Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing
This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. The growing popularity of mobile hand-held devices is opening up intriguing new possibilities for what the authors refer to as "brand in the hand" marketing. Because individuals can be, and often are, connected anytime and anyplace, mobile marketing can be used to collect data through the wireless Internet to determine not only the exact location of a consumer at a given time, but also why that individual might be there. With that information, more meaningful or relevant advertising messages or promotions can be delivered to the consumer on a mobile device. Before companies rush into this new marketing arena, though, they need to understand some fundamental issues. How does mobile marketing differ from traditional approaches? When should a company pursue a brand in the hand initiative? Does mobile marketing have to be integrated within an overall marketing strategy and, if so, how? Moreover, how should companies address privacy issues? These are of particular concern, in part because of the personal nature of mobile devices.
Swot Analysis of "Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing" written by Fareena Sultan, Andrew Rohm includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Mobile Marketing facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Innovation, IT, Marketing, Security & privacy and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing casestudy better are - – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing energy prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Mobile Marketing, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Mobile Marketing 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 Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Mobile Marketing
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 Mobile Marketing
Strengths Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Mobile Marketing in Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing Harvard Business Review case study are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Mobile Marketing to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Mobile Marketing to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Strong track record of project management
– Mobile Marketing is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing 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.
Learning organization
- Mobile Marketing 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 Mobile Marketing is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Mobile Marketing 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 Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High brand equity
– Mobile Marketing has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Mobile Marketing to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Mobile Marketing in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Mobile Marketing has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Digital Transformation in Sales & Marketing segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Mobile Marketing digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Mobile Marketing 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Mobile Marketing is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Training and development
– Mobile Marketing has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Mobile Marketing is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing 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.
Weaknesses Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing are -
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Fareena Sultan, Andrew Rohm suggests that, Mobile Marketing is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Lack of clear differentiation of Mobile Marketing products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Mobile Marketing needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Mobile Marketing 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing 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 Mobile Marketing 's lucrative customers.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Mobile Marketing supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Mobile Marketing vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Mobile Marketing 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing 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 Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Mobile Marketing is planning to shift buying processes online.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing, it seems that the employees of Mobile Marketing 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Mobile Marketing is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing, in the dynamic environment Mobile Marketing has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Mobile Marketing has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing HBR case study mentions - Mobile Marketing 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 Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing | 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 Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing are -
Buying journey improvements
– Mobile Marketing can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Mobile Marketing can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Mobile Marketing can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Mobile Marketing operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Mobile Marketing is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Mobile Marketing has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Mobile Marketing to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing case study. Mobile Marketing can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Mobile Marketing 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Mobile Marketing 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Mobile Marketing 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Mobile Marketing 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Mobile Marketing 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.
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 Mobile Marketing 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 Mobile Marketing 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Mobile Marketing 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.
Threats Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing are -
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. Mobile Marketing 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Mobile Marketing has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Mobile Marketing needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Sales & Marketing sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Mobile Marketing 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 Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing .
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing, Mobile Marketing 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 .
Regulatory challenges
– Mobile Marketing 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.
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Mobile Marketing with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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 Mobile Marketing.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Mobile Marketing 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 Mobile Marketing 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.
Environmental challenges
– Mobile Marketing 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. Mobile Marketing can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry.
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. Mobile Marketing needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing 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 Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing 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 Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing 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 Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing 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 Coming Era of "Brand in the Hand" Marketing 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 Mobile Marketing needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
