Case Study Description of Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada
An immigrant entrepreneur created Hi-Bridge Consulting Corporation, a company that imported and distributed alcoholic products in Canada, among other activities. In 2009, the entrepreneur brought Yanjing beer to Canada from China, even though the Chinese brewery did not have an articulated international expansion strategy in Canada at the time. Despite numerous challenges in the Canadian beer market, the entrepreneur made significant headway. However, six years after the product's introduction, she understood that many Canadian consumers were still not aware of Yanjing beer and that she needed to find an effective way to increase its market share. Kimberley Howard and William Wei are affiliated with Grant MacEwan College.
Authors :: Kimberley Howard, William Wei, Kaijin Nie
Swot Analysis of "Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada" written by Kimberley Howard, William Wei, Kaijin Nie includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Yanjing Beer facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada casestudy better are - – geopolitical disruptions, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, wage bills are increasing, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Yanjing Beer, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Yanjing Beer 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 Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Yanjing Beer
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 Yanjing Beer
Strengths Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Yanjing Beer in Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada Harvard Business Review case study are -
Organizational Resilience of Yanjing Beer
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Yanjing Beer does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High brand equity
– Yanjing Beer has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Yanjing Beer to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– Yanjing Beer is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada 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.
Digital Transformation in Sales & Marketing segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Yanjing Beer digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Yanjing Beer 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Yanjing Beer 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 Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada - 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
– Yanjing Beer is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Yanjing Beer 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 Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Yanjing Beer in the sector have low bargaining power. Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Yanjing Beer to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Yanjing Beer in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Yanjing Beer to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Yanjing Beer to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Yanjing Beer 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.
Learning organization
- Yanjing Beer 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 Yanjing Beer is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada are -
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Yanjing Beer 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada 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 Yanjing Beer has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Yanjing Beer 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 - Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Yanjing Beer 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Yanjing Beer 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada, it seems that the employees of Yanjing Beer 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada, 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Yanjing Beer 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada HBR case study mentions - Yanjing Beer 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada, is just above the industry average. Yanjing Beer 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Yanjing Beer 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. Yanjing Beer 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.
Opportunities Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada | 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 Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada are -
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Yanjing Beer to increase its market reach. Yanjing Beer 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.
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. Yanjing Beer 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. Yanjing Beer 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
– Yanjing Beer 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Yanjing Beer has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Yanjing Beer to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada case study. Yanjing Beer can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Yanjing Beer 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.
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. Yanjing Beer can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Yanjing Beer 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 Yanjing Beer to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Yanjing Beer 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 Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Yanjing Beer to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Yanjing Beer 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 Yanjing Beer in the consumer business. Now Yanjing Beer can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Developing new processes and practices
– Yanjing Beer 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Yanjing Beer 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, Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Buying journey improvements
– Yanjing Beer can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada 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.
Threats Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Yanjing Beer 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.
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. Yanjing Beer needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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. Yanjing Beer 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Yanjing Beer 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Yanjing Beer is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Yanjing Beer
– 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 Yanjing Beer.
Regulatory challenges
– Yanjing Beer 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.
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. Yanjing Beer can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada, Yanjing Beer 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 .
Environmental challenges
– Yanjing Beer 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. Yanjing Beer can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry.
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 Yanjing Beer in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Yanjing Beer 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 Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada .
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada 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 Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada 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 Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada 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 Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada 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 Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Bringing Yanjing Beer to Canada 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 Yanjing Beer needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.