Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version
Brinda Patel, director of oral care products for the India division of a consumer home-care product company, develops a data-driven marketing plan for toothbrushes. She believes her plan can support a 20% increase in unit sales based on rising demand for modern oral-care products in India. Her boss, the VP of Marketing, believes her forecast is too conservative and suggests spending more money on promotions to boost sales by 30%. Patel must develop a new plan to meet this higher growth rate by increasing the advertising budget and revising the distribution of the budget across three targeted advertising messages. She must also consider the regional challenges within India between rural and urban consumers and their willingness to adopt a modern approach to dental care. Students must build a projected income statement and consider the effects of increasing the advertising budget and changing the product mix in favor of higher margin toothbrushes.
Swot Analysis of "Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version" written by John A. Quelch, Alisa Zalosh includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Oral Toothbrushes facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Customers, Emerging markets, Forecasting, Health, Product development and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version casestudy better are - – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there is backlash against globalization, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, technology disruption, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing transportation and logistics costs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
wage bills are increasing, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Oral Toothbrushes, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Oral Toothbrushes 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 Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Oral Toothbrushes
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 Oral Toothbrushes
Strengths Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Oral Toothbrushes in Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version Harvard Business Review case study are -
Innovation driven organization
– Oral Toothbrushes is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Oral Toothbrushes in the sector have low bargaining power. Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Oral Toothbrushes to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Oral Toothbrushes has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Oral Toothbrushes 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Oral Toothbrushes is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version 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.
Learning organization
- Oral Toothbrushes 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 Oral Toothbrushes is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Analytics focus
– Oral Toothbrushes 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 John A. Quelch, Alisa Zalosh 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Oral Toothbrushes is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Oral Toothbrushes 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.
Organizational Resilience of Oral Toothbrushes
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Oral Toothbrushes does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Training and development
– Oral Toothbrushes has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Oral Toothbrushes 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Oral Toothbrushes is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Weaknesses Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Oral Toothbrushes 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version 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 Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Oral Toothbrushes is planning to shift buying processes online.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Oral Toothbrushes 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Oral Toothbrushes needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Lack of clear differentiation of Oral Toothbrushes products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Oral Toothbrushes 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 Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version 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 Oral Toothbrushes has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version HBR case study mentions - Oral Toothbrushes 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version, it seems that the employees of Oral Toothbrushes 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Oral Toothbrushes 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 - Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version, in the dynamic environment Oral Toothbrushes has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Oral Toothbrushes has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Oral Toothbrushes, firm in the HBR case study Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Opportunities Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version | 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 Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version are -
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Oral Toothbrushes 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Oral Toothbrushes 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Oral Toothbrushes can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Oral Toothbrushes to increase its market reach. Oral Toothbrushes will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Oral Toothbrushes is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version 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.
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. Oral Toothbrushes can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Loyalty marketing
– Oral Toothbrushes 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Oral Toothbrushes 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.
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. Oral Toothbrushes 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. Oral Toothbrushes 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.
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 Oral Toothbrushes in the consumer business. Now Oral Toothbrushes can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Developing new processes and practices
– Oral Toothbrushes can develop new processes and procedures in Sales & Marketing industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Oral Toothbrushes 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, Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Oral Toothbrushes 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.
Threats Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Oral Toothbrushes has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Oral Toothbrushes 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.
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. Oral Toothbrushes can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Oral Toothbrushes 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.
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 Oral Toothbrushes.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Oral Toothbrushes 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Oral Toothbrushes 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Oral Toothbrushes with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Oral Toothbrushes is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version, Oral Toothbrushes 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 .
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 Oral Toothbrushes 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.
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.
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 Oral Toothbrushes business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version 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 Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version 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 Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version 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 Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version 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 Cottle-Taylor: Expanding the Oral Care Group in India, Spanish Version 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 Oral Toothbrushes needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.