Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers
In April 2007, Huella Online Travel Ltd, a Malaysian-based online travel portal targeting Asia, including Greater China, announced its results for the financial year 2006. Its market share for Hong Kong had been hovering just under 5% since the launch of its local site in 2000 and was performing worse in this than in other markets. A qualitative market research study conducted earlier had revealed that low awareness of the Huella brand and the general risk-averseness of Hong Kong consumers towards online travel purchases appeared to be the key reasons behind this. These findings were also echoed by market intelligence and industry reports, both of which suggested that online travel had not picked up in Hong Kong, despite the city's high internet usage penetration rate and the techno-savvy nature of its population, especially that of young people. Indeed, Hong Kong's adoption rate for online flight purchases was among the lowest in the world. In order to confirm previous findings and to test their representativeness, Huella decided to conduct a quantitative study. The company's goals were to devise a viable marketing strategy to ease Hong Kong consumers' concerns towards online travel purchases and ultimately to increase its market share in the city. This case illustrates the types of information needed by a company for its specific marketing objectives and examines how different types of market research can help it attain its goals.
Swot Analysis of "Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers" written by Isabella Chan, Kevin Zhou includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Huella Travel facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers casestudy better are - – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing commodity prices, wage bills are increasing, geopolitical disruptions, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic ,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Huella Travel, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Huella Travel 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 Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Huella Travel
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 Huella Travel
Strengths Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Huella Travel in Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers Harvard Business Review case study are -
Learning organization
- Huella Travel 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 Huella Travel is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Huella Travel in the sector have low bargaining power. Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Huella Travel to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Diverse revenue streams
– Huella Travel is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Huella Travel is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High brand equity
– Huella Travel has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Huella Travel to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Huella Travel 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 Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers - 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 Huella Travel digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Huella Travel 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
– Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Huella Travel to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Huella Travel to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Analytics focus
– Huella Travel 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 Isabella Chan, Kevin Zhou 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Huella Travel 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 Huella Travel in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers 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.
Weaknesses Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers are -
Need for greater diversity
– Huella Travel 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers, 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Huella Travel 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Huella Travel is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Huella Travel 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Huella Travel products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Huella Travel needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Huella Travel 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. Huella Travel 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Huella Travel 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers, it seems that the employees of Huella Travel 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers 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 Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Huella Travel is planning to shift buying processes online.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Isabella Chan, Kevin Zhou suggests that, Huella Travel 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.
Opportunities Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers | 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 Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers are -
Buying journey improvements
– Huella Travel can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers 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.
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. Huella Travel can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Huella Travel to increase its market reach. Huella Travel 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.
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 Huella Travel 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Huella Travel 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 Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Huella Travel to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Huella Travel 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 Huella Travel 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.
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. Huella Travel 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. Huella Travel 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 Huella Travel in the consumer business. Now Huella Travel can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Huella Travel 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 Huella Travel to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Huella Travel can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Huella Travel 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Huella Travel has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Huella Travel to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers case study. Huella Travel can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers are -
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Huella Travel 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. Huella Travel can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Huella Travel.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Huella Travel 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 Huella Travel with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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. Huella Travel 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 Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers, Huella Travel 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 Huella Travel in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Huella Travel 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. Huella Travel can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry.
Regulatory challenges
– Huella Travel 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 Huella Travel is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Huella Travel business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers 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 Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers 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 Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers 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 Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers 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 Huella Online Travel: Gaining Market Insight into Hong Kong Consumers 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 Huella Travel needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
