Case Study Description of General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B)
Yoplait's director of new product development is finalizing plans for the national introduction of custard-style Yoplait. Based on the results of a mini-market test and a BASES laboratory test market.
Swot Analysis of "General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B)" written by John A. Quelch, John L. Teopaco includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Custard Yoplait facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Product development and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) casestudy better are - – technology disruption, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing energy prices, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
wage bills are increasing, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Custard Yoplait, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Custard Yoplait 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 General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Custard Yoplait
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 Custard Yoplait
Strengths General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Custard Yoplait in General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Digital Transformation in Sales & Marketing segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Custard Yoplait digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Custard Yoplait 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
– Custard Yoplait 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, John L. Teopaco 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Custard Yoplait 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 General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Custard Yoplait 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 General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Custard Yoplait has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Custard Yoplait 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Custard Yoplait 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.
Training and development
– Custard Yoplait has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) 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 Custard Yoplait
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Custard Yoplait does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Custard Yoplait 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 lead change in Sales & Marketing field
– Custard Yoplait 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 Custard Yoplait in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Custard Yoplait in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Innovation driven organization
– Custard Yoplait is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Weaknesses General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) are -
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B), it seems that the employees of Custard Yoplait 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 bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, John A. Quelch, John L. Teopaco suggests that, Custard Yoplait 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Custard Yoplait 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Custard Yoplait 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Custard Yoplait 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. Custard Yoplait 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 dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) 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 Custard Yoplait has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B), 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Custard Yoplait 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) 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 Custard Yoplait 's lucrative customers.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Custard Yoplait 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Custard Yoplait, firm in the HBR case study General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Opportunities General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) | 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 General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Custard Yoplait 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 General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Custard Yoplait to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Custard Yoplait 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Custard Yoplait can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Buying journey improvements
– Custard Yoplait can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) 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.
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. Custard Yoplait can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Custard Yoplait 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, General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B), to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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. Custard Yoplait 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. Custard Yoplait 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Custard Yoplait 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Custard Yoplait to increase its market reach. Custard Yoplait 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Custard Yoplait 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.
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. Custard Yoplait 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 Custard Yoplait 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Custard Yoplait 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 General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) are -
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. Custard Yoplait needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Custard Yoplait business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Custard Yoplait 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Custard Yoplait 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 General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) .
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Custard Yoplait 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.
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. Custard Yoplait can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing wage structure of Custard Yoplait
– 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 Custard Yoplait.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B), Custard Yoplait may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Sales & Marketing .
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Custard Yoplait is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Custard Yoplait with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Custard Yoplait has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Custard Yoplait 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Custard Yoplait 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) 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 General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) 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 General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) 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 General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) 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 General Mills, Inc.: Yoplait Custard-Style Yogurt (B) 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 Custard Yoplait needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
