Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team
On January 2006, the director of performance management for Callaway Golf Canada (Callaway Canada) was in his Toronto office preparing for his upcoming meeting with Callaway Canada's managing director. The managing director had asked the director of performance management to assess the results of the mobile performance team (MPT) and to design a plan for the 2008 golf season that would ensure that Callaway Canada would stay one step ahead of its competitors, who, the director of performance management believed, were preparing to increase their focus and resources on service.
Swot Analysis of "Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team" written by John S. Haywood-Farmer, Brett Jackman includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Callaway Golf facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Marketing, Operations management and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team casestudy better are - – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, wage bills are increasing, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing commodity prices, technology disruption,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Callaway Golf, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Callaway Golf 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 Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Callaway Golf
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 Callaway Golf
Strengths Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Callaway Golf in Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team Harvard Business Review case study are -
Digital Transformation in Sales & Marketing segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Callaway Golf digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Callaway Golf 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Callaway Golf 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 Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Callaway Golf 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Callaway Golf is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Callaway Golf 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
– Callaway Golf has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Callaway Golf 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 Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Callaway Golf in the sector have low bargaining power. Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Callaway Golf to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Callaway Golf in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Learning organization
- Callaway Golf 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 Callaway Golf is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team 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.
Organizational Resilience of Callaway Golf
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Callaway Golf does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team are -
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team, it seems that the employees of Callaway Golf 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Callaway Golf 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Callaway Golf 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Callaway Golf is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Sales & Marketing segment. Callaway Golf needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Callaway Golf to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team 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 Callaway Golf has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Callaway Golf 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 - Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team 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 Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team, is just above the industry average. Callaway Golf 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team 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 Callaway Golf 's lucrative customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Sales & Marketing strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Callaway Golf 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. Callaway Golf 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team HBR case study mentions - Callaway Golf 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.
Opportunities Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team | 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 Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team are -
Loyalty marketing
– Callaway Golf 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Callaway Golf has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Callaway Golf to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team case study. Callaway Golf can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Callaway Golf is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team 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 Callaway Golf in the consumer business. Now Callaway Golf can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Callaway Golf 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, Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team, 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, Callaway Golf 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Callaway Golf 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.
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. Callaway Golf 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 Callaway Golf 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Callaway Golf 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Callaway Golf 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 Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Callaway Golf to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Callaway Golf 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.
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. Callaway Golf 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. Callaway Golf 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.
Threats Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Callaway Golf 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Callaway Golf 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.
Increasing wage structure of Callaway Golf
– 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 Callaway Golf.
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. Callaway Golf can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Callaway Golf 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 Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team .
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 Callaway Golf in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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 Callaway Golf.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Callaway Golf 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Callaway Golf 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.
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. Callaway Golf needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team, Callaway Golf 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 .
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Callaway Golf has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Callaway Golf 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.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team 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 Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team 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 Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team 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 Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team 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 Callaway Golf Canada: The Mobile Performance Team 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 Callaway Golf needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
