Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities
Dewar's is considering employing new media options. The company had committed resources to a new CD-ROM magazine, Launch, in 1994, as its first experiment with new media. During 1994, a number of additional opportunities have been presented to both Leo Burnett and S&S including other CD-ROM "digizines" and World Wide Web sites. Jamie Prusak must now decide how to evaluate these new opportunities, as well as several other lower technology media alternatives, in terms of costs, effectiveness and efficiency, and long-term impact on the brand's two target markets.
Swot Analysis of "Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities" written by Alvin J. Silk, Lisa R. Klein includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Dewar's Rom facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities casestudy better are - – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing transportation and logistics costs, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, geopolitical disruptions, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Dewar's Rom, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Dewar's Rom 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 Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Dewar's Rom
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 Dewar's Rom
Strengths Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Dewar's Rom in Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities Harvard Business Review case study are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Dewar's Rom to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Dewar's Rom to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– Dewar's Rom is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Ability to lead change in Sales & Marketing field
– Dewar's Rom 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 Dewar's Rom in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Dewar's Rom 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 Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Dewar's Rom in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Dewar's Rom in the sector have low bargaining power. Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Dewar's Rom to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High brand equity
– Dewar's Rom has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Dewar's Rom to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Digital Transformation in Sales & Marketing segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Dewar's Rom digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Dewar's Rom 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.
Training and development
– Dewar's Rom has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities 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.
Analytics focus
– Dewar's Rom 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 Alvin J. Silk, Lisa R. Klein 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.
Organizational Resilience of Dewar's Rom
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Dewar's Rom does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities are -
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Alvin J. Silk, Lisa R. Klein suggests that, Dewar's Rom 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Dewar's Rom products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Dewar's Rom needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities 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 Dewar's Rom has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Dewar's Rom 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities 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 Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Dewar's Rom is planning to shift buying processes online.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities, it seems that the employees of Dewar's Rom 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Dewar's Rom 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 - Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities, is just above the industry average. Dewar's Rom needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Need for greater diversity
– Dewar's Rom 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 Dewar's Rom, firm in the HBR case study Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Dewar's Rom is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Opportunities Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities | 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 Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities are -
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. Dewar's Rom can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Dewar's Rom 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Dewar's Rom 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Dewar's Rom 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Dewar's Rom to increase its market reach. Dewar's Rom 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Dewar's Rom 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Dewar's Rom 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.
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. Dewar's Rom 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. Dewar's Rom 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Dewar's Rom 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 Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Dewar's Rom 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, Dewar's Rom can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Dewar's Rom operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Dewar's Rom can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Dewar's Rom has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Dewar's Rom to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities case study. Dewar's Rom can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Dewar's Rom to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Dewar's Rom to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities are -
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 Dewar's Rom business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Dewar's Rom 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Dewar's Rom 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Dewar's Rom 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Dewar's Rom 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 Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities .
Environmental challenges
– Dewar's Rom 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. Dewar's Rom can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Dewar's Rom 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
– Dewar's Rom 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.
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. Dewar's Rom can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Regulatory challenges
– Dewar's Rom 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.
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 Dewar's Rom in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities 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 Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities 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 Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities 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 Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities 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 Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities 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 Dewar's Rom needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.