Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China
In this case Roly International, the largest Disney apparel licensee in China, considers how to adapt their distribution channel strategy to the downturn in the Chinese market.
Swot Analysis of "Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China" written by David J. Arnold, Shivani Chand includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Roly Licensee facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Emerging markets and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China casestudy better are - – increasing transportation and logistics costs, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing energy prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing commodity prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Roly Licensee, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Roly Licensee 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 Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Roly Licensee
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 Roly Licensee
Strengths Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Roly Licensee in Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China Harvard Business Review case study are -
Organizational Resilience of Roly Licensee
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Roly Licensee 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
– Roly Licensee has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Roly Licensee 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.
Training and development
– Roly Licensee has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China 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.
Digital Transformation in Sales & Marketing segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Roly Licensee digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Roly Licensee 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.
High brand equity
– Roly Licensee has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Roly Licensee to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- Roly Licensee 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 Roly Licensee is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Roly Licensee has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Roly Licensee is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Innovation driven organization
– Roly Licensee is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Roly Licensee to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Roly Licensee to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Roly Licensee in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Roly Licensee 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 Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Roly Licensee has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Need for greater diversity
– Roly Licensee 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Roly Licensee 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. Roly Licensee 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China, is just above the industry average. Roly Licensee 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China, it seems that the employees of Roly Licensee 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 Roly Licensee 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 - Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China, in the dynamic environment Roly Licensee has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Roly Licensee has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China 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 Roly Licensee 's lucrative customers.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Roly Licensee 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China 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 Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Roly Licensee is planning to shift buying processes online.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China 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 Roly Licensee has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Opportunities Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China | 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 Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China are -
Buying journey improvements
– Roly Licensee can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Roly Licensee 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Roly Licensee 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.
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. Roly Licensee 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. Roly Licensee 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Roly Licensee 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Roly Licensee is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Roly Licensee 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 Roly Licensee to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Roly Licensee to increase its market reach. Roly Licensee 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.
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 Roly Licensee in the consumer business. Now Roly Licensee can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Roly Licensee 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Roly Licensee 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Roly Licensee 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 Roly Licensee to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China are -
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Roly Licensee needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Environmental challenges
– Roly Licensee 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. Roly Licensee can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Roly Licensee high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Increasing wage structure of Roly Licensee
– 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 Roly Licensee.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Roly Licensee 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Roly Licensee 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Roly Licensee with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Roly Licensee has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Roly Licensee 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.
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.
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. Roly Licensee 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, Roly Licensee 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 Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China .
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 Roly Licensee.
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. Roly Licensee 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China 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 Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China 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 Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China 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 Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China 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 Roly International: Consumer Licensed Products in China 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 Roly Licensee needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.