Business performance and social media: Love or hate? SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Business performance and social media: Love or hate?
The social media space has become a common place for communication, networking, and content sharing. Many companies seek marketing and business opportunities via these platforms. However, the link between resources generated from these sites and business performance remains largely unexploited. Both managers and financial advisors can profit from the lessons learned in this study. We conceptualize four channels by which social media impacts financial, operational, and corporate social performance: social capital, customers' revealed preferences, social marketing, and social corporate networking. An empirical test of our framework shows that 'followers' and 'likes' positively influence a firm's share value, but only after a critical mass of followers is attained. Our estimates suggest that Twitter is a more powerful tool to enhance business performance than Facebook.
Swot Analysis of "Business performance and social media: Love or hate?" written by Jordi Paniagua, Juan Sapena includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Social Followers facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Business performance and social media: Love or hate? case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Marketing, Performance measurement, Social platforms and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Business performance and social media: Love or hate? casestudy better are - – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, wage bills are increasing, there is backlash against globalization, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, technology disruption,
increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Business performance and social media: Love or hate?
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Business performance and social media: Love or hate? case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Social Followers, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Social Followers 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 Business performance and social media: Love or hate? can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Business performance and social media: Love or hate? case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Social Followers
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 Social Followers
Strengths Business performance and social media: Love or hate? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Social Followers in Business performance and social media: Love or hate? Harvard Business Review case study are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Social Followers 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 Business performance and social media: Love or hate? 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
– Business performance and social media: Love or hate? firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Social Followers to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Social Followers to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Social Followers has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Social Followers 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Social Followers in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Analytics focus
– Social Followers is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by Jordi Paniagua, Juan Sapena can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Organizational Resilience of Social Followers
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Social Followers does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Strong track record of project management
– Social Followers is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Innovation driven organization
– Social Followers is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Business performance and social media: Love or hate? Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Digital Transformation in Sales & Marketing segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Social Followers digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Social Followers 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Business performance and social media: Love or hate? 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Social Followers 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Social Followers is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Business performance and social media: Love or hate? are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Weaknesses Business performance and social media: Love or hate? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Business performance and social media: Love or hate? are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Business performance and social media: Love or hate? 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 Business performance and social media: Love or hate? can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Social Followers is planning to shift buying processes online.
Lack of clear differentiation of Social Followers products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Social Followers needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
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 Social Followers supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Business performance and social media: Love or hate?, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Social Followers vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Business performance and social media: Love or hate?, it seems that the employees of Social Followers 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 Business performance and social media: Love or hate?, 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Social Followers 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 cash cycle compare to competitors
Social Followers 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Social Followers 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 - Business performance and social media: Love or hate? should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Social Followers, firm in the HBR case study Business performance and social media: Love or hate? needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Business performance and social media: Love or hate? 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 Social Followers 's lucrative customers.
Need for greater diversity
– Social Followers 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.
Opportunities Business performance and social media: Love or hate? | 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 Business performance and social media: Love or hate? are -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Social Followers is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Business performance and social media: Love or hate? 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Social Followers can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Social Followers 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 Social Followers to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Social Followers 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.
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. Social Followers can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Manufacturing automation
– Social Followers 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Social Followers 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 Social Followers 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Social Followers 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Social Followers can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Business performance and social media: Love or hate? 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Social Followers can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Social Followers operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Social Followers 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.
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. Social Followers can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Threats Business performance and social media: Love or hate? External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Business performance and social media: Love or hate? are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Social Followers has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Social Followers 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Social Followers 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.
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 Social Followers in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Social Followers is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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.
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. Social Followers 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Social Followers 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
– Social Followers 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. Social Followers can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Business performance and social media: Love or hate?, Social Followers 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 .
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Social Followers 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 Business performance and social media: Love or hate? .
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 Social Followers.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Social Followers high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Business performance and social media: Love or hate? 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 Business performance and social media: Love or hate? 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 Business performance and social media: Love or hate? 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 Business performance and social media: Love or hate? 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 Business performance and social media: Love or hate? 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 Social Followers needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.