Case Study Description of Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning
The soup division at Brannigan Foods contributes over 40% of the firm's revenue. The general manager is concerned that the soup industry is declining and that the soup division shows declining profits and market share, especially among the important baby boomer segment. Hoping to reverse these trends, he asks four key managers to review a consultant's analysis of the soup industry and recommend a turnaround strategy. Each manager presents a different plan, from investing in core market segments and products to acquiring new product lines and customers. Students must perform a quantitative analysis of each proposal while considering the feasibility and risks associated with each option before making a final recommendation.
Swot Analysis of "Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning" written by John A. Quelch, James Kindley includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Soup Brannigan facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Budgeting, Customers, Decision making, Forecasting, Government, Mergers & acquisitions, Product development, Risk management, Strategic planning and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning casestudy better are - – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing commodity prices, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, wage bills are increasing, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
technology disruption, increasing energy prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Soup Brannigan, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Soup Brannigan 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 Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Soup Brannigan
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 Soup Brannigan
Strengths Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Soup Brannigan in Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning Harvard Business Review case study are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Soup Brannigan in the sector have low bargaining power. Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Soup Brannigan to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Analytics focus
– Soup Brannigan 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 John A. Quelch, James Kindley 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Soup Brannigan in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Soup Brannigan 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.
Digital Transformation in Sales & Marketing segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Soup Brannigan digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Soup Brannigan 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Soup Brannigan is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Soup Brannigan has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Soup Brannigan 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Soup Brannigan 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 Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Soup Brannigan is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Soup Brannigan 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 Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High brand equity
– Soup Brannigan has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Soup Brannigan to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Weaknesses Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Soup Brannigan products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Soup Brannigan needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Soup Brannigan, firm in the HBR case study Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning, 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Soup Brannigan 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. Soup Brannigan 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning 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 Soup Brannigan 's lucrative customers.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning 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 Soup Brannigan has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Need for greater diversity
– Soup Brannigan 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, Soup Brannigan 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Soup Brannigan 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Soup Brannigan 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 - Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Soup Brannigan needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Opportunities Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning | 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 Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning are -
Buying journey improvements
– Soup Brannigan can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Soup Brannigan 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 Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Soup Brannigan to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Sales & Marketing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Soup Brannigan 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. Soup Brannigan 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.
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 Soup Brannigan 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Soup Brannigan has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Soup Brannigan to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning case study. Soup Brannigan can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Soup Brannigan can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Soup Brannigan in the consumer business. Now Soup Brannigan can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Soup Brannigan is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Soup Brannigan 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
– Soup Brannigan 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Soup Brannigan in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Sales & Marketing segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Soup Brannigan can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Soup Brannigan operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Soup Brannigan 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.
Threats Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning are -
Environmental challenges
– Soup Brannigan 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. Soup Brannigan can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Soup Brannigan has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Soup Brannigan needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Sales & Marketing 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.
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 Soup Brannigan in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline 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 Soup Brannigan in the Sales & Marketing industry. The Sales & Marketing 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.
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. Soup Brannigan 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Soup Brannigan with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Soup Brannigan 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.
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 Soup Brannigan.
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.
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 Soup Brannigan business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Soup Brannigan 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Soup Brannigan 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 Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning 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 Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning 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 Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning 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 Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning 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 Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing Planning 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 Soup Brannigan needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
