Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992
Describes Du Pont's 1992 corporate advertising campaign, and its objectives and key messages. The campaign is set in the context of Du Pont's historical corporate positioning ("better things for better living"). Includes target audiences, budget considerations, and the role of print and television advertising as well as events sponsorship. Also includes Du Pont's approach to evaluating its corporate advertising. Acquaints students with the objectives and detailed program specifics of corporate advertising campaigns, to examine the continuity of corporate image position of a major high-visibility diversified firm.
Swot Analysis of "Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992" written by Stephen A. Greyser, Norman Klein includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Du Pont's facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Marketing, Public relations and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 casestudy better are - – increasing energy prices, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing transportation and logistics costs, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Du Pont's, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Du Pont's 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 Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Du Pont's
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Sales & Marketing field.
4. Making a Sales & Marketing topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Du Pont's
Strengths Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Du Pont's in Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 Harvard Business Review case study are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Du Pont's in the sector have low bargaining power. Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Du Pont's to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Ability to lead change in Sales & Marketing field
– Du Pont's 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 Du Pont's in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Du Pont's 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 Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Du Pont's has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Du Pont's 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Du Pont's 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 Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Training and development
– Du Pont's has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 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.
Learning organization
- Du Pont's 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 Du Pont's is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Du Pont's is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 case study a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Du Pont's 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Du Pont's 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Du Pont's to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Du Pont's to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Weaknesses Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 are -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Du Pont's 's lucrative customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Sales & Marketing 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 Du Pont's 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Du Pont's 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Stephen A. Greyser, Norman Klein suggests that, Du Pont's 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Du Pont's 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. Du Pont's 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Du Pont's 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Du Pont's, firm in the HBR case study Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Du Pont's is planning to shift buying processes online.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 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 Du Pont's has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992, in the dynamic environment Du Pont's has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Du Pont's has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Opportunities Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 | 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 Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Du Pont's can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Du Pont's 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Du Pont's 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Sales & Marketing industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Du Pont's can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Manufacturing automation
– Du Pont's can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Sales & Marketing segment. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Du Pont's to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Du Pont's can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Du Pont's operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Du Pont's 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 Sales & Marketing segment.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Du Pont's has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Du Pont's to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 case study. Du Pont's can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, 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. Du Pont's can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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 Du Pont's 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Du Pont's 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, Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Buying journey improvements
– Du Pont's can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 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.
Threats Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Du Pont's 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Du Pont's with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Du Pont's 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.
Environmental challenges
– Du Pont's needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Du Pont's can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry.
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 Du Pont's.
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 Du Pont's in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing wage structure of Du Pont's
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Du Pont's.
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 Du Pont's business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Du Pont's 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 Sales & Marketing industry regulations.
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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Du Pont's 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 Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 .
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Du Pont's is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Sales & Marketing field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Du Pont's can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 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 Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 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 Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 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 Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 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 Du Pont: Corporate Advertising for 1992 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 Du Pont's needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.