Swot Analysis of "Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C)" written by John T. Gourville includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Steinway Legend facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Marketing and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) casestudy better are - – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing energy prices, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, geopolitical disruptions, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , wage bills are increasing,
increasing household debt because of falling income levels, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Steinway Legend, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Steinway Legend 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 Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Steinway Legend
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 Steinway Legend
Strengths Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Steinway Legend in Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Steinway Legend is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Steinway Legend 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 Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Digital Transformation in Sales & Marketing segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Steinway Legend digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Steinway Legend 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Steinway Legend to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Steinway Legend to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Sales & Marketing field
– Steinway Legend 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 Steinway Legend in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Training and development
– Steinway Legend has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) 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
– Steinway Legend is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Steinway Legend 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Steinway Legend is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Steinway Legend has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Steinway Legend 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Steinway Legend 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Steinway Legend in the sector have low bargaining power. Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Steinway Legend to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Steinway Legend is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Sales & Marketing segment. Steinway Legend needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Steinway Legend to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
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 Steinway Legend supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C), it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Steinway Legend vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Lack of clear differentiation of Steinway Legend products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Steinway Legend needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) 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 Steinway Legend has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, John T. Gourville suggests that, Steinway Legend 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Steinway Legend 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Steinway Legend 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. Steinway Legend 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Steinway Legend 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 - Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Steinway Legend 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Steinway Legend, firm in the HBR case study Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C), in the dynamic environment Steinway Legend has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Steinway Legend has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Opportunities Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) | 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 Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) are -
Loyalty marketing
– Steinway Legend has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Steinway Legend can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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 Steinway Legend in the consumer business. Now Steinway Legend can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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. Steinway Legend 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. Steinway Legend 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Steinway Legend can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Steinway Legend 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 Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Steinway Legend to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Steinway Legend 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Steinway Legend 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Steinway Legend 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Steinway Legend can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Steinway Legend operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Steinway Legend 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 Steinway Legend to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Manufacturing automation
– Steinway Legend 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Steinway Legend 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 Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) are -
Regulatory challenges
– Steinway Legend 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.
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. Steinway Legend 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C), Steinway Legend 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 dependence on third party suppliers
– Steinway Legend 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Steinway Legend 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Steinway Legend with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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 Steinway Legend in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Steinway Legend 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. Steinway Legend 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. Steinway Legend needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Steinway Legend business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Steinway Legend
– 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 Steinway Legend.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Steinway Legend 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 Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) .
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) 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 Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) 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 Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) 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 Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) 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 Steinway & Sons: Buying a Legend (C) 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 Steinway Legend needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
