Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul
Surfing on the crest of various consumption trends (health, organic foods, life-styled eating, convenience...), Fresh and Wild launches in the UK a chain of rather focused stores. Should they remain a niche player or try to reach out for the "mass market"? How should they reinforce their management skills and tweak their corporate culture to fulfil their strategic ambitions.
Swot Analysis of "Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul" written by Charles Waldman, Anna Perry includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Wild Fresh facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul casestudy better are - – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, wage bills are increasing, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, technology disruption, increasing energy prices,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Wild Fresh, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Wild Fresh 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 Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Wild Fresh
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 Wild Fresh
Strengths Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Wild Fresh in Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul Harvard Business Review case study are -
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Wild Fresh in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Wild Fresh has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Wild Fresh is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Wild Fresh is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul 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
– Wild Fresh has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Wild Fresh 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
– Wild Fresh is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Wild Fresh in the sector have low bargaining power. Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Wild Fresh to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Learning organization
- Wild Fresh 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 Wild Fresh is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Wild Fresh 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Wild Fresh 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 Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Wild Fresh is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul 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 Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul are -
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Wild Fresh 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Wild Fresh 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 to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Wild Fresh is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Wild Fresh 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.
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 Wild Fresh supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Wild Fresh vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Wild Fresh, firm in the HBR case study Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Lack of clear differentiation of Wild Fresh products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Wild Fresh needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Wild Fresh 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 - Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Wild Fresh has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Wild Fresh is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Sales & Marketing segment. Wild Fresh needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Wild Fresh to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul, in the dynamic environment Wild Fresh has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Wild Fresh has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Opportunities Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul | 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 Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul are -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Wild Fresh is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul 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.
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 Wild Fresh 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Wild Fresh 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Wild Fresh 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 Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Wild Fresh to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Wild Fresh 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. Wild Fresh 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. Wild Fresh 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Wild Fresh 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Wild Fresh 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Wild Fresh 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Wild Fresh 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 Wild Fresh to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Wild Fresh 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Wild Fresh 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 Wild Fresh can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul are -
Increasing wage structure of Wild Fresh
– 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 Wild Fresh.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Wild Fresh 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Wild Fresh 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.
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. Wild Fresh needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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. Wild Fresh 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.
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 Wild Fresh with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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 Wild Fresh business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, 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 Wild Fresh.
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 Wild Fresh in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Wild Fresh is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Wild Fresh has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Wild Fresh 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.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul 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 Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul 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 Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul 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 Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul 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 Fresh and Wild: Growth without Losing your Soul 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 Wild Fresh needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
