Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management
As surveillance technology advances and becomes more data rich and less intrusive and costly, brands collect vast quantities of customer data in order to gain customer insights to remain competitive. Brands conduct customer surveillance often without considering the consequences on customer relationships. Because of customer surveillance activities, customers may also experience privacy intrusions and turn to customer secrecy strategies that hide or disguise their data. To reduce this reaction, we propose a set of surveillance prompts to structure market intelligence databases to increase the efficiency of, and thus reduce the quantity of, customer surveillance activities while increasing data integrity and the potential value of customer insights. By discussing the need for brands to collect business and market intelligence, as well as detailing five types of customer data resources, we lay the groundwork for selecting potential customer data resources that best fit a brand's customer insight needs. We conclude with a discussion of two important considerations of a brand's customer surveillance strategy.
Swot Analysis of "Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management" written by Kirk Plangger, Richard T. Watson includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Surveillance Customer facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Marketing, Security & privacy and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management casestudy better are - – digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, wage bills are increasing, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Surveillance Customer, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Surveillance Customer 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 Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Surveillance Customer
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 Surveillance Customer
Strengths Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Surveillance Customer in Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management Harvard Business Review case study are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Surveillance Customer has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Surveillance Customer 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Surveillance Customer in the sector have low bargaining power. Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Surveillance Customer to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Surveillance Customer 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 lead change in Sales & Marketing field
– Surveillance Customer 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 Surveillance Customer in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Surveillance Customer 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 Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Surveillance Customer to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Surveillance Customer to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Surveillance Customer are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Training and development
– Surveillance Customer has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Surveillance Customer is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Learning organization
- Surveillance Customer 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 Surveillance Customer is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– Surveillance Customer is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Weaknesses Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Surveillance Customer 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 - Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management HBR case study mentions - Surveillance Customer 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Surveillance Customer, firm in the HBR case study Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Need for greater diversity
– Surveillance Customer 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Surveillance Customer products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Surveillance Customer needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Surveillance Customer 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 Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management, it seems that the employees of Surveillance Customer 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, Surveillance Customer is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management 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 Surveillance Customer has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Kirk Plangger, Richard T. Watson suggests that, Surveillance Customer 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Surveillance Customer 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. Surveillance Customer 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 Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management | 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 Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Surveillance Customer 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Surveillance Customer has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Surveillance Customer to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management case study. Surveillance Customer can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Surveillance Customer can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Surveillance Customer in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Sales & Marketing segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Surveillance Customer can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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. Surveillance Customer 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. Surveillance Customer 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Surveillance Customer is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Surveillance Customer 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Surveillance Customer 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, Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Loyalty marketing
– Surveillance Customer 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.
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 Surveillance Customer 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Surveillance Customer can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Surveillance Customer operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Surveillance Customer can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management are -
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.
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 Surveillance Customer in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management, Surveillance Customer 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 .
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. Surveillance Customer needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Surveillance Customer 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 Surveillance Customer 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Surveillance Customer 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.
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 Surveillance Customer.
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Surveillance Customer 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.
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. Surveillance Customer 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.
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. Surveillance Customer can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Surveillance Customer has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Surveillance Customer 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 Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management 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 Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management 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 Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management 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 Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management 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 Balancing customer privacy, secrets, and surveillance: Insights and management 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 Surveillance Customer needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
