Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
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Case Study Description of Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History?
PepsiCo faces criticism after releasing a series of online advertisements for Mountain Dew that featured an angry Mountain Dew-drinking goat, a battered white woman on crutches and the goat in a police lineup of all black men. Critics are offended by the advertisement's portrayal of violence toward women and racial stereotypes. As the public outcry spreads, Mountain Dew's senior brand manager needs to devise a course of action or risk damage to one of its billion-dollar brands.
Swot Analysis of "Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History?" written by Jana Seijts, Paul Bigus includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Dew Mountain facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? casestudy better are - – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing commodity prices, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, wage bills are increasing, increasing transportation and logistics costs, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History?
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Dew Mountain, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Dew Mountain 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 Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Dew Mountain
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 Dew Mountain
Strengths Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Dew Mountain in Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? Harvard Business Review case study are -
Strong track record of project management
– Dew Mountain is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Dew Mountain to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Dew Mountain to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Dew Mountain 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Dew Mountain 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 Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Dew Mountain is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Dew Mountain 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.
Digital Transformation in Sales & Marketing segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Dew Mountain digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Dew Mountain 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.
Ability to lead change in Sales & Marketing field
– Dew Mountain 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 Dew Mountain in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Diverse revenue streams
– Dew Mountain is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? 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.
Analytics focus
– Dew Mountain 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 Jana Seijts, Paul Bigus 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Dew Mountain has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Dew Mountain 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
– Dew Mountain 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 Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Dew Mountain products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Dew Mountain needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Need for greater diversity
– Dew Mountain 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 Dew Mountain, firm in the HBR case study Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? 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 Dew Mountain has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Dew Mountain 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Jana Seijts, Paul Bigus suggests that, Dew Mountain 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? 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 Dew Mountain 's lucrative customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History?, 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History?, is just above the industry average. Dew Mountain 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History?, in the dynamic environment Dew Mountain has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Dew Mountain has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Dew Mountain 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.
Opportunities Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? | 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 Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? are -
Loyalty marketing
– Dew Mountain 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Dew Mountain can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Dew Mountain can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Sales & Marketing segment.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Dew Mountain has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Dew Mountain to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? case study. Dew Mountain can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Dew Mountain can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Dew Mountain operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
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. Dew Mountain 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. Dew Mountain 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Dew Mountain 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Dew Mountain can develop new processes and procedures in Sales & Marketing industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Dew Mountain 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 Dew Mountain to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Dew Mountain is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Dew Mountain 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 Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Dew Mountain to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Dew Mountain 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Dew Mountain 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.
Threats Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History?, Dew Mountain 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 .
Increasing wage structure of Dew Mountain
– 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 Dew Mountain.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Dew Mountain has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Dew Mountain 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Dew Mountain 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 Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? .
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Dew Mountain with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Dew Mountain 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.
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.
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 Dew Mountain.
Environmental challenges
– Dew Mountain 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. Dew Mountain can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry.
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. Dew Mountain can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Dew Mountain 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Dew Mountain is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Dew Mountain business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? 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 Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? 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 Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? 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 Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? 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 Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History? 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 Dew Mountain needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
