggae Music
Strengths Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Reggae Music in Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry Harvard Business Review case study are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Reggae Music 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Reggae Music 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 Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Reggae Music has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Organizational Development industry
– Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Reggae Music to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Organizational Development industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Reggae Music to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Reggae Music is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Ability to lead change in Organizational Development field
– Reggae Music is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Reggae Music in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Reggae Music 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Reggae Music is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High brand equity
– Reggae Music has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Reggae Music to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Training and development
– Reggae Music has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Organizational Resilience of Reggae Music
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Reggae Music does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry are -
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry, it seems that the employees of Reggae Music don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Reggae Music has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Reggae Music has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Reggae Music even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry, in the dynamic environment Reggae Music has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Reggae Music has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Reggae Music is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Organizational Development segment. Reggae Music needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Reggae Music to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Reggae Music 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 Reggae Music products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Reggae Music needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Need for greater diversity
– Reggae Music has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Reggae Music has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry HBR case study mentions - Reggae Music 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.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Reggae Music supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Reggae Music vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Opportunities Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry | 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 Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry are -
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Reggae Music 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Reggae Music 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 Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Reggae Music to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Reggae Music can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Reggae Music operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Organizational Development sector.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Organizational Development industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Reggae Music can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Reggae Music can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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 Reggae Music 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Reggae Music is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry case study suggests that firm can utilize new technology to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Reggae Music 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Reggae Music can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Organizational Development segment.
Buying journey improvements
– Reggae Music can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Reggae Music has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Reggae Music to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry case study. Reggae Music can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Reggae Music 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.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Reggae Music can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Threats Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry, Reggae Music 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 .
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. Reggae Music can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Reggae Music 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.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Reggae Music in the Organizational Development industry. The Organizational Development industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Reggae Music 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 Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry .
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Reggae Music will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Reggae Music has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Organizational Development industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Reggae Music needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Organizational Development sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
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 Reggae Music.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Reggae Music in the Organizational Development sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
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 Reggae Music business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Reggae Music 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry 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 Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry 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 Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry 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 Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry 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 Trench Town Rock: The Creation of Jamaica's Music Industry 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 Reggae Music needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
