Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications
Marketing executives at the company are considering the merits of a variety of communications programs designed to increase the effectiveness of the company's sales force of beauty consultants.
Swot Analysis of "Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications" written by John A. Quelch, Alice M. Court includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Communications Kay facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Marketing, Sales and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications casestudy better are - – digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing transportation and logistics costs, technology disruption, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Communications Kay, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Communications Kay 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 Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Communications Kay
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 Communications Kay
Strengths Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Communications Kay in Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications Harvard Business Review case study are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Communications Kay 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Communications Kay is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Communications Kay in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Communications Kay in the sector have low bargaining power. Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Communications Kay to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Communications Kay
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Communications Kay does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to lead change in Sales & Marketing field
– Communications Kay 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 Communications Kay in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Learning organization
- Communications Kay 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 Communications Kay is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Communications Kay 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 Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Communications Kay 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 Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Innovation driven organization
– Communications Kay is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications 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
– Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Communications Kay to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Communications Kay to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications 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.
Weaknesses Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications are -
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Communications Kay, firm in the HBR case study Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Communications Kay 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 - Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Communications Kay 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications, in the dynamic environment Communications Kay has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Communications Kay has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Need for greater diversity
– Communications Kay 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Communications Kay 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications 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 Communications Kay 's lucrative customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications 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 Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Communications Kay is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications HBR case study mentions - Communications Kay 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Communications Kay 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications, 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.
Opportunities Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications | 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 Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications are -
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Communications Kay 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 Communications Kay to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Communications Kay 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.
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. Communications Kay can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Communications Kay 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.
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 Communications Kay in the consumer business. Now Communications Kay can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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 Communications Kay 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 Communications Kay 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Communications Kay 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Communications Kay can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Manufacturing automation
– Communications Kay 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.
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. Communications Kay can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Communications Kay 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 Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Communications Kay to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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. Communications Kay 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. Communications Kay 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 Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Communications Kay is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Communications Kay 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.
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. Communications Kay needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Communications Kay 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 international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Communications Kay 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 Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications .
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.
Increasing wage structure of Communications Kay
– 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 Communications Kay.
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 Communications Kay in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline 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. Communications Kay 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. Communications Kay 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.
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 Communications Kay.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Communications Kay 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
– Communications Kay has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Communications Kay 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications 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 Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications 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 Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications 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 Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications 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 Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc.: Marketing Communications 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 Communications Kay needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.