Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Strategy & Execution
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market
In the dynamic online travel industry, the founders of mygola.com (mygola) needed to decide on the company's future growth trajectory. The online travel industry was booming, but online travel planning was at a relatively nascent stage. In the travel-planning space, mygola's initial service offering had been well received but the need to scale up was pressing. The existing product leveraged technological efficiencies and human judgment to provide customized answers for users' travel queries. The new product, on the other hand, could change mygola's way of doing business going forward. Though it was untested, it had the potential to put mygola on a higher growth path. The choice of product would mean that mygola would have to make a host of other decisions regarding the business. The decisions that the co-founders had to make could very well turn out to be the most important in mygola's growth story. Supriya Sharma is affiliated with Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Rajesh Nanarpuzha is affiliated with Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Pinaki Roy is affiliated with Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
Authors :: Supriya Sharma, Rajesh Nanarpuzha, Pinaki Roy
Swot Analysis of "Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market" written by Supriya Sharma, Rajesh Nanarpuzha, Pinaki Roy includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Travel Mygola facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Internet and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market casestudy better are - – digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, wage bills are increasing, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing energy prices, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic ,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Travel Mygola, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Travel Mygola 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 Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Travel Mygola
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 Travel Mygola
Strengths Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Travel Mygola in Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market Harvard Business Review case study are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Travel Mygola 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.
Organizational Resilience of Travel Mygola
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Travel Mygola does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- Travel Mygola 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 Travel Mygola is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Travel Mygola has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Travel Mygola 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.
High brand equity
– Travel Mygola has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Travel Mygola to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Travel Mygola 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 Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market 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
– Travel Mygola is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Training and development
– Travel Mygola has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market 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.
Digital Transformation in Strategy & Execution segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Travel Mygola digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Travel Mygola 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.
Ability to lead change in Strategy & Execution field
– Travel Mygola 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 Travel Mygola in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Travel Mygola in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market are -
Need for greater diversity
– Travel Mygola 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Travel Mygola 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market 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 Travel Mygola 's lucrative customers.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Travel Mygola is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market, is just above the industry average. Travel Mygola 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Travel Mygola 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.
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 Travel Mygola supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Travel Mygola vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market 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 Travel Mygola has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market HBR case study mentions - Travel Mygola 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market 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 Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Travel Mygola is planning to shift buying processes online.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Travel Mygola 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.
Opportunities Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market | 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 Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Travel Mygola 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Travel Mygola 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Travel Mygola can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Manufacturing automation
– Travel Mygola can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Strategy & Execution 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Travel Mygola 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Travel Mygola 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Travel Mygola 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Travel Mygola 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 Travel Mygola to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Travel Mygola can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help, as suggested in case study, Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Travel Mygola 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 Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Travel Mygola to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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 Travel Mygola 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
– Travel Mygola 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.
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 Travel Mygola in the consumer business. Now Travel Mygola can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market 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. Travel Mygola 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Travel Mygola 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 Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market .
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market, Travel Mygola 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 .
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 Travel Mygola business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Travel Mygola has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Strategy & Execution industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Travel Mygola 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.
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 Travel Mygola.
Regulatory challenges
– Travel Mygola 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 Strategy & Execution industry regulations.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Travel Mygola is facing in Strategy & Execution sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, 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. Travel Mygola needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Strategy & Execution industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Travel Mygola in the Strategy & Execution sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
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. Travel Mygola can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Travel Mygola 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market 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 Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market 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 Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market 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 Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market 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 Mygola.com: Deciding Its Place in the Online Travel Market 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 Travel Mygola needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.