Swot Analysis of "Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review" written by Gerald Zaltman, Nancy Puccinelli includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Music Mood facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Market research, Psychology and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review casestudy better are - – there is backlash against globalization, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing commodity prices, geopolitical disruptions, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing transportation and logistics costs,
increasing energy prices, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Music Mood, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Music Mood 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 Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Music Mood
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 Music Mood
Strengths Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Music Mood in Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review Harvard Business Review case study are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Music Mood has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Music Mood 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
– Music Mood is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Music Mood to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Music Mood to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Learning organization
- Music Mood 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 Music Mood is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Music Mood 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Music Mood in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Music Mood 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 Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review - 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 Music Mood digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Music Mood 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Music Mood 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Music Mood in the sector have low bargaining power. Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Music Mood to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Music Mood
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Music Mood does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Analytics focus
– Music Mood 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 Gerald Zaltman, Nancy Puccinelli 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.
Weaknesses Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Music Mood 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 - Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Music Mood 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Music Mood 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 dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review 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 Music Mood has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review, 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review, is just above the industry average. Music Mood needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Need for greater diversity
– Music Mood 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Music Mood 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Music Mood is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Sales & Marketing segment. Music Mood needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Music Mood to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Lack of clear differentiation of Music Mood products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Music Mood needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review 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 Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Music Mood is planning to shift buying processes online.
Opportunities Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review | 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 Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Music Mood 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Music Mood 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.
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. Music Mood can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Manufacturing automation
– Music Mood 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
– Music Mood 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Music Mood 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Music Mood has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Music Mood to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review case study. Music Mood can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Music Mood 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Music Mood is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Music Mood 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Music Mood 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Music Mood 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 Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Music Mood to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Music Mood can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review are -
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 Music Mood in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline 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 Music Mood business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Music Mood 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.
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. Music Mood can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Music Mood can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
Regulatory challenges
– Music Mood 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Music Mood is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Music Mood.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Music Mood 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 Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review .
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. Music Mood 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 Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review, Music Mood 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 wage structure of Music Mood
– 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 Music Mood.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review 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 Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review 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 Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review 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 Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review 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 Strategic Use of Music in Marketing: A Selective Review 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 Music Mood needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
