Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Strategy & Execution
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C)
The case is a continuation of Lesser Antilles Lines (UV0351 and UV3879), which describes the price competition between two duopolistic shipping companies facing inelastic demand for cargo volume. Customers have inelastic and time-sensitive demands, restricting their strategic possibilities. The case extends this setting to multiple competitors using a multinomial logit model of customer demand.
Swot Analysis of "Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C)" written by Matthias Hild includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Inelastic Antilles facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Competition, Competitive strategy, Diversity, International business, Pricing and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) casestudy better are - – increasing transportation and logistics costs, there is backlash against globalization, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing commodity prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Inelastic Antilles, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Inelastic Antilles 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 Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Inelastic Antilles
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Strategy & Execution field.
4. Making a Strategy & Execution topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Inelastic Antilles
Strengths Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Inelastic Antilles in Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Strong track record of project management
– Inelastic Antilles is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Ability to lead change in Strategy & Execution field
– Inelastic Antilles 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 Inelastic Antilles in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Training and development
– Inelastic Antilles has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Inelastic Antilles 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 Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Diverse revenue streams
– Inelastic Antilles is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Inelastic Antilles in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Inelastic Antilles in the sector have low bargaining power. Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Inelastic Antilles to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High brand equity
– Inelastic Antilles has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Inelastic Antilles to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- Inelastic Antilles 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 Inelastic Antilles is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Inelastic Antilles is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Inelastic Antilles 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.
Weaknesses Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Inelastic Antilles 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) 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 Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Inelastic Antilles is planning to shift buying processes online.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Inelastic Antilles 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Inelastic Antilles 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C), it seems that the employees of Inelastic Antilles 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C), in the dynamic environment Inelastic Antilles has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Inelastic Antilles has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) 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 Inelastic Antilles 's lucrative customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) HBR case study mentions - Inelastic Antilles 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Inelastic Antilles 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) 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 Inelastic Antilles has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Inelastic Antilles, firm in the HBR case study Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Opportunities Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) | 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 Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Inelastic Antilles 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Inelastic Antilles 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 Strategy & Execution segment.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Inelastic Antilles can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Inelastic Antilles in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Strategy & Execution segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Buying journey improvements
– Inelastic Antilles can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Inelastic Antilles 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Inelastic Antilles to increase its market reach. Inelastic Antilles 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Inelastic Antilles can develop new processes and procedures in Strategy & Execution 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.
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 Inelastic Antilles in the consumer business. Now Inelastic Antilles can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Loyalty marketing
– Inelastic Antilles 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 Inelastic Antilles has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Inelastic Antilles to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) case study. Inelastic Antilles can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Inelastic Antilles 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 Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Inelastic Antilles to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Inelastic Antilles can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Inelastic Antilles operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Strategy & Execution sector.
Threats Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) are -
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. Inelastic Antilles 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Inelastic Antilles in the Strategy & Execution industry. The Strategy & Execution industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Inelastic Antilles with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C), Inelastic Antilles may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Strategy & Execution .
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Inelastic Antilles has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Strategy & Execution industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Inelastic Antilles needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Strategy & Execution 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.
Environmental challenges
– Inelastic Antilles 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. Inelastic Antilles can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Inelastic Antilles 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 Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) .
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Inelastic Antilles 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.
Increasing wage structure of Inelastic Antilles
– 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 Inelastic Antilles.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Strategy & Execution field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Inelastic Antilles can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Inelastic Antilles needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Strategy & Execution industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Inelastic Antilles 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) 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 Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) 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 Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) 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 Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) 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 Lesser Antilles Lines: The Island of San Huberto (C) 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 Inelastic Antilles needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
