Stealth Marketing as a Strategy SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Strategy & Execution
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Stealth Marketing as a Strategy
Stealth marketing has gained increasing attention as a strategy during the past few years. We begin by providing a brief historical review to provide some perspective on how this strategy has been practiced in a myriad of ways in various parts of the world, and how it has consequently evolved in the emerging new marketplace. A more inclusive definition of stealth marketing is then proposed to conceptually understand its use in various contexts. Specifically, we propose a new typology of stealth marketing strategies based on whether businesses or competitors are aware of them, and whether they are visible to the targeted customers. We further provide suggestions of how firms can counter the stealth marketing strategies used by their competitors. Contrary to conventional wisdom, evidence is also provided about how such strategies can be used for "doing good" for society. Finally, the assessment of efficiency and effectiveness of stealth marketing strategies, and their related ethical implications, are discussed.
Swot Analysis of "Stealth Marketing as a Strategy" written by Abhijit Roy, Satya P. Chattopadhyay includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Stealth Marketing facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Stealth Marketing as a Strategy case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Social responsibility, Strategy and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Stealth Marketing as a Strategy casestudy better are - – wage bills are increasing, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, there is backlash against globalization, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, geopolitical disruptions, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Stealth Marketing as a Strategy
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Stealth Marketing as a Strategy case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Stealth Marketing, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Stealth Marketing 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 Stealth Marketing as a Strategy can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Stealth Marketing as a Strategy case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Stealth Marketing
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 Stealth Marketing
Strengths Stealth Marketing as a Strategy | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Stealth Marketing in Stealth Marketing as a Strategy Harvard Business Review case study are -
Digital Transformation in Strategy & Execution segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Stealth Marketing digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Stealth Marketing 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.
High brand equity
– Stealth Marketing has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Stealth Marketing to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Stealth Marketing is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Stealth Marketing as a Strategy are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Ability to lead change in Strategy & Execution field
– Stealth Marketing 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 Stealth Marketing 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 Stealth Marketing in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Stealth Marketing 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 Stealth Marketing as a Strategy HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Stealth Marketing 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Strategy & Execution industry
– Stealth Marketing as a Strategy firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Stealth Marketing to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Stealth Marketing to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Strong track record of project management
– Stealth Marketing is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Stealth Marketing 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 Stealth Marketing as a Strategy - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Learning organization
- Stealth Marketing 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 Stealth Marketing is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Stealth Marketing as a Strategy Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Stealth Marketing
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Stealth Marketing does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses Stealth Marketing as a Strategy | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Stealth Marketing as a Strategy are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Stealth Marketing has some of the most successful products in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. firm in the HBR case study - Stealth Marketing as a Strategy should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Stealth Marketing 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Stealth Marketing as a Strategy, is just above the industry average. Stealth Marketing 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Stealth Marketing as a Strategy 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 Stealth Marketing as a Strategy can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Stealth Marketing is planning to shift buying processes online.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Stealth Marketing 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Abhijit Roy, Satya P. Chattopadhyay suggests that, Stealth Marketing 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Stealth Marketing is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Stealth Marketing as a Strategy can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Stealth Marketing 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Stealth Marketing as a Strategy 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 Stealth Marketing has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Stealth Marketing 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. Stealth Marketing 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Stealth Marketing as a Strategy HBR case study mentions - Stealth Marketing 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.
Opportunities Stealth Marketing as a Strategy | 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 Stealth Marketing as a Strategy are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Stealth Marketing 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Stealth Marketing 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Stealth Marketing can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Stealth Marketing is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Stealth Marketing as a Strategy 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Stealth Marketing 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.
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 Stealth Marketing in the consumer business. Now Stealth Marketing can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Loyalty marketing
– Stealth Marketing has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Stealth Marketing 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 Stealth Marketing as a Strategy - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Stealth Marketing to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Stealth Marketing 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 Stealth Marketing to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Strategy & Execution industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Stealth Marketing 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. Stealth Marketing 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Stealth Marketing has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Stealth Marketing to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Stealth Marketing as a Strategy case study. Stealth Marketing can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, 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, Stealth Marketing can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Stealth Marketing operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Strategy & Execution sector.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Stealth Marketing 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.
Threats Stealth Marketing as a Strategy External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Stealth Marketing as a Strategy are -
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 Stealth Marketing in the Strategy & Execution sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Stealth Marketing 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Stealth Marketing 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Stealth Marketing 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.
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Stealth Marketing 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.
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 Stealth Marketing business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Stealth Marketing 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.
Increasing wage structure of Stealth Marketing
– 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 Stealth Marketing.
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. Stealth Marketing 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.
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. Stealth Marketing needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Strategy & Execution industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Environmental challenges
– Stealth Marketing 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. Stealth Marketing can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry.
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 Stealth Marketing.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Stealth Marketing as a Strategy 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 Stealth Marketing as a Strategy 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 Stealth Marketing as a Strategy 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 Stealth Marketing as a Strategy 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 Stealth Marketing as a Strategy 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 Stealth Marketing needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
