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 - – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, wage bills are increasing, there is backlash against globalization, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, 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 -
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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Dewar's Rom 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 Dewar's Rom 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.
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.
Learning organization
- Dewar's Rom 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 Dewar's Rom is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, 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.
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.
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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Dewar's Rom has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Dewar's Rom 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.
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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Dewar's Rom 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 Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Diverse revenue streams
– Dewar's Rom is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities 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.
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 -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities HBR case study mentions - Dewar's Rom takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
High 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.
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 decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Dewar's Rom 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. Dewar's Rom 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Dewar's Rom 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Dewar's Rom 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.
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.
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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Dewar's Rom is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Sales & Marketing segment. Dewar's Rom needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Dewar's Rom to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
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.
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.
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 -
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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Dewar's Rom is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities 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.
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 Dewar's Rom in the consumer business. Now Dewar's Rom can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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.
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.
Manufacturing automation
– Dewar's Rom 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.
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.
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. Dewar's Rom can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
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.
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.
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 Dewar's Rom 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, Dewar's Rom 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, Dewar's (C): Exploring New Media Opportunities, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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.
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 -
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.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Dewar's Rom has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Dewar's Rom 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Dewar's Rom 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. Dewar's Rom 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.
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.
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.
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 .
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. Dewar's Rom needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
