Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement
The marketing head of the Boston Red Sox is reviewing the team's "Friendly Fenway" fan satisfaction program. The program is described in the context of the team's on-the-field performance, the ballpark's character, and team marketing and fan-building in general. The revenue implications of increased customer satisfaction are also raised, within the framework of team economics.
Swot Analysis of "Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement" written by Stephen A. Greyser includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Fenway Fan facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Customers, Supply chain and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement casestudy better are - – technology disruption, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, geopolitical disruptions,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Fenway Fan, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Fenway Fan 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 Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Fenway Fan
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 Fenway Fan
Strengths Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Fenway Fan in Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement Harvard Business Review case study are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Fenway Fan to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Fenway Fan to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Learning organization
- Fenway Fan 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 Fenway Fan is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Sales & Marketing field
– Fenway Fan is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Fenway Fan in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Organizational Resilience of Fenway Fan
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Fenway Fan does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Innovation driven organization
– Fenway Fan is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Digital Transformation in Sales & Marketing segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Fenway Fan digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Fenway Fan 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.
Training and development
– Fenway Fan has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Fenway Fan 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 Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Fenway Fan 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 Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Fenway Fan 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.
High brand equity
– Fenway Fan has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Fenway Fan to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Analytics focus
– Fenway Fan 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 Stephen A. Greyser 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 Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Fenway Fan products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Fenway Fan needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Fenway Fan 's lucrative customers.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement, it seems that the employees of Fenway Fan 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement, is just above the industry average. Fenway Fan 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Fenway Fan 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. Fenway Fan 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Fenway Fan 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, Fenway Fan is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement HBR case study mentions - Fenway Fan 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Fenway Fan 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 Fenway Fan is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Sales & Marketing segment. Fenway Fan needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Fenway Fan to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Fenway Fan 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.
Opportunities Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement | 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 Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement are -
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Fenway Fan 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Fenway Fan 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Fenway Fan can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Fenway Fan operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
Buying journey improvements
– Fenway Fan can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement 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.
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 Fenway Fan in the consumer business. Now Fenway Fan can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Fenway Fan 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Fenway Fan can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Fenway Fan 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Fenway Fan is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Fenway Fan 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 Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Fenway Fan to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Manufacturing automation
– Fenway Fan 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
– Fenway Fan 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Fenway Fan 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.
Threats Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement are -
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 Fenway Fan business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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. Fenway Fan needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Fenway Fan 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.
Increasing wage structure of Fenway Fan
– 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 Fenway Fan.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Fenway Fan 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 Fenway Fan 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
– Fenway Fan has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Fenway Fan 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Fenway Fan 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Fenway Fan 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.
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 Fenway Fan in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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 Fenway Fan.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement, Fenway Fan 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 .
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement 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 Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement 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 Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement 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 Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement 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 Friendly Fenway Program: The Value of Experience Enhancement 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 Fenway Fan needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.